“Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible” – Jean Baudrillard

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then” – Alice in Wonderland

A great civilization is not always conscious of its decline. Wrapped and draped in pleasure and riches, too often does it ignore the tragedy, deny the darkness, shrug off the sinister, allowing the madness and muck to be handled by hands never seen. There is a terrific, tremendous ease in foregoing responsibility and embracing revel; there is a masterful, meandering glow in dancing upon the volcano, feeling the fire upon your soles without fear or fright. When such passions become commonplace, it is not soon after that what was once glorious and gilded drifts into ruin and wreckage, transforming the glittered into the ghastly, composing the funerary passages for those once headed for heaven. And in that seventh year in the first decade of this new century and even newer millennium, such destruction and chaos seemed to move the beat of American culture.

While wars waged to exorcise terrorism, dictators dethroned and publicly executed, and corporate giants pocketed billions from employees, the world carefully watched as a group of couture-covered beauties consistently gravitated from tinted SUVs past lavish velvet ropes, viciously waiting hawk-like for the inevitable drunken, stumbling exit accompanied by the occasional glimpse and flash of bare flesh. Though an alluring, fascinating representation of a nation’s glamour and wealth, there was a seedy, unsettling undertone of voyeurism and escapism in chronicling the exploits of these privileged few, a cold, icy necessity to be distracted and drift far away from one’s own banalities and turmoil. One felt envious of their power and abilities yet enviable in freedom and liberation; even in recognizing the magical qualities of fame and fortune, there did often linger in the average being that blessing of anonymity. For those being watched, it seemed merely a game, a show, a performance of high hedonism and decadence to be meticulously documented and analyzed upon blogs and faded newsprints. But not every starlet basked in this glory and exposure; in fact, some, like the incomparable Britney Spears, were almost obliterated because of such.

As perhaps the definitive pop star of her generation, Britney had never been a stranger to controversy or provocation. From being sprawled on a pink satin bed in polka-dotted boxers on her debut Rolling Stone cover to rocking her hips in earth-shattering glee whilst gripping an electrifying boa constrictor at the Video Music Awards, these elements had actually become an intrinsic, important portion of her persona, abilities, and appeal. However, in the wake of romantic and familial death, something ominous and portentous seemed to be lurking within her sphere in those already-doom-laden days of 2007, transforming her nightly prowls into shimmering travesties, horrendous cries for help unacknowledged regardless of volume. In the most extraordinary fashion, the most famous and most successful teen idol of the past twenty years seemed to be falling apart in front of our eyes, an unfair sacrifice for a ravenous harvest, an unjust symbol of a civilization unable to keep its heels on track. And, yet, in the most extraordinary fashion, this would-be tragic heroine managed to bypass the endless temptations of upheaval and create one of the greatest albums of all-time.

Released perhaps in her darkest of hours, the aptly titled Blackout came as a surprise for a culture happily anticipating a catastrophe of the grandest proportions. What was expected to be a calculated, shambolic exercise of typical cookie-cutter Pop fuckery revealed itself to be something far more progressive, innovative, and groundbreaking than perhaps anyone could have imagined. Within the slim, solid scope of 40 minutes, Britney Spears clutches our collars and drags us to the depths of her freakish funhouse of pleasure and perversity, bringing us along in the backseat of her Bentley as a corrupt chauffeur signals towards hell. From the erstwhile purveyor of teenybopper grace and goodness, there could not have been anything more shocking and disruptive, and had it merely existed as some hopeless endeavor to surround its artist with edge, it may have faltered completely. But, as it were, Blackout is a magnificent experiment of millennial pop, shifting and shaping the rules and regulations of a genre and a culture, playing the underground for popularity, drawing a map of where the future lies and how one can obtain such.

As 10 years have passed since being gifted with its presence, it seems only natural for one to re-explore and reinterpret the defining album for The TMZ Age in all of its brilliance and mastery. It seems only natural to dissect its splendor, exhume its chaos, excavate its magic – to dig deep into its bones and illuminate its passions. In so many ways, Pop does not get much stranger and we are far too lucky to be privy to its confines:

1. Ensconced in a frosted, glacial, sublime chill, “It’s Britney, bitch” is one of the most enthralling and legendary openers of any work of art, a sleazy Melvillesque drawl that immediately strikes whimsy and intoxication, launching one into a surreal cycle of seediness, still polished enough to be inviting and enticing. It seems both a greeting and a warning, a suggestion and a promise, a Pandora’s Box of puzzles, riddles, and mazes, where masks are taken off to reveal even more masks, where there is no up and down, just existence.

2. Though vocal manipulation has always played an integral part to Britney’s recordings, the immeasurable amounts of distortion, contortion, and mutilation displayed through Blackout hold a nightmarish beauty – bending and twisting her trademark kitten coos into that of mutated growls, grunts, sighs, moans, and quivers. Instead of radiating the bubblegum brightness of clubland cleverness, she comes off embittered, melancholy, demented, and disturbed, a betrayed banshee lurking in the shadows for her moment of revenge and revolt. It is an exercise both in technological breakthroughs and personal aches, mimicking the schizophrenic madness of which must erupt the mindset of a hunted superstar.

3. The Gothic Hollywood of which Blackout exemplifies is a cruel, fantastical, maniacal world of its own: corrosive photographers, cavernous nightclubs, vampiric hangers-on, vacant mansions, faded palms, violent beaches. It is Sunset Boulevard for the jet set, Play It As It Lays for college kids, as if Jackie Collins and Nathanael West got wasted and spent the night together – humorous and haunting, dazzling and depressive, glorious and gloomy. A succulent, spellbinding horror swathed in luxury and trash.

4. The pervasive doom circling from each crevice is both exhilarating and worrisome, smothering and suffocating with greater intensity the deeper we fall to the depths of Hades. It is an anxious, nervous, yet ultimately satisfying discovery, as if one is awaiting some kind of skeleton or demon to come rushing from behind to attack and annihilate, as if one is awaiting their own kind of startling, sensational doom to occur. In many ways, it feels quite similar to the titular track of Michael Jackson’s greatest-selling album, though stretched over 12 tracks: pulsating with incredible groove, but puncturing with imperious ghoulishness.

5. Within this overriding darkness, Blackout’s preoccupation with carnality and all of its trappings then becomes something far more sinister than seductive. No longer the naïve nymphet searching for a snog before night’s end, Britney embodies the rapacious expert carefully scoping out her hapless prey and wondering where to hide the remains. She is a monster, a creature, an eager animal unconcerned with decorum and guidelines, living by wits and wanderlust, the gatekeeper of a netherworld of lost, captured souls. It is an almost primal stimulation of which she beams, coming to fore especially on the blazing, brimming bacchanalia of “Get Naked (I Got a Plan),” where the callous, degenerate urging to “take it off” becomes a thunderous mantra rivaling that of religious nirvana. She is a guru of gaudiness, professing the treaty of tawdriness.

6. Yet, throughout all of the album’s encroaching depravity, there is the delicious, glimmering, sparkling fervor of “Heaven On Earth,” which, from the moment its barreling, sci-fi synths zap through the atmosphere, feels as if a marvelous revelation. Seemingly concocted by Phil Spector on a space station in the 22nd century, its potent mixture of girl group longing and otherworldly breeze contains the most seamless encapsulation of blossoming romance. One feels lightheaded, overjoyed, overwhelmed, and even overly emotional, the kind of ebullient, spellbinding fantasy of furious affection that is both requited and un, with her palpable declarations of “So in LOVE!” feeling self-created, perhaps even falsified, a delusional, bubbly rumination of impossible gratification.

7. It is that particular interest in delusion and illusion that transforms Blackout from a mere set of songs strung together by a weak concept to a bonafide collection of comprehensive genius and wonder. Though she often presented herself as the chief vessel of Pop music, largely divorced from her material and willing to be changed and altered in any capacity to fit whatever the producer-in-question has up their sleeve, this album could not be seen as anything other than a personal work of art. Not anyone else could have captured and conjured such a foreboding yet sensuous interpretation of modern celebrity life with such clarity and such insight. Not anyone else could have zeroed in on the hypocrisy, pretensions, and insanity with such candor and sarcasm. Snarling, caustic, and defensive, Britney both criticizes and celebrates the culture that created her fame and stardom, delighting in the horror in the midst of repulsion. Heavier than Warhol, more cynical than Duchamp, more bizarre than Dali – Blackout is a modernist masterwork for a postmodernist’s world.

8. No features are included but on three tracks we are bombarded with the obscene, inhuman chuckles and cajoles of producer Danja. As he assumes command of a satanic fleet, guiding us closer and closer to hellish fires and grinning goblins, one is both terrified and enraptured, slowly but surely allowing his beastly claws and teeth to slice through and resurrect freedoms. He is a new-world Beelzebub, a pied piper in bondage leather, a guardian demon in a snapback, a torturous spirit gauzed in gold and ice, opening a door of perplexities and nonsense and torture, a delicious, demented deviation.

9. Yet for all of its pivotal vocal components, there is nothing more mesmerizing upon Blackout than its plethora of bass. Thudding, pounding, heavy, gargantuan – especially within the box-spring marching-band haze of “Hot As Ice,” the Day-Glo laser show of “Break The Ice,” and the menacing intergalactic orgy of “Freakshow” – it often feels as if one is being bludgeoned or pummeled into submission, a sort of generous, welcoming slice of masochism. This is, of course, precisely what keeps the album feeling so fresh and alive and contemporary even after 10 years – an eternity in Pop time. As hip hop (and its stylistic offspring) has steadily become the lingua franca of music in our current century, the demolishing, cascading, eruptive booms and crashes within seem even more desirous and fashionable, even more stylish and magnetic, even more exceptional and smooth.

10. The closing duo of “Perfect Lover” and “Why Should I Be Sad” is a masterful illustration of a reckless night of decadence merging into a guilt-ridden morning of sobriety, where the pomp and circumstance are washed away for the truth and reality, that moment when the lights come on and one is left staring in confusion and discomfort. The former is a whirling, swirling paean to senseless seduction, catapulted to heights of ridiculous hypnosis through its wave of cylindrical synths and zero-gravity drums; the latter, however, is a cold monologue delivered on an even colder mattress, recalling the finality of a relationship marred by secrets, lies, and slander. Most reminiscent to her then-recent divorce from her wayward husband, the closing track feels like an epiphany not yet ready to bloom, the realization something must be done without an idea of how to achieve it. It is an awful, disheartening end to an album hellbent on celebrating madness, leaving one feeling more emptied than full, in the best way possible.

11. Ultimately, Blackout remains a masterclass in Pop perfection and experimentation. Though many artists of any genre or any field often profess a thirst for progression and artistic credibility, it is perhaps most ironic that one who seemed to care very little about not only her art but also her own life created something with an almost seamless and endless sublimity. In a sense, that apathy and indignance makes this album something daring, almost punk – a ruthless examination of a grisly, eerie, dreadful kind of charm and superficiality, gleaming a gnarled reflection of fame that speaks even deeper to our obsessive modernity and chaos than it did a decade ago. It is a prophecy, a portend, an omen, stitched by speed, hunger, and pain. It is a grand illusion, professing one truth and living another. It is timeless, it is great.