Britney Jean, the forgettable 2013 album that might have stayed buried were it not for “Work Bitch” and “Perfume” is arguably one of Britney Spears’ least cohesive records, offering everything from the former pop power anthem and the latter jilted lover’s lament to the uncomfortable Jamie Lynn Spears-featuring “Chillin’ With You”–a true affront to music as a whole. And yet, its opening track, an ethereal, hypnotic song that bows to Spears’ longstanding undercover feelings of being an outsider in a world that has positioned her as the ultimate “popular girl” (the “Lucky” syndrome, if you will) in her endless Madonna/whore dissections, in addition to analyses that are just plain reaching, remains one of the most endearing of Spears’ canon.
The arresting backbeat, in large part due to William Orbit’s production, perfectly punctuates the lament of Spears as she recalls living a life without having found, at the very least, a counterpart weirdo. Singing, “Lost in the world, out of me, myself and I was lonely then, like an alien/I tried but I never figured it out/Why I always felt like a stranger in a crowd,” Spears addresses a sentiment we have all experienced if not constantly at least every now and again in our often fruitless attempts to make sense of our existence in the universe. For Spears in particular, who spent years as, for all intents and purposes, some endlessly prodded experiment in the manager/corporate deal lab, it’s easy to see why she would feel “lonely then, like an alien” and that she “had to get used to the world [she] was on/While yet still unsure if [she] knew where [she] belonged” (it all harkens back to that “I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman” conundrum). With no equilibrium to keep her grounded on a planet that didn’t even really feel like her own, what it took for Spears to suddenly apprehend her welcomeness on what felt like a formerly inhospitable earth was the revelation that she could be her own best friend–her very own home to go back to. In short, the counterpart weirdo was within.
Somewhat in the vein of “thank u, next” in terms of realizing that what it really takes to not feel so alone is at last feeling comfortable in your own skin, “Alien” is a track that reconciles how frequently we must rely upon ourselves for happiness and gratification (even, to be honest, when it comes to sexual gratification–another reality Spears addresses on “Touch of My Hand”). With this in mind, one can envision Spears staring at her own reflection in the mirror as she states, “And the light in your eyes lets me know I’m not alone.” For it is, in so many respects, a song about not only figuring out who you are and your place on this earth, but returning to some semblance of your original self. The one before all the major traumas and dramas that led you slightly off-kilter, to the point of not even recognizing any part of that person you once knew to be “yourself.”
So it is that when Spears talks about how she “crossed through the universe to get where you are/Travelled the night, riding on a shooting star,” the person she’s really crossing the universe to is her own self, waiting with open arms to embrace her in a manner that no one else can. And then, all at once, she doesn’t need to feel so awkward and alone because she’s finally figured out that the moment you accept who (and what) you are, le monde doesn’t have to seem quite so scary and ominous. Even though if you had Spears’ money, you would probably be taking a fucking spaceship out of this low-budget planet instead of posting up in Vegas once more (maybe the ultimate planet within a planet).
