Britney Spears's Blackout: 33 1/3

by Natasha Lasky, uncredited (Narrator)

Britney Spears barely survived 2007. She divorced her husband, lost custody of her kids, went to rehab, shaved her head and assaulted a paparazzo. In the midst of her public breakdown, she managed to record an album, Blackout. Critics thought it spelled the end for Britney Spears’ career.

But Blackout turned out to be one of the most influential albums of the aughts. It not only brought glitchy digital noise and dubstep into the Top 40, but also transformed Britney into a new kind of pop star, one who shrugged off mainstream ubiquity for the devotion of smaller groups of fans who worshipped her idiosyncratic sound.
This book returns to the grimy clubs and paparazzi hangouts of LA in the 2000s as well as the blogs and forums of the early internet to show how Blackout was a crucial hinge between twentieth and twenty-first-century pop.

Audible Audio

Published May 13, 2025

Reviews

[Meagan Scotti · Rating 2 out of 5]

Blackout is THE album that has influenced what so much of pop music is today. I wanted to hear more about the technicality of making the album and the process behind it. Instead she talks about the culture at the time which is of course relevant but only a part of the picture. Blackout is suppose to be this freeing album for Britney however there is a lack of information about the creation and from what she says it sounds like she only wrote a few songs. There is a reason I chose to listen to this because it is an important part of culture and pop and I feel like this book did not live up to the potential it could have.