Will.i.am Is Executive Producing Britney Spears’ Next Album & Everything Feels Hopeless

Sam Lansky | May 1, 2013 11:29 am

That anguished sob of despair you just heard coming out of Brazil? Yes, that was all of Britney Spears‘ stans reacting with unprecedented shock and dismay to the gut-punching horror show news bulletin that Spears’ next album will be executive produced by her “Scream & Shout” collaborator, abysmal club-pop gremlin Will.i.am.

Rolling Stone reports that Will says he’s “involved in, not producing and writing every song, but to be an executive producer on the songs.” (He also said that Britney “really liked Diplo” and that they’d had recent sessions which he described as “amazing,” which is more promising, but still, really, ugh — Will.i.am?)

Look: I’m not saying that Will.i.am is the worst thing that’s ever happened to the world of music, and he’s a capable producer as long as he doesn’t make the songs about him, but Spears — who has long been pop music’s secret avant-garde superstar, with a propensity for including groundbreaking sounds and influences that define the trends of mainstream radio — probably won’t benefit from having the king of bleepy-bloop chart pablum on her side. Does anyone actually like Will.i.am? Why is this happening? Also, even when her ballads have vacillated in quality, Spears’ uptempo tracks are consistently amazing, and (in my opinion) “Big Fat Bass” is maybe the only bad dancefloor banger she’s ever recorded.

Will.i.am continued to explain that he needed to have a lot of lunches with Spears in order to find out exactly who she was as a person and “what she’s excited about in life”; he said, “We can’t do another song about going on the dance floor. Really? Didn’t we see a bunch of Britney doing that already? Don’t we want to see something that comes from her heart?”

Will, nobody wants something that comes from Britney’s heart. We want big pop smashes. Also, what? This from the guy responsible for the soul-baring torch ballad “#thatpower”? Give my heart a break, Will.

Best case scenario: They assemble the best pop songs in the world and Will is a useful resource in curating which ones make the album. Worst case scenario: Lots and lots and lots of lines like the iconic “Big Fat Bass” lyric, “When it pounds it causes addiction / Y’all addicts better have a prescription.”

In a word: #Pray4Godney.

[via Rolling Stone]