Britney Spears
"Glory"
(RCA (ASTERISK)(ASTERISK)(ASTERISK))
Coupled with her Las Vegas residency and this fun and fizzy dance-pop album, a welcome improvement after 2013's desultory "Britney Jean," the recent MTV Video Music Awards were supposed to be a platform for Britney Spears' big comeback. It didn't quite work out that way: Though not nearly such a train wreck as the 2007 showing that seemed to sound a death knell for her career, this time around, the onetime VMA snake handler was stiff on stage and awkward in her exchanges with lanky white rapper G-Eazy. The performance also made the 34-year-old Spears seem bland and passe in comparison to larger-than-life contemporary stars like Beyonce, Rihanna and Kanye West. But her dearth of personality isn't as much of a liability on recordings as it is on stage. On the best of "Glory" _ the hot and bothered "Do You Want to Come Over?," the spaced-out "Man on the Moon," the cleverly crafted "Clumsy" _ Spears sounds engaged rather than vacant, as committed to concocting winning pop trifles as she has been in a decade.
_Dan DeLuca
