KEY POINTS:
Rating: * * *
Verdict: Fun pop tinged with sadness
You can't help but feel sorry for Britney Spears. On the title track of her "comeback" record, Circus, she sings "I'm like the ringmaster, I call the shots". Of course, this couldn't be further from the truth.
Spears is the star attraction. The caged songbird and face of brand Britney. And while she may no longer be out of control, she has never been in control.
Last year, we all watched in wild-eyed delight as Spears precariously walked a career tightrope, gasping as she stumbled shambolically, convinced she was about to fall and never get up.
Released on her 27th birthday, Circus - Spears' sixth studio album - sees Spears back on terra firma. It's a solid collection of digitally enhanced pop music, with a couple of weepy ballads in between. But it's not nearly as exciting as the bolshie rebellion of Blackout.
If You Seek Amy is the closest Spears comes to last year's middle-fingered salute to the world. But the very fact she has to spell out her message, to keep the album PG, goes to show she's no longer on the kamikaze mission she once was.
Likewise, Circus and Kill the Lights also attempt to lash out at detractors.
The resulting feisty-but-fun tracks are probably the album's best offerings, and far preferable to the breathy sap of Out from Under and over-sexed squeal of Mmm Papi.
But perhaps the worst moment of the record is the slow twang of My Baby. Singing free from all vocoder effects, Spears voice is so fragile it threatens to break as she sings the atrocious lyrics "I smell your breath, it makes me cry/I wonder how I've lived my life".
The truth is Spears has never really lived her life or made her own choices. Which, at 27, is really rather sad.
Joanna Hunkin
