It's Britney bitch! announces Britney Spears straight out the gate on her brand new album, Blackout, on Jive/Zomba (available at each Amoeba Music store) which was released early on October 30th due to fears of internet leaking. The big surprise is that the album is actually pretty darn good -- a tight dance-pop collection on which the heavily processed voice of Brit often lashes out at the mean media -- like in the vocoder-fed song "Piece of Me" -- as heard in the above "non-official" video version that displays the Tabloid Britney that we are all too familiar with -- like it or not. But putting aside all the tabloid self-references and all the other superficial stuff, what really strikes me most about this new Britney Spears album is its production, the music itself and just how expertly its producers (Danja and others such as Timbaland and Pharrell Williams) effortlessly channel pop's golden past. Take, for example, "Heaven on Earth" (scroll all the way down for the YouTube clip) is a straight homage (rip-off?) to Donna Summers' 1977 Giorgio Moroder-produced dance masterpiece "I Feel Love." 

Meanwhile, the first 30 seconds of Blackout's track #10 "Ooh Ooh Baby" (streamed below on YouTube) borrows its drum rhythm from Gary Giltter & the Glitter Band's "Rock and Roll (Part II)," the 1972 hit and sports anthem, while Britney's lyrical delivery in the track echoes the melody straight from the Turtlles' 1967 classic "Happy Together." In fact, for a bit of fun I recommend that you play around with hitting the start buttons on the two videos below -- Britney's "Ooh Ooh Baby" with the Turtles (on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour) doing "Happy Together" and try and make your own impromptu video mash-up. I suggest starting the Britney song about five seconds before hitting "Play" on the Turtles. And if you go off beat or get bored with one of the two songs, hit the pause button on one video -- especially since you cannot control volumes on YouTube when they're embedded like they are here.