The video: Brit’s audition tape for Gossip Girl…
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[5.44]
Katherine St Asaph: Britney’s in love with a slightly sketchy guy criminal, but Max Martin’s even more in love with traversing the melodic minor scale. This would be much better during Blackout and estranged from its “mama” refrain. At least 33% of Femme Fatale‘s remaining tracks would be much better singles.
[5]
Brad Shoup: Because Femme Fatale has no real ballads to speak of, we’re stuck with this as the gear-changing single. It’s a mincing zombie of a track that sags with seriousness. True, the text flips the script of a redeemed rogue — Britney’s boy is rotten, and she’s well aware — but she’s not interested in veering toward either pride or tragedy. Whatever one’s opinion of the last three singles, none of them had an arrangement as static as this.
[3]
Jonathan Bradley: In anyone else’s hands, this would be eerie pop&B, but Brit’s criminal is the kind who wears a black band across his eyes and carries a sack with a dollar sign. One cartoon deserves another, I guess, even if the little acoustic guitar flutters are a satisfying curlicue on an arrangement that’s otherwise too plain.
[5]
Alex Ostroff: I can’t remember the last time Britney released a single this mid-tempo. While still digging into the normal “in love with a bad boy” tropes, “Criminal” turns the narrative wistful. Framing the entire song as an attempt to address her mother’s worries is almost quaint — a throwback to The Crystals and Carole King. It’s a good thing that the screwing of the repeated “fun”s and “none”s is an effective hook, though, because the chorus and the chintzy pan pipe melody are far too lightweight to anchor the song.
[6]
Alfred Soto: The guitar-flute-drum-machine combo, plus a studio-manipulated Britney descending the scale, is my favorite collection of purposeful sound effects on a record all year, and that she included them on one of Femme Fatale‘s weakest tracks says something about the album’s excellence. But unlike Ke$ha she isn’t a good enough actress to feel gross, violated, or — I wish — excited about dating a criminal. These days she just isn’t very good at direct expression. Bait a catchphrase like “Til The World Ends” with enough aural significance, however, and she can deliver all the ambivalence that mental breakdown can buy.
[6]
Anthony Easton: Britney makes the tragic Elektra ballad everyone forgot she was capable of. (She plays with auto-biography so well that we go to TMZ and connect the dots — but it’s unnecessary here.) This use of auto-tune as a filter not for musical/formal issues but for techno-ennui I am sure has been done often, but I am not sure that it has been done as well,
[10]
Edward Okulicz: Britney’s autobiographical, or might-as-well-be album closers are usually complete wastes of space that you can disregard after one listen, or preferably, midway through one listen (“Everytime” is classic, though). But “Criminal” has this one moment when the song breaks into the middle eight and Britney actually sounds like the actress she needs to be to spin this corny tale so you can believe it. The rest, with the shower-sung vocals and childish lyrics, is the sort of thing Britney should know better than. Even if she doesn’t know better than to avoid bad men, she should avoid bad songs.
[4]
Jer Fairall: “Papa Don’t Preach” for a girl more in danger of becoming accessory to a Bonnie and Clyde crime spree than becoming knocked up, set to a witty little noirish whistle and a melody that twists, for no good reason, in the direction of “Breakfast in America.” I’d like to commend her songwriters for tapping into several strains of classic adolescent melodrama, but Brit remains too much of a non-entity to pull it off, and her “love the guy” sounds far more mocking, to me, than impassioned.
[5]
Kat Stevens: My favourite part of this song is the immensely childish “BUM BUM BUM BUM“. I like to think that Britney, who probably has fewer legal rights now than when she was 18, has decided to be as silly and immature as possible. That’ll show them!
[5]