BRITNEY SPEARS SINGLES POLL

i would also like to put out a request for a decent-quality mp3 of the alan braxe remix of "anticipating" if anyone has such a thing

as for the music here...considering that even many of her own fans struggle to take britney-the-artist (and indeed britney-the-person) 100% seriously (maybe because she's never bothered with any nonsense Artistic Credibility narrative herself à la JT or Xtina), that's a massive amount of quality in there. there are only a handful of singles there i don't fuck with.

"everytime" has long been my default answer to this question but actually looking at them all lined up..."anticipating" (nile rodgers collab y'all) and its irresistible disco strings, "stronger" as the "baby" template turned up to steely-edged 11, the unimpeachable blackout stretch...

obv "lucky" is the most ~poignant~ in retrospect

fuckkkk "do somethin'" goes so hard for a random bonus track

tell you what ISN'T the best britney single though - "toxic"

"Born To Make You Happy" always and 4 ever.

It has to be Gimme More as it starts one of the best albums of all time.

i c what you did with putting the "till the world ends" remix in there lex

putting ke$ha on a song never makes it better

Crazy

tell you what ISN'T the best britney single though - "toxic"

― flamenco drop (lex pretend), Wednesday, April 24, 2013 6:33 AM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is obv gonna win, & should

"Born To Make You Happy" always and 4 ever.

― Tim F, Wednesday, April 24, 2013 11:45 AM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

pretty much word for word what i was gonna post

everytime

i c what you did with putting the "till the world ends" remix in there lex

― prolego, Wednesday, April 24, 2013 11:06 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

putting ke$ha on a song never makes it better

― prolego, Wednesday, April 24, 2013 11:06 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

putting nicki on a song, otoh...

(i assumed the remix was the single version à la "boys"?)

"Gimme More" and "Womanizer" her dumbest first singles imo.

One of these:

I'm a Slave 4 U
Toxic
Till The World Ends
Hit Me Baby
Break The Ice

I've never heard "Born To Make You Happy"! It wasn't a single in the States.

"Lucky"

Slave

anything but "toxic", srsly

thing with "toxic" is, is it good? yes obviously

is it obviously head and shoulders above ALL THOSE OTHER AMAZING SINGLES SHE'S DONE? no, and if you think it is, by implication you're selling all of them way way way too short and maybe you are not a tru britney head

That is... strange logic. Think I'll go "break the ice" but that is one HELL of a résumé

i'd thought about making this poll several times! ty lex. i will have to rescreen a bunch of these, but my gut tells me "lucky"

voted piece of me.

anything but "toxic", srsly

When "I'm Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman" wins this, I will blame you.

"overprotected" is a very underrated single

NO ONE ELSE
BUT
MAAAEEEEEEEEHHHHHHH

toxic is the only good britney spears song

predicting only vote for "You Drive Me Crazy." for me it's the vocal.

iatee going straight for Lex's jugular there.

Voted Piece of Me. It's simultaneously defiant and nihilistic. But could have been One More Time, Womanizer, Toxic, Oops, etc. She's made a lot of great singles.

I used to really love Brave New Girl and Breathe On Me - didn't realise they weren't singles. Interesting album, In the Zone.

yeah i don't remember it getting particularly great reviews - "me against the music" was largely seen as a dud (just b/c it was only 7/10 when everyone wanted 10/10), and the campaign only turned around with "toxic", but it's wall-to-wall great imo, with a lot of curveballs that people didn't quite realise were curveballs at the time but some pretty weird in retrospect. britney spears and the ying yang twins? check. an answer to the "what if the daft punk robots had produced the britney robot?" hypothetical in "brave new girl"? check. r kelly writing her a song about flashing the paparazzi? check. almost entirely bangers except for a grandiose ballad about wanking and a lost/broken/tremulous/tiny-sounding, music box-featuring micropowerballad about justin that was given her realest video ever and went to no 1? check. "toxic" is only like the fifth best or most interesting song on that album let alone her discography as a whole!

i recommend the bonus track "the answer" too, al those amazing tactile percussive clicks>>>>

Voted "Overprotected", but I completely forgot about "Sometimes" even being a Britney song. It's light years away from the music I associate with her, more a BSB song than a Britney. Might have voted for that had I remembered.

"till the world ends" remix wasn't the main single version, it was just rushed out at one point to boost the song's chart position for a week a la the rihanna "s&m" remix w/ britney and the katy perry "last friday night" remix w/ missy elliott

i hate to vote for her debut single because there really is lots of great material here but man, that song is just so great. i often forget just how good it is.

my top 10:

1) ...baby one more time
2) born to make you happy
3) till the world ends
4) sometimes
5) i'm a slave 4 u
6) piece of me
7) criminal
8) break the ice
9) stronger
10) (you drive me) crazy

i have to say that i find "toxic" extremely overrated

anyone who votes for anything other than "I'm a Slave 4 U" is an imbecile and should be banned from this thread.

everytime>>>stronger=born to make you happy>lucky>>i'm a slave 4 u

man her first album is kind of amazing huh

anyone who votes for anything other than "I'm a Slave 4 U" is an imbecile and should be banned from this thread.

― sandra dayo connor (The Reverend), W

my boo

Just going by resonance/nostalgia... Baby One More Time.

"i'm a slave 4 u" was always lukewarm

CRAZY #1. THAT BREAKDOWN IT'S ALL "UNH UNH UNH UNH UNH... STOP!!!!" #protodrop

Piece Of Me

i might like "slave" more but "toxic" is so fucking important to my high school self and i'm voting for it to spite lex

my boo

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, April 24, 2013 6:17 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my mans

"Toxic" is the clear winner for me. Sure, it hasn't aged that well but it's still brilliant. Plus, I always go with what had the most impact on me at the time of its release. "I'm A Slave 4 U" and "Gimme More" would be my second and third choices, not sure in what order.

putting ke$ha on a song never makes it better

― prolego, Wednesday, April 24, 2013 11:06 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Totally disagree. Ke$ha was BORN to sing that chorus!

Shocked to realize I like more than half of these - in my mind she'd put out a lot more crap along the way but this is a solid lineup of songs. Some of them I might like more from freshness/distance - "Stronger" is sounding great right now but I'm pretty sure I got sick of it at the time, etc.

"Toxic" blew my mind the first time I heard it, just such a banger and a blast to dance to and just associated with great times. Unfortunately that means it never really left my mp3 collection or whatever, and I've heard it too many times and the things that once sounded really striking about it now sound kind of canned and thin. Maybe that's why the big booming Max Martin tracks are sounding better to my ears than they ever did before, I dunno. Anyway, if you'd asked me this question almost any time in the second half of the 2000s I would have given this to "Toxic" in a heartbeat, but...yeah, I dunno.

Kind of amazing now to realize that the greatest hits album predates "Gimme More," "Womanizer," "Til The World Ends," and "I Wanna Go." Kinda forgot how long that stretch between In The Zone and Blackout seemed at the time - I imagine at some point it seemed like the Britney wave had probably run its course completely and it was time to cash in. I know that most of the people in the room here are serious Britney heads so let me just say that this is totally just outsider perspective, but for me it was really surprising at some point to realize that she was still releasing songs and they were still massive hits even though I sort of had thought she'd become a pop-cultural nobody or punchline at some point mid-decade. I don't clearly have a sense of whether or how much something like "Til The World Ends" was connecting with people who bought the first albums, or if it's an entirely different, teenage and young adult listenership.

Her top tracks on Spotify totally blow my mind. "Baby One More Time" is the only track from the first two albums and it's down at #10! Below "3," "Piece Of Me," and (ugggggggggh) "Circus" which I probably hate most of anything in the whole lineup, not counting the ghastly Bobby Brown cover which is basically a showcase for every limitation of her voice and none of her charm.

Bah. Hrm. "Toxic," "Baby," "Womanizer," or "Gimme More" for me. "Slave" also way up there and I probably enjoy "3" and "Me Against The Music" more than is really justifiable.

kinda surprised by how many of these i love, especially 'anticipating,' which is just so stupidly happy and giddy i can't not smile when i hear it. britney is such a great, weird singer -- she never phrases things the way i expect her to. worst one is 'i love rock n roll.'

oh wait, i forgot "If You Seek Amy," that would DEFINITELY be my pick for worst. Don't think I remember the I Love Rock N Roll cover but it doesn't bode well.

yeah wow, this sucks

I know that most of the people in the room here are serious Britney heads

Naw, I like a few of her songs but I have never ever even slightly given a teensy portion of a fuck about her

yeah, i have zero interest in britney as a person or even really as a persona -- she's not interesting the way madonna was interesting. i can't even imagine saying i'm really even especially a fan, but there are lots of great singles here.

I would say around the "In The Zone"/pre-Federline era Britney was starting to be more interesting as a person. She started to be more outspoken and self-aware of her public image. I know around that time she started being snarky about Timberlake and Aguilera. I think she even admit that her voice was just passable at best, but just enjoyed being a pop star. She always seemed like a likeable person, which I guess doesn't make her "interesting" in snarky online music forum discussions. But at least back in the day, she seemed to enjoy her job.

Oh and Slave 4 U for me. She needs to get back with the Neps for this next album.

If You Seek Amy. mama miea, what a spicie song

cosign on lex's "in the zone" rundown. lots of amazing stuff there. but voted lucky because its my favorite chorus to sing along to. stuff like "slave 4 u" and "toxic" are completely out of the running for me because they're all about the production and i hardly think of the lyrics or singing at all. as a song "everytime" is probably my favorite, but its not a booming song, and if i'm picking a britney single, its only right to pick one that sums her up more.

yeah, i have zero interest in britney as a person or even really as a persona -- she's not interesting the way madonna was interesting. i can't even imagine saying i'm really even especially a fan, but there are lots of great singles here.

she's really an anomaly that way - i can't say i'm not a fan, the amount of britney songs i love alone makes me a huge fan, and i have a lot of residual affection for her basically borne from hearing "...baby" and realising she was in the same school year as me - i think of her as "our" generation's pop star in many ways. but at the same time she's never said anything even remotely interesting, my impression of IRL britney is of a dim (if good-hearted) and slightly confused girl in over her head who makes poor life decisions and - in total contrast to every other megastar of her level - has seemed the opposite of manically driven. it's like amazing pop happens to her, rather than the other way round. meltdown aside - which was fascinating and tragic and a pretty important Cultural Moment imo - if these great pop songs didn't keep coming, i don't know if i could sustain an interest. but they keep coming! so many pop stars who try really hard don't have a tenth of the quality of this discography.

especially 'anticipating,' which is just so stupidly happy and giddy i can't not smile when i hear it.

<3 to hear love for "anticipating". i don't think it was given a massive push (don't even remember it being a UK single) but it's one of the most uncomplicatedly charming here for sure. proto-call me maybe (or, the kind of thing call me maybe was harking back to).

cosign the love for "i'm a slave 4 u", one of the singles that really exemplifies how bizarre and distinct and effective britney's voice is - the production is incredible but it's def not just about that.

comparing this to one-time rival xtina's discography - xtina has one great album and outside of that you can literally count her essential songs on the fingers of one hand

wow i have never heard this "anticipating" song before, had no idea there was anything like this in britney's catalog

some of the songs on circus were dire. "if u seek amy" -_______________________-

"3" was kinda shitty too, i wish the heavenly middle 8 had been copied and pasted out of that song and into a better one

i think i would need two hands for the essential non-stripped xtina tracks, but only barely

hmm

genie in a bottle
ain't no other man
monday morning

i'm sure i remember back to basics being at least a decent effort at the time but nothing much else has really stuck. "tilt ya head back" and "tell me" if collabs count?

i have a shameful, inexplicable affection for "Candyman" but other than that I've got nothing

that song is the fucking worst out of everything

I will stick up for "What a Girl Wants" and "Come on Over" tho

yeah "What a Girl Wants" is class

i think our Hannah just drilled "Candyman" into my head so i've got an excuse, normally hate hate hate retro 40s shit

oooh yeah, i forgot about "tell me", def a good one.

(and yeah, "what a girl wants" and "come on over" are def essential to me. i'd even put "i turn to you" in there but idk, i guess i had a soft spot for manufacturedtina)

i actually listened to back to basics again recently and i found it kind of bad... perhaps even worse than bionic. the songs were no more mediocre, i'd say, but the authenticity-posturing and the lazy caricatured "throwbacks" were, with a couple exceptions, really nauseating. the low pt of the album tho is probably this really long, embarrassingly self-congratulatory track which is mostly composed of voicemails from her fans.

i wonder to what extent Britney's blankness as a persona has helped her to have this great discography. like Kylie she has an adaptability that probably means writers don't often think "this song isn't Britney" - she can do a genuine range of material and make it hers. unlike Kylie i don't feel like Britney's ever grown out of her awkwardness tho. she never looks fully comfortable to me, and that makes her more human, gives something to her performances. it also gives an extra edge to the robot/coke-paranoia/dead inside Britney stuff - "Piece of Me" wd be half the song with any other delivery - even on ILX's most reviled single of the last 12 months "Scream and Shout" Britney is near-terrifying to me, her bit totally subverts whatever Will.I.Am seems to think that song is about, to me it's pure Death Disco.

"Born to Make You Happy" is the root of this to me. she sounds more lost and hopeless even then than any other star of her size cd manage. i think she does existential emptiness better than anybody i can think of.

that's a lot of songs, from "Hit Me Baby" thru "Slave" and "Piece of Me" even bloody "Amy" about being a passive object of somebody else's desire, but instead of pandering she turns them into some "you can hurt me but you can't reach me" thing

living legend you can look but don't touch

"Born to Make You Happy" is the root of this to me. she sounds more lost and hopeless even then than any other star of her size cd manage.

"born to make you happy" is one of those songs where the more you think about the actual words she's singing the darker it gets

i think our Hannah just drilled "Candyman" into my head so i've got an excuse, normally hate hate hate retro 40s shit

― we're up all night to get picky (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 25 April 2013 08:58 (42 minutes ago) Bookmark

dude. the lyrics!

Xpost few pieces of music affect me as much.

voted 'email my heart' </hipster yuppie>

dude. the lyrics!

i know! she had the radio edit tho where it just played trumpet raspberries over the single entendres. sadly "If You Seek Amy" didn't pull the same trick.

and don't start me moaning about "S&M" again

xtina's had fewer singles full stop, forget 'essential' ones. and bear in mind that two of her seven albums are respectively spanish language and a christmas throwaway.

but other non-stripped tracks i'll rep for are 'still dirrty', 'woohoo', 'elastic love', 'my girls', 'monday morning', and 'birds of prey'. (latter two are bonus tracks on bionic -- they have terrible taste in picking singles for xtina, and equally bad taste in deciding album vs. bonus).

i know three britney songs: "hit me baby", "slave" and "toxic", so it's probably one of those. probably the one in the middle.

Circus singles the least impressive imo.

i remember loving album cut "unusual you" at the time but haven't listened to that in a few years

yeah - the only long-term keeper off that album for me was "amnesia"

xp

unusual you is great. circus is prob her worst album.

i know everyone thinks the debut single is better than oops but nah. someday history will explain.

i am always dazzled by the amount of stuff going on in "piece of me"

maybe i'll be the lone vote for "radar" though

oh wow it turns out i've never heard "anticipating" in my life and it's the best thing ever made

you should def check out the other zone album tracks then! "brave new girl" is pretty awesome.

I don't know her albums but Circus is def the worst singles campaign.

I went for piece of me.

That song is so awkward

that's why it's great

lol as expected I'm the only person here who liked "If U Seek Amy"

One of the great things about these britney videos/about britney is how much being a popstar is obv just a job for her. So many of her latter singles are about tabloids and paparazzi and fame, with videos about going around being glam and photographed, but there's this sense that she'd really rather be hanging out in sweats and living her life.

like britney is way more miley-the-character than hannah-the-character or miley-the-actual-celebrity.

"if you seek amy" drives me crazy because, ignoring the double entendre, "all of the boys and all of the girls are begging to if you seek Amy" literally makes no sense

well that is sort of why it's a single entendre at that point

Yeah I kinda like the bluntness of its lack of double meaning.

like britney is way more miley-the-character than hannah-the-character or miley-the-actual-celebrity.

― Chuck E was a hero to most (s.clover), Thursday, April 25, 2013 6:30 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is spot on, though I can't imagine her being as cheerful as miley-the-character.

A dash of post-makeover Ty from Clueless wishing she was pre-makeover Ty.

the lack of double meaning fails to register as genius for me. idk. it drives me crazy. I just can't sleep.

Oh, it's not genius by any stretch. It's not even a good song.

I glory in those wonderful two weeks when you could hear Britney shouting "ALL OF THE BOYS AND ALL OF THE GIRLS ARE BEGGING TO F-U-C-K ME" from the car stereo before someone figured that changing "seek" to "see" was a good enough bandage and the rest of us were making up dirty definitions for for "fuca"

being a passive object of somebody else's desire, but instead of pandering she turns them into some "you can hurt me but you can't reach me" thing

"mannequin" off of circus plays into this idea of her blankness and remove, it's almost like an icier follow-up to "piece of me." it's one of my favorites off that album.

oh Jesus how hadn't I heard "Anticipating"! I'm gonna slip this in a 2002 mix alongside Ashanti's "Happy" and Kylie's "Love at First Sight."

oh man I am going to out myself as a nerd here but if you like those icy/blank/fucked-up tracks you will love the original doll-era unreleased stuff. (one of them is a "cry me a river" answer track!)

Crut OTM + the chorus doesn't follow from the verse, lyrically. Clumsiest double entendre ever.

Piece Of Me (Gavin Russom rmx)

"If you seek Amy", um, I doubt it's *really* so, but does the performance sort of suggest that the singer hasn't noticed the double-meaning?

(A bit like the Pizza Restaurant girl in "Porky's" ?)

oh man I am going to out myself as a nerd here but if you like those icy/blank/fucked-up tracks you will love the original doll-era unreleased stuff. (one of them is a "cry me a river" answer track!)

um TELL ME MORE about these things i had not heard of before!

so happy to see people discovering "anticipating" for the first time, it's pure joy

i agree that what annoyed me most about "If You Seek Amy" was the lack of syntactical sense but DJP's sold it to me on this thread

"If you seek Amy", um, I doubt it's *really* so, but does the performance sort of suggest that the singer hasn't noticed the double-meaning?

It's almost literally spelled out at the beginning of the video.

That's the video, I was meaning the song / recording...

i've only heard "mona lisa" from the original doll but it is awesome and basically lucky pt. 2

"now see everyone's watching, as she starts to fall
they want her to break down
there will be a legend of her fall"

britney OTM :(

or: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_qvB75rLT4

if I did a top-ten Britney list "Guilty" would make #5 at least; the whole thing is fucked-up and brutal. "you may sit there, say I'm filthy / but you're the one who made me guilty." supposedly this is a radio edit of a Quentin Harris remix of the original (which hasn't leaked), which suggests there was at least some traction behind it getting a release. probably would be easier to get away with in this share-happy climate than back then.

i had never heard of "the original doll"! i remember that period when fully-formed songs seemed to surface randomly, but looking at fan tracklists there are a bunch of these i've never heard! awesome.

also all of the fan album art i'm seeing is 100000x better and more carefully considered than her real album art, smh

just to show u how much i care :(

before seeing spring breakers i would have selected toxic, but instead i voted for "everytime" which i find addictive now for some reason. kind of want to take back my vote because this is a very trite song musically, whereas the dancier stuff is more musically interesting/distinctive.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

If her first single doesn't win this, then everyone will have been thinking about this too hard.

still going with "lucky" but "born to make you happy" has a certain poignance i've never picked up on before (when i was 10)

how the hell did you even know the song back then, the only people i know who ever heard of it are euros

same as "Anticipating," I suppose.

BUT TELL ME
WHAT HAPPENS
WHEN IT STOPS

how the hell did you even know the song back then, the only people i know who ever heard of it are euros

― bish don't kmt (some dude), Monday, April 29, 2013 8:37 PM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i had the CD! was it not on the US version? maybe that's why i didn't remember it

no it was on the album and obv it sold boatloads but it was only a single overseas and furriners always seem surprised that most americans don't know it

ah

i wish we had gotten "born to make you happy" instead of "from the bottom of my broken heart". it was the only non-single track i ever played from the album

everytime v. lucky v. overprotected v. gimme more v. slave 4 u probably

but born to make you happy was definitely also a single in canada. and from the bottom of my broken heart.

at the very least the video got plays up here.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

If U Seek Amy 2

respect

u and who else?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUtHjOvPKT0

New song on the Smurfs soundtrack, must repoll.

smurf me baby one more time

lol "piece of me" you dumbasses are still on that

I'm a Smurf 4 You obv

Good top three but Gimme More really should have been higher up.

if u smurf amy

u and who else?

I voted "I'm a Slave 4 U"!

I came really close to voting for it and then asked myself how much of that was just for the fun of the low crazy GIMME MAWRR - which while great, maybe isn't a whole song's worth of great.

Also thought long and hard about voting for "Til The World Ends," which is just a total banger with a great payoff in the bridge...but on the other hand the verses are pretty transparently a lift of Enrique's "Tonight."

In the end, I was the lone vote for "Womanizer." Not sure I can explain why I voted for it, but at the same time I'm amazed nobody else did!

if u smurf amy

― infirm neophytic child (zachlyon), Tuesday, April 30, 2013 9:03 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i seriously considered "If U Seek Brainy" but the total collapse of the already-creaky entendre was too much to bear

u and who else?

― we're up all night to get relegated (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, April 30, 2013 8:55 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

me

piece of shit

love the long tail on this poll. sign of a strong career.

Pity Get Naked (I Got A Plan) was never a single.

"Pity get naked" is a good title tho.

brit's people tried so hard to make Radar happen and it didn't even get a single vote here, sigh.

"piece of me" classic for the part at the end where brit & robyn say "piece of me" one right after the other, only robyn says it "mee" and brit says it "mayy."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYNbyHQyr-U

lol i remember the 2nd time "radar" was released as a single (or maybe it was just released once, but put on two albums?) and my only thought was "damn i did not even like this song the first time around"

iirc the circus (and single) version was slightly remixed (and botched)? i love the blackout version, it's so manic.

smh @ the winner, love for the long tail, imo the zero-pointers that were really robbed are "boys", "break the ice" and "do somethin'" - all pretty flawless jams

feel like i should've voted for "anticipating" but v gratified to see a strong showing for "everytime"

"piece of me" classic for the part at the end where brit & robyn say "piece of me" one right after the other, only robyn says it "mee" and brit says it "mayy."

haha YES

xp "Anticipating" deserved better, although it regularly receives lots of love around here
ILM Top 100 2000-2004: TRACKS

i would LOVE to read a behind-the-scenes retrospective of blackout à la this one for aaliyah http://youknowigotsoul.com/aaliyah