Future Mythologies

Listening to Britney Spears' Boys and I'm a Slave 4 U. Started getting quite kafkaesque visions midway through Slave. Towering, icy castles. Black, anti-human machines. There's no reassurance here, it's cold, cruel precision. This can't be right, can it? I'm going to write it off to lack of proper anti-depressants and re-visit it on warmer day. This isn't what everything sounds like to me, honest. Boys is, of course, the masterpiece here. Not only Britney's best song, but perhaps the best teen pop song in recent memory. Absolutely devastating in its minimalism. Robotic drum claps are overdriven and harsh, propelling the song into the intro. Transluscent keyboards pop in, warble slightly off-tune, and fade away. This is what Prince would've sounded like if he actually knew how to use cheesy synth equipment. Laughs and sighs creep out of the metallic rain. This is Britney's real set of implants. She's never sounded this sexy. The Neptunes take her voice and disembody it from its pubescent Disney overmediation into pure teenage lust, updated for the 21st century. And you can't tell me you saw that bridge coming, because nobody did.