Blackout (Britney Spears Album) - Legacy

Legacy

"Britney uses Auto-Tune the way Bob Dylan used his harmonica — for punctuation, for atmosphere, for an alienatingly weird sound effect. It's a blast of vocal distortion, harsh on the surface, but expressive, capable of sounding wildly funny or abrasively pissed-off or seductive. In 'Telephone,' as in 'Piece of Me,' the Auto-Tune does for her voice what the harmonica does for Dylan's in 'It Ain't Me, Babe' — a way of telling the world to keep its hands off you. The point isn't whether Britney is punching the buttons herself. (When is that ever the point with a pop star?) It's the romance going on between the voice and the machine. Part of what makes Britney the perfectest of perfect pop stars is the way she expresses her personality most passionately when she's turning herself into a machine — That's what makes her sound so human after all."

—Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone reviewing Spears' demo of "Telephone" in 2010.

When Blackout was released, Spears' behaviour in public began to clash with her image. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic stated that Spears was an artist that always relied on her "carefully sculpted sexpot-next-door persona", but for Blackout "those images re replaced by images of Britney beating cars up with umbrellas, wiping her greasy fingers on designer dresses, and nodding off on-stage, each new disaster stripping away any residual sexiness in her public image." Erlewine added that the album served as a soundtrack "for Britney's hazy, drunken days, reflecting the excess that's splashed all over the tabloids", while noting that the album had a coherence that the public Spears lacked. Kelefa Sanneh of The New York Times said Spears became a spectral presence in her own album, explaining that when compared to her previous records, " cuts a startlingly low profile on Blackout Even when she was being marketed as a clean-cut ex-Mouseketeer, and even when she was touring the country with a microphone that functioned largely as a prop, something about her was intense." Tom Ewing of Pitchfork Media compared the relationship between Spears and Blackout with American television series Twin Peaks, saying that what made the show "so great wasn't the central good-girl-gone-bad story, it was the strangeness that story liberated. And Britney's off-disc life is both distraction from and enabler for this extraordinary album".

Critics also referred to the high expectations of the album's direction and quality. Alexis Petridis of The Guardian elaborated that when faced with a public image in freefall, an artist has two options: making music "that harks back to your golden, pre-tailspin days" to "underlin your complete normality" or "to throw caution to the wind: given your waning fortunes, what's the harm in taking a few musical risks?". Petridis commented that Spears opted for the latter and the results were "largely fantastic." Ewing said that "eleven successive tracks of hard, defiant, envelope-pushing dance-pop" may have been what he expected from Spears, but "on paper and on precedent you might have expected an apologetic ballad or two; a song about her kids, maybe; a high-profile guest star, You don't get any of those things and I'd like to think Britney had the sense to avoid them herself." Ewing noted that after "Freakshow" leaked online, a dubstep forum thread on the song hit seven pages in 24 hours, generating mixed reactions and exemplifying that "it still seems when the mainstream borrows underground music, brings it into the wider pop vocabulary." He also attributed the quality of every track of Blackout to economic reasons, since one of the main causes album sales began to suffer during the digital era is due to the "unbundling" of albums in online stores – making it easier for consumers to buy some tracks rather than the entire album. Ewing explained that "The Revolver blueprint for pop albums – every track good, every track a potential hit – makes more sense than ever. Especially if a star can keep sonically up-to-date in a fast-moving market."

Reviewers noted the use of Auto-Tune in Spears' voice. Ewing said that Blackout serves as a reminder of how instantly recognizable Spears' vocals are, saying that "treated or untreated: her thin Southern huskiness is one of the defining sounds of 00s pop." He noted that the album "is a masterclass in autotune and vocal treatment as a studio instrument, disrupting and jamming the songs as much as it helps them." While reviewing Spears' demo of "Telephone", Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone compared it to "Piece of Me", "proving yet again how much impact Britney has had on the sonics of current pop. People love to make fun of Britney, and why not, but if 'Telephone' proves anything, it's that Blackout may be the most influential pop album of the past five years." In June 2012, "Blackout" was added to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's musical library and archive, in recognition of the album's musical and cultural influence, as well as significance.