As Britney Spears keeps making subtle tweaks to her last album, Glory (most recently its cover, now complete with David LaChapelle photography), from four years ago, the previously unofficially released “Mood Ring” that was once only available on an elusive “Japanese edition” of the record reminds one that, back in 2016, Mustard was all over pretty much everyone’s production (including Rihanna’s “Needed Me” from ANTI, her own last album from four years ago that she seems content to conclude her discography with the same way Spears is). So it is that the track opens with, “Mustard on the beat,” before Britney proceeds to explain that she’s a little bit, let’s say, all over the goddamn map.
Particularly in matters of love and affection as she breaks down, “My love is a mood ring/Up and down emotions, all these mood swings.” It would certainly explain the strange roster of relationships she’s had over the years, culminating for now in settling down with her Iranian-born boyfriend, Sam Asghari, whom she met on the set of “Slumber Party,” the second and final single that Glory would generate. And maybe part of the reason Britney simply can’t return to making music isn’t just because the record was her most substance-filled work out of her vast discography, but because to do so might taint that meeting with Asghari somehow (though one doesn’t see why he couldn’t just co-star in another music video with her).
Tongue-in-cheekly written as “Mood Ring (By Demand)” on the new version of Glory, Britney’s recent addressment of some of her fans’ more long-standing desires and whims leads one to believe that she’s doing her best to please them not just because these are dark times and more people than ever seem to have extra hours on their hands, but because she has nothing else to excite them about, seemingly resigned to never creating new material again as she dances fancifully around her house and posts the same exact photos of herself back-to-back, each one displaying an almost calculated lack of interest in the fact that she was once a perfectly-coiffed icon.
In so many ways, this is why “Mood Ring” is the perfect track to acknowledge Britney’s decided “all over the placeness.” Not just on her Instagram, but in life. At three minutes and forty-nine seconds, the song is an admission not only of her frenetic nature (that’s just Sag life, after all), but that she’s finally willing to let her guard down long enough to allow the mood ring that has, for so long, reflected her overwrought emotions turn to a calmer hue.
So it is that she offers, “I’m in the palm of your hand/My temperature is at your command by my demand.” And there it is again, that nod to “by demand” that speaks to her fans’ own needs and moods. The truth is, however, the only thing that would really turn their collective mood ring blue (representing happiness and serenity) is if Spears would put out another record on par with Glory instead of making retroactive adjustments to it.
In any event, where was this song when Vada Sultenfuss (Anna Chlumsky) needed it as the theme for the My Girl Soundtrack?
