I really believe Britney Spears ‘Blackout’ possibly debuting 350k is a cultural defining moment. Shockingly, her first week numbers are rather good. If Britney came out 7-10 years earlier, she very well have could been a Debbie Gibson or Tiffany posing for playboy, raising a family outside of Hollywood, and appearing on VH1’s “Where Are They Now”.

The Media couldn’t capture Gibson’s and Tiffany’s most private moments and their private lives were not exploited in magazines and on the TV. I remember watching the video ‘Only In My Dreams‘, and I only remember Debbie Gibson as a 16 year old girl riding on a merry go round and dancing behind a white picket fence. I never had the opportunity to see the other side of Gibson. Never saw a video on TMZ with her face buried in coke.

How is the public still concerned with a 15 year old prepubescent girl dancing in high school proclaiming “Hit Me Baby One More Time”? Without question, this is a case when the stars align for an artist. Britneys success came on the heels of a changing society. New technology and globalization was right around the corner. Britney had another chance for fame unlike Gibson and Tiffany. We no longer have to walk to the stage when living in a surveillant society because the world is the stage. It’s Lights, Camera, Action every day, every minute, and every second. Britney’s fame was propelled through a 24 hour rolling camera and she gave it her all. Gibson at her age would have done the same thing granted she was given the opportunity.

Living in today’s world makes it more difficult to ‘imagine’. We can no longer just know Britney as the little prepubescent pigtailed girl performing those cute little dance moves like we did with Debbie Gibson. In fact, we know more than we need to know about Britney and this is why she can sell records a decade later. What we have today is a ‘aftermarket’ that has allowed these former teen pop stars to grow and maintain relevance.

Unfortunately, the music itself has become just a dog and pony show. I truly believe Britney’s new record Blackout is a defining moment because we can see the degradation of music and the craft.

I found this review and believe this is an accurate description of what took place.

Her record company would no doubt like us to consider this album a bold assertion of Spears’ identity and, by extension, relative sanity. “Crazy” is acceptable in pop, clinically insane is not. But the self-consciously stylish tin-can beats on “Blackout,” referencing every ’80s synth phenom from Trio to Berlin and smothered with vocal tics cribbed from Beyoncé and Christina Aguilera, actually testify to Spears’ absence, and point to the irrelevance of her modest contribution to the process of building her brand. With so many hot producers competing with one another, what you hear on “Blackout” are not songs so much as commercials for songs — a team of professional songwriters frantically overselling and spinning the image of a celebrity who has essentially left the building. (salon)

I believe that we hit the pinnacle. Maybe the next generation of artists will come back around and proclaim “I want to make a record and I have to be really GREAT…..