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Just in case anyone following me has managed to miss isabelthespy's amazing series of posts on Britney, you definitely need to do yourself a favour and read them.

I structured this week very deliberately, to highlight Britney’s evolution, to bring up resonances and overlaps and crucial shifts, and you can of course read it straight through; but I think the posts stand on their own as well. The songs certainly do. Compiled in one place, our journey through the work, the life, the magic of the legendary Miss Britney Spears:

Prelude

Early Britney: Not That Innocent

…Baby One More Time - give me a sign

"Then they see the video and it’s like — fuck!"

"Everyone’s been doing e-mails."

Born To Make You Happy - a statement of terms

My loneliness ain’t killing me no more.

Oops!…I Did It Again - not innocent, not sorry

(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction - I’ve got my own identity

Lucky - this is a story

Bye-bye, sweetheart

Britney On The Dance Floor

Slave 4 U - just listen

Me Against The Music - grab a partner, take it down

(I Got That) Boom-Boom - I see you looking

Do Somethin’ - some kind of freak/got what you need

Gimme More - DANGER DANGER DANGER DANGER

Circus - all eyes on me in the center of the ring

Till the World Ends - see the sunlight

Chillin’ With You - I danced so much till I was tired

Visions of the dance floor

Britney And The Cameras

Overprotected - you’re gonna learn to see from my perspective

What does it mean to play with a fire you have never touched?

Brave New Girl - curiosity is hunger; to see is to devour

I Am The American Dream

My Prerogative - [drives a car into a pool]

A celebrity is not a people; no more Britney Spears jokes.

OMG Is Like Lindsay Lohan Like Okay Like

Piece of Me - I mean, please

Kill The Lights - you still listen, I don’t have to

I Wanna Go - I like dreams. And seashells.

Britney And Love, Britney In Love

Cinderella - I don’t believe in fairy tales

Anticipating - this is our song they’re playing

Touch Of My Hand - I’ll teach myself to fly

"It’s a reality we have, aaand… yeah. Okay."

Everytime - who are they these secular saints?

Toy Soldier - is that her?

Why Should I Be Sad? - they couldn���t believe I did it

Womanizer - I got your crazy

Unusual You - sweet surprise I could get used to

Inside Out - gotta look my best if we’re gonna break up

Passenger - we’ll see more without a map

Now That I Found You - all my life I’ve waited

This has been a thrill and a trip and a joy, the best way to close out my year. Unspeakable thanks to Hendrik for the opportunity and the patience with my lag; to all of you for reading along; and to Britney, to quote Max Martin quoting ABBA — thank you for the music.

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When I first heard reports that Britney Jean was going to be "more personal" I was worried, because the music industry seems to think that "personal" means "awful over-emoting X Factor ballads." I should, of course, have had more faith in Britney, because it turns out that the deepest expression of her innermost subjectivity is EDM bangers. And, you know, if you find over-emoting X Factor ballads genuinely affecting, that's fine, but I certainly don't; most of the songs that mean the most to me are pop or dance records that hide their emotion cautiously in little details of production or performance. It's great that Britney seems to understand, and perhaps share, that emotional makeup.

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Which brings us to the end of my personal list of the best deep Britney album cuts. Actually, when I first drew up the list, I ended it with "Bombastic Love," but while I was researching stuff for these blurbs I discovered there were a few Japanese Blackout bonus tracks I, scandalously, hadn't heard; including this track, which is rather nice.

Doubtless, there are some amazing Britney tracks I've unaccountably missed. You can let me know what they are through my ask. Or, if you have Britney tracks you'ld like to write about, let me know and I can add you as a poster on this Tumblr. So, what are your favourite #deepbritneyalbumcuts?

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I was thinking that, with this track, we're back where we started, with another variant on the "Baby One More Time"/"Oops" template. And we are, more or less, but I always forget how far Max Martin's pilfering of R&B had strayed over into hip-hop, with this track starting with what's close to a rip of the Luniz "I Got 5 On It." I guess the ominousness of 90s hip-hop isn't such a bad way to signify bombast.

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This isn't Britney's prettiest vocal performance, but I do find it very affecting, and it's very Britney in the way that little rasp to her voice suggests a yearning, a slight desperation.

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I don't know enough music theory to explain how this works, but the way the backing in this track just seems to go on and on, spiralling around itself, is great. And any song in which Britney gets to sing "baby" this  many times is always going to be good.

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Are Bloodshy and Avant the weirdest producers that Britney has worked regularly with? They produced "Toxic" which obviously is brilliant but not particularly weird, but they also produced "Freakshow" and this track which is, if anything, an even stranger collection of clicky poppy noises.

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Britney doing dubstep before it was cool. It doesn't have the frenetic pace or the drops that are now associated with dubstep, but in the way it seems to be assembled from discrete elements in a vast empty space (those echoey handclaps) it has quite a bit in common with early dubstep.

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File under "unexpectedly massive bass." It's kind of cavernous, even a little bit eerie, underneath the perkiness of the rest of the song.

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Another excellent bonus track. Not really clear why it was a bonus track, as it does the "world-destroying grandeur" thing that is so key to Blackout at least as well as any of the tracks on the album, with added massive bass.

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More confirmation that the real action on Circus is in the bonus tracks. I'm still sad that this doesn't actually include the line "dirty talk and call it steganography."

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Another remixed single sneaking in on a bonus track technicality. Again, the remix is better than the original; I go back and forth on whether this or the Spanish Fly mix is better, but only this one is at all eligible as a deep album cut, and it's also the only one that sounds like "Moi... Lolita."

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Pushing the boundaries of my theme, but this remix of a single was itself included as an album track, so I'm going to include it. It's interesting because the original is so bad (Britney's worst single, I would say; the other contender I was thinking of is "Do Something," which turns out to be significantly better than I remember); but all it needs is a quick remix and I love it. Possibly I have a weakness for terrible desi remixes, though.

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I was trying to remember why I'd put this song at this point in my #deepbritneyalbumcuts playlist; I think it was as a shift towards more explicitly dance-influenced songs and, as part of that, under the mistaken belief that it was produced by Stuart Price, which it wasn't (he did a couple of remixes, but they're not as good as the album version). In the Zone kind of has a reputation as "Britney's dance-influenced album," right? But it's interesting what signifies as "dance" at different times. This track and "Touch of My Hand" are reminiscent of a particular kind of popular early-90s tasteful house, indeed they remind me of when Kylie "went dance"; and, checking Wikipedia to see when "Confide in Me" was released, I discover that it was, like "Breathe on Me," written by Steve Anderson.

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This seems uncharacteristically mean for a Britney song, in a Taylor Swift/old testament god righteous vengeance sort of way. Though I'm not sure Taylor has actually gone as far as this song does, with the horror-movie strings and the threat of broken window panes. Britney really inhabits the misogynist stereotype of the scorned woman and shoves it in her ex's face ("You say I'm crazy; I got your crazy" - but this time she really means it).

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Whatever dubious source I acquired this MP3 from says it comes from the "UK edition," although it wasn't on the CD I bought from HMV back in 2001. Wikipedia says it's from the Spanish edition, although why only Spain was deemed worthy of this gorgeous track, I'm not sure. It's a lovely enough yearning ballad even before the middle-eighth, where it accompanies jagged strings with breakbeats like some kind of bb Homogenic.

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The past few posts have been following a theme of woozy disassociation. This is the best of all those tracks. The lyrics are about interiority and intimacy and, in particular, about not being able to trust either of these things; the production is fascinating for the way it envelops Spears's voice, with mechanical crunches that echo the creek in the vowels she's made a vocal trademark.