Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

15 years ago or so I was between marriages and living on the edge in an apartment next to a woman named __________ who was what would now be called a hottie. She was, I thought, way out of my league, so I never even tried for her. I think what scared me off was her pattern. A new guy would show up at her apartment one day, he'd be there every day for a week or 10 days, then he'd be gone. A couple of days later a new guy would show up and repeat the pattern. This went on for months. Finally, a guy showed up, a real monster, ripped and buffed; he walked in on a Monday and his car was there for three weeks. And due to the thin walls of this establishment, I was getting a real play-by-play, if you know what I mean.

March turned into April and this guy's car never moved. I finally saw him come staggering out of her door on a Spring afternoon. His muscle tone, was gone, his jaw was slack, his eyes had that dull look in them as if a mirage he had been walking toward across the burning sands of a desert had suddenly disappeared. He looked, basically, like his life force had been drained out of him. From the pipe he liked best. I saw __________ a couple of days later and she looked better than ever, totally invigorated and refreshed. Can you say "succubus?" I moved.

The reason that I bring up this observation from my past is that I'm convinced, after listening to BRITNEY, watching (and taping, and watching, and watching) the video for "I'm A Slave 4 U, " and checking out the booklet so thoughtfully prepared for the CD (there are exactly three beauty marks on Britney's chest), that unless Justin Timberlake breaks loose of Britney Spears he's gonna wind up like the guy my former next door neighbor drained the life out of. I mean, this womanchild doesn't look like she has an off button. At the least, his major medical better cover chiropractic. The problem, though, is that we're not discussing the finer points (heh heh) of this month's MAXIM girl. We're talking Britney Spears, here. And while she's got a movie coming out, has a book out, it's the singing, the music, that is supposed to be her bread and butter. The only problem is that in this case it's water and gruel.

BRITNEY covers the same ground that Janet Jackson tilled in RHYTHM NATION, that Prince plowed in his slew of brilliant albums of the 1980s and 1990s.

And she doesn't do it as well. There are any number of embarrassments here, from the narcissistic "What It's Like to Be Me" ("I carry fake IDs/so I can buy my friends drinks/I can jump into Lake Ponchetrain/and never even sink"; those aren't really the lyrics, but you get the idea) to the whiny declaration of independence proclaimed in "Cinderella" (I mean, shut up and LEAVE already) to the unintentionally funny "Overprotected." The real turkey here, though, is the ever-so-unadvisable take of "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" in which Britney takes the Joan Jett classic (and Joan, before she decided to become the poster girl for the Patrick Stewart Lookalike Finals, was hotter than Britney could ever hope to be) and drives it right over the guardrail of the Crescent City Connection.

Much has been made of Britney's "growing up," so to speak, with the BRITNEY CD. My guess is that the sudden accentuation of Britney's, ah, charms is to distract everyone from the fact that her music is warmed over hip-hop, wrapped in a beautiful little package of dynamite. And the distraction almost works. Almost. I'll keep watching the videos, but with the sound off, and with Irma Thomas in the CD player.