Of the three post breakdown Britney Spears albums, Femme Fatale is the worst and it is still pretty good. A state of the art, hide in plain sight, disco extravaganza encompossing everything (except for Guetta's 80s samples) that matters in modern dance music.
What it doesn't have is a "Piece of Me" or a "Blur" -one, a self-portrait that singlehandedly gave her back her career, the latter a peek in the closet to devastating effect.There is no "Womanizer" to push it all over the top. Femme Fatale is product but GREAT product, bass patterns thump under bpms everything from squiggly synth lines to, ahem, whistling to dubstep steals.
Dr. Luje is on top of his game and stealing old tropes, frrom his work with Ke$ha on (Drop Dead) Beautiful" for one.
Will I Am uses a clever extended musical metaphor on "Big Fat Bass" (gwan guess).and Brit lives up to it; Till The End Of The World" you know and it loses nothing on the album and "How I Roll" is a melodic beaut.
Brit doesn't have much more than sex and dancing on her mind, she still can't sing worth a damn, but she surrounds herself with gifted and she is her own best friend. .
It needed two more pop songs, it needed a smackdown.
Still, it is a very good album. Grade: B+