Gimme More Midnights

Taylor Swift’s new album, Midnights, dropped on Friday. Us Swifties have been celebrating all over social media, but I’m gearing up for another milestone. Blackout, Britney’s pop bible, turns 15 on Tuesday.

Me listening to pop music at work

I remember the day I found Blackout. I downloaded the album from FrostWire and listened to it on repeat on the way to our grade 8 Quebec city trip. My pink nano iPod kept falling out of my pocket as I attempted choreography on the bus seat.

I couldn’t believe how much I loved every second of the tracklist.

Even in these self-reflective articles, I don’t spend much time thinking about middle school. It’s a weird age. I was both a child and entirely infatuated with the idea of being sexy. I idolized women who bore their midriffs in public. The Paris Hiltons and Xtinas possessed ease in their skin that I still can’t fathom. Clothes on them were merely decorations on their lithe, un-jiggling bodies.

At least once, I pulled the sides of my thong outside my school uniform pants. A popular girl told me I looked like an idiot.

That Britney and I could exist on the same planet was unfathomable.

How I think I look dancing to Gimme More

At 14, I still didn’t understand sex as a concept. In class, people would joke about the number “69” and I would giggle along, confused. For a smart kid, my mind could not compute what actually went down behind closed doors.

That’s not to say I didn’t understand the appeal. I knew all about longing from early crushes and reading Twilight. I built my entire sexual understanding on euphemisms. It’s not like catholic school gives a road map on how to get from A to B.

With Blackout, I felt like I understood. Britney welcomed sex and scandal in her lyrics: We wanted a piece of her, she wanted real soldiers, everyone wants to get naked, etc…Putting in my earbuds was like strutting into a VIP club that everyone else already had access to. A (literal) freakshow.

None of her songs actually helped me in my quest to be hot. I committed to strange haircuts that kept me on the outskirts of cool. I was fiercely competitive and valued correctness over being liked. My small group of friends was fundamentally kind, but we were still trick-or-treating while our peers got drunk by the river.

When I listened to Blackout, I could pretend everyone just hadn’t yet discovered how desirable I was. I was waiting to be on everyone’s radar.

Me looking at boys in math class

From the first note, it was clear that Blackout was going to be a different Britney.

At the time, Britney was scrutinized for breathing. She was an easy target for every middle-of-the-road morning show host and gossip magazine. We knew her as a pop robot in her early career. Her sex appeal was always scandalous, but she showed up polished and girlish in interviews. The perfect girl (not yet a woman) next door.

In her 2007 black hair era, she led car chases and forgot to put on panties. She went shopping in her wedding dress after her divorce, got tattoos, swore at paparazzi, and wreaked havoc in hot pink wigs. The second she said, “it’s Britney, bitch,” the wholesome teenager died.

Blackout came on Britney’s own terms, and the rage is palpable. She told fans that she was “taking a break from being told what to do.” Her frustration seeps through each track even as she sings other people’s words. For a body of work created by multiple writers and producers, it’s compellingly self-reflective.

Of course, there are a lot of songs just about having sex, too.

Pop music is all about transformation. It is, quite literally, a popularity contest. As such, each new track list comes with a new look. Shock value is one of the only ways to transform yourself into the Top 40.

All the best divas reinvent themselves. A mandatory Metamorphosis, if you will. Miss American Dream became the legendary Miss Britney Spears. Country Taylor Swift became a bad Reputation, (then a lover, then a cottagecore fantasy, and now a depressed Millennial like the rest of us). This year alone we’ve seen Beyoncé jump into dance music, Kim Petras coin “Slut Pop”, and Charli XCX master on-stage choreography.

Pop stars have to be fresh, sexy babies at every turn.

Their success as artists depends on the full package of their music and personas. Listeners grade based on the mystique of the character, the lore of the gossip, and the red-carpet presentations. We want to know who their songs are about (cough Jake Gyllenhaal cough), we live for hidden messages, and we don’t like to be kept waiting. When Beyoncé dropped a surprise album, we lost our damn minds. When Taylor released the Midnights bonus tracks, we stayed awake til 4 am. Britney fans have been creating playlists of what we thought would be on her unreleased album, Original Doll since 2005.

“I’m sorry. The old Sandy can’t come to the phone right now…”

Despite the harsh critiques of who Britney was in 2007, Blackout is touted as a masterpiece. Rolling Stone listed it as number 441 in their list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. They described it as an “album about fame, scandal, divorce, and dancing on tables in a cloud of glitter and Cheetos dust."

While the music is amazing, I think the context of the album has kept it top of mind. Personally, Britney’s chaotic period gave me a love of mess. I still gravitate to divas with rough edges. The ones that show their humanity behind the pop machine coating. I want the sassy baby tees, cigarette breaks, and rockstar energy that can still transform into a glitter goddess on stage.

I want to see their humanity and recognize that reinvention is possible.

As an adult, I look back on my middle school awkwardness as part of my charm. Those strange stages gave me depth and humour, and pop taught me that there’s always a new way to imagine yourself. I could be a loser in school and feel like a sexy supermodel the second I hit play.

That sentiment is why I still love pop music today. The music is fun, and often light-hearted, but there’s something deeper behind the scenes. Someone is always trying something different, growing into something new, or using messiness to create art. I like to think their music helps me do the same. Their choruses give me confidence.

Because I often feel like a monster on the hill, too.