Still, if it’s topped the charts in America…
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[5.73]
Jonathan Bradley: Spears returns with a chorus for everyone who thought “If You Seek Amy” was too subtle. It succeeds in a workmanlike kind of way, so solidly constructed it might as well be stamped “Union Approved.” The most interesting part is the breakdown at 2:20, when the harder-than-usual dancefloor thump threatens to go avant-garde, but don’t get too concerned: Spears is no longer that ambitious or that insane. It’s merely the best collision of manufacturing and pop since Homer took Bart Simpson to the Anvil steel mill, and a gay nightclub ensued.
[6]
Jonathan Bogart: If anybody else had released it, it would be 10/10. But because she’s capable of “Toxic,” “Gimme More,” and back in the primordial depths of history “Baby One More Time,” it’s a disappointment. It’s not fair. It’s pop.
[8]
Michaelangelo Matos: The drawn-out-psychodrama part of Britney’s life has, unavoidably, enriched her music. Even if I find a lot of it flat, there’s enough going on with it recently to at least keep me from wondering why she still has fans. This, on the other hand, is the kind of abject pandering she is so often accused of. Her winsome voice up against those rainbow synth-strings is like having your candy rained on. She sounds better, and judging from these lyrics also thinks better, over R&B, straight up.
[2]
Al Shipley: The wordplay isn’t as pained as it was in “If You Seek Amy” (which might technically be impossible), but since when did anyone come to Britney for double entendres? This one’s so hoary even Toby Keith wouldn’t be shameless enough to try to turn it into a song. But it at least takes the right lesson away from “Toxic”: that in a Britney song, squelchy synth breakdowns actually feel soothing compared to the sound of her voice.
[3]
Jer Fairall: Surprising, really, that it took so long for this skeezy old pick-up line to be rendered in song form. Leave it to the reigning queen of puddle-deep provocation to pick up the slack.
[2]
Kat Stevens: Making this sort of single-entendre work is difficult enough at the best of times, and without the sing-song playfulness of “If U Seek Amy” this limp chorus hasn’t got a hope. The vorging dubstep middle 8 and wibbly-wobbly verse are still great, but they just serve to make the chorus all the more feeble.
[6]
Chuck Eddy: Nonchalant vocals, fuzzy-wuzzy beats, sparks fritzing from a broken light socket — whatever. The Bellamy Brothers still own this joke. And unlike “If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me” in 1979, I guarantee that this song will not reach #1 on the country chart.
[4]
David Moore: As an extended Groucho Marx one-liner, this one holds my interest for about a minute, plus one minute for what I guess we’re calling a “dubstep breakdown,” though I still don’t see what the fuss is about (really, no one else mainstream is going wub-wub-wub? Wouldn’t sound out of place on a Black Eyed Peas track). That makes this an enjoyable-enough single from an artist whose latest string of ’em has lowered expectations. Still, I think Kylie would have been a better fit for this one, Britney having a tough time simultaneously juggling an ethereal coo and suggestive wink. She can do the former pretty well (cf. “And Then We Kiss”) but her winks are about as sly as Sarah Palin’s. When she tries to nudge, it sticks out like a sore elbow.
[7]
Alfred Soto: The sentiment — will her desire disgust him? — is pure Madonna in ’86. The track though is Euro-friendly ’08. As capable as the Brit has become at spearing complex emotional states, neither the arrangement nor her voice are up to her recent protean standards.
[5]
Katherine St Asaph: The charts are paved thick with Max Martin / Dr. Luke collabs, but seldom are they divvied up this neatly. Luke takes the verses, washing the sleaze off to repurpose “Take It Off,” while the choruses are vintage Max. A coworker compared it to “something you’d have danced to at the seventh-grade dance,” and the clipped melodies, very Solid HarmoniE, are indeed anachronistic next to today’s tableau of robotuned sing-talkers. Even when “Hold It Against Me” tries to catch up with successive dubbish and Eurodance turns, grunts, ah’s and oh’s, it sounds quaint. But it’s a good sort of quaint, and it’s the reason this works. For once, Britney doesn’t carry the song; she’s practically a cipher, almost all of her vocal quirks demonstratably taken from writer Bonnie McKee. And speaking of writers, if you’re engaged enough to write internal rhyme into your chorus, why can’t you rip off a better pickup line?
[7]
Frank Kogan: It’s impossible for me not to hear this as yet another addendum to Britney’s Great Year Of Alienation 2007 – even though, for all I know, Max and crew might have originally written it for some up-and-coming Eurosleaze and then decided to give it to Britney instead. Anyhow: obvious double-entendre that you don’t have to hear twice to get, big aggressive synth-bass, a strangely recessive chorus that’s one of Max Inc.’s top five most beautiful melodies, a dance breakdown where the dance breaks down, and a general air of You Want Dumb, I’ll Give You Dumb, if I think it’s funny, it’s funny, if I want to throw sex at you in big infantile gulps then I’m sexy, in fact I can throw any old shit at you and it can turn out to be the most brilliant thing ever. With a serviceable tune in the verse and a flimsy anono Italodisco beat replacing the bass this would be a 10. A lot depends on how I accommodate myself to that bass over the next few months and whether I decide that the disruption/suspension in the break ends up adding to the momentum when the song proper re-enters.
[9]
Alex Macpherson: SHE WAS DOING DUBSTEP FOUR YEARS AGO CAN PEOPLE STOP ACTING LIKE IT’S A MASSIVE SHOCK TO HEAR A BIT OF A BASSLINE ON A BRITNEY SONG ALREADY, GOD. OK, now that’s off my chest, what’s notable about “Hold It Against Me” isn’t the wub-wub bass but the way Britney allies it to a melody of pure bubblegum, playing light against dark instead of taking the more obvious route. She sounds blithely unconcerned to everything around her – a tactic that works well both within the song, the world reduced to just two bodies, and in a wider pop context, Britney sailing obliviously past the Ke$has and Katys of the world, just being and sounding entirely like she always used to do.
[7]
Mark Sinker: First identical sweet-faced bots mass to press their suit, their numbers doubling at every turn, from antiquely pre-programmed “human = feeble” pick-up line to crowding martial pulse. Then a breakdown like the final moments on the Death Star — self-destruct alarm! chaotic BritBorg raygunfight! — but it doesn’t find a way to explain to itself how the mounting heat of the former resolves back out of the tinny flash-game recreation of the latter. By the end you feel like the precision-engineered action just sightlessly cyber-strode right past you.
[8]
Martin Skidmore: The galloping beats and ravey synths here have a load of energy, dissipated in the weaker and horribly cliched chorus pick-up lines (“If I said I want your body now / Would you hold it against me”). There’s also a breakdown that I think wants to be dubsteppy, but is a bit of a bore. Her singing is sharper at the start than on the chorus, too, and ultimately there is too much of that chorus for me to love this, but there is some real energy in parts.
[7]
Edward Okulicz: She’s experimented with all these elements before: the dub-step on “Freakshow”, the dubious wordplay on “If You Seek Amy” and the combination of something hard-edged with candied singing is very much “3”. But overall this is less than the sum of those parts. Britney can do filthy, she can do naughty, but her attempts to nod and wink and nudge at the listener with suggestive lines aren’t strong here. Britney isn’t a humorless human being, but she can’t pull off this recycled gag with any glee or lustre.
[5]