Debbie Gibson never recorded anything as sexy as Britney Spears’s white-funk smoker “…Baby One More Time.” Unfortunately, neither does the 17-year-old Spears’s debut album contain anything else that remotely approaches that instant hit single. A few of the disc’s cuts are pleasantly catchy, but too much of its space is given over to icky ballads (”E-Mail My Heart”?) and other unconvincing moves such as the dancehall-lite “Soda Pop.”

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Where Britney Spears’s first two albums hewed to the early-’60s formula of one strong single plus a stack of filler–a fair bit of which ended up on the radio anyway–her third justifies itself as a full-length listen. Led by the single “I’m a Slave 4 U,” a Neptunes-helmed piece of electrofunk that promises she’ll do anything you want as long as it’s dancing, the album continues through superior versions of Spears’s poses.

Calculated frustration with the adult world? Calculated independence? Sheer celebration? Check, check, and check: “Overprotected,” “Let Me Be,” and a cover of “I Love Rock & Roll” that brings to mind its bubblegum roots. Even without the joyous disco tribute of “Anticipating” and the not-icky ballad “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” providing symbolic respite from the rest of this machine-tooled music, Britney is one of the most human discs of the current teen-pop boom. If it spins off the deserved string of radio/video smashes, it may even buy this superstar a second 15 minutes.

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From the Label Presenting Britney Spears: B in the mix - The Remixes–a collection of brand new remixes of some of the Grammy-winning performer’s biggest hits, some ‘classic’ remixes and as if that weren’t enough a brand new song! The new previously unreleased track, entitled “And Then We Kiss” is remixed by Junkie XL. No Britney Spears fan, no music fan and certainly no dance fan could do without this non-stop hit list of monster remixes. Celebrate the many moods and sounds of Britney Spears: B in the mix - The Remixes.

Description In the absence of a new studio album, the princess of pop follows up 2003’s ‘In The Zone’ with this collection of remixes. The eclectic selection of guest producers includes Junkie XL, Jason Nevins, Hex Hector and Jacques Lu Cont aka Stuart Price, the producer of Madonna’s ‘Confessions On A Dancefloor’ album. The album also includes the Hi-Bias remix of a new song, ‘Someday’, which was previously only available on the bonus CD included with Britney’s ‘Chaotic’ DVD.

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However coy she might be in her public statements, Britney Spears leans more than a bit toward the provocative on In the Zone. Less concerned with aiming at the mainstream radio dial than in the first days of her career, she and her collaborators make this as street and club ready a record as possible. The opening duet with Madonna, “Me Against the Music,” is worthy, but the bigger superstar’s presence serves almost less as a performance than a key to Britney’s intentions: as Madonna did on albums such as Erotica , Ray of Light, and Music, she’s out to bend current trends to her needs.

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