Britney Spears at (surprise) a nightclub opening in September: the end of 2007 brings some good news for a change. Photograph: Jae C Hong/AP
If you're an avid trawler of album reviews, you'll know that virtually every publication that covered Britney Spears' current album, Blackout - including the Guardian - deemed it a minor masterpiece; the Observer even included it among its 50 best records of the year, commenting: "An album for which few had high hopes, Blackout was conclusive proof that some of the best music comes from artists on the brink of mental collapse."
Having just discovered that Billboard magazine's readers have voted it their top album of 2007, I can't let 2008 start without addressing this collective delusion. Britney's name may be on the album cover, but credit for what the Guardian called "a torrent of ferociously distorted synthesizers, electronically treated vocals, snapping drum samples and bovver-booted glam rock beats" is due producers Bloodshy and Avant and Danja.
Britney had nothing to do with it, nor with the "futuristic, thrilling" ambience that had critic after critic dribbling superlatives. Despite having cowritten two tracks, her involvement was minimal. Britney's job was to come in and sing; Danja and company did the rest. Even the eyebrow-raising "It's Britney, bitch," which opened the single Gimme More, was reportedly suggested by a producer.
Why did so many reviewers give credit where it wasn't due? They must have been romanticising like mad - they'd have to have done, to be able to see in the lumpen Britney a parallel with the tragic heroines whose creativity really was at its most fruitful during periods of anguish.
Spears is not a musician, or even a "singer," as such - she's an entertainer who, like the Spice Girls, hasn't been beaten with the talent stick, but has powered through by a combination of sweat, determination and timeliness. She's not of the class of artists who funnel their despair into their art, and shouldn't be applauded as such.
Oh, and what about the uniformly tepid notices that greeted Kylie's new album, X? Guilty of the same assumption that Kylie was the one conjuring up the tunes. She's a savvy pop kitten, as these things go, and has seven cowriting credits on X, but she paid collaborators to make X sound the way it does. Richly, one review slates her "diffident, robotic delivery" - this was the same reviewer who lavished praise on the equally zombieish Spears. Go figure. But Kylie has an OBE to cheer herself up. A bit of misplaced criticism won't hurt her.
