'Britney Jean'

She goes by many names. The Princess of Pop. Godney. The Legendary Miss Britney Spears. But on her first album in almost 3 years, the teenage school-girl-turned-pop-phenomenon Britney Spears just wants be known as Britney Jean.

Spears has claimed it’s her most personal album yet, and while Brit is producing more mid-tempo pop ditties than club bangers, it’s still not like she lets us in that much.

In fact, much of the album feels kind of like an afterthought. Like someone said, “Oh yeah, Britney is launching a residency in Las Vegas, so we’d better do some basic kind of promotion.”

Lead single “Work Bitch,” though a campy and brilliant dance smash, failed to gain much traction on the charts. Same for the second single “Perfume,” a lovely, personal ode to a potentially shared lover that’s the most intimate song on the record.

Now, it’s no secret that Spears is not the world’s foremost vocalist, even by pop standards. But her baby-with-a-chest-cold vocals have cemented their place in the pop forum, allowing us to instead judge how well the producers and songwriters she employs do their magic.

This is why all of her previous albums have been such smashes. “Blackout” started a pop revolution and was one of the most influential records of the 2000s. Working with such talent as Danja, Dr. Luke and Max Martin allowed Britney to define pop music.

On “Britney Jean,” Spears enlists A-list producers such as will.i.am and David Guetta. But they just don’t do her justice.

Slow jam tracks like “Body Ache” and “It Should Be Easy” are fun but almost instantly forgettable. It should be a nice change of pace when the radio is full of Mileys and Gagas trying to blast bangers successively harder than one another, but Spears’ sound is just drowned out.

“Tik Tik Boom” is a sound exception, a T.I.-assisted track that’s the closest thing the album has to a bona fide Britney mega-hit.

It’s not like the album is bad by any standard. It’s full of fine tracks that usually feel right at home in Spears’ discography. We’re just missing the “Toxic,” the “Womanizer” or the “Till The World Ends.”

Spears has proved again and again she can release the one pop single to rule them all, even a decade and a half after she hit the scene in her short skirt and pigtails.

“Britney Jean” is a fine effort, but it just doesn’t continue in that fashion.