Blackout - BRITNEY SPEARS

There's an appropriate bleakness to Britney Spears' first album in four years, and her first as a tabloid figure rather than a vibrant teen idol. The hazy-eyed bump-and-grind of her "Gimme More" MTV Video Music Awards performance fits all this material: It's defiant like a bad drunk, uncomfortably oversexed and more at home in a seedy after-hours club than a celebrity ultra-lounge. The music ranges from shockingly minimal—"Piece of Me" and "Radar" have the synth fugues and smudgy bass of current underground electro and little else—to novelty pop, like the J.J. Fad-styling of "Freakshow" and Gwen Stefani-ripping snare march of "Toy Soldier." Spears is threatening or seducing, or both, on every track. This is still pop, but the last bits of Spears' song-and-dance girl veneer are cracking, along with the rest of her public persona. —Kerri Mason