The practice of big artists beefing up their vocals on tracks with a veritable chorus of backing singers is not a new one. Almost every major recording artist is guilty of this to varying degrees, and one who’s always been a notable adopter of softening her…distinctive vocal style with a symphony of other voices is Brit Brit.
After the debacle of her last album’s release cleared, that being intense fan dissatisfaction, questions over authenticity of vocals, outrage at poor autotuning and much more – one of the remaining questions swirled around backing singer Myah Marie.
Marie basically has made a name for herself in recent years as a backing vocalist for Britney because she sounds basically exactly like her. For Britney fans, mentioning Myah Marie’s name is like hitting a giant RAGE button to unleash this.
Britney fans feel like Myah Marie is the unpoppable hemmaroid on their bottom-butts because it is alleged that Myah Marie contributed in equal measure to Britney Jean as Britney herself. The irony of a popstar calling an album her most personal yet and not realizing that half of the vocals aren’t even hers is not lost on me.
When Brit Brit wants to go for frapuccinos and buy a toy dog, producers – they say, will yes her out of the door and instead get Myah Marie to imitate Brit Brit and lay down the track.
The scandal deepened when Myah’s own father came forward and claimed Brit-wasn’t-really-Brit on half of ‘Femme Fatale’ . Marie disputed this publicly, but it was unconvincing. Somehow, despite what should have been a Milli Vanilli sized scandal – Britney has come out of the other side of the accusation without any statement from her label or her management. Marie went on to become a featured background vocalist on Britney Jean where she also co-wrote the track Body Ache.
Somethin in the Britney Jean aint Clean.
It’s an issue that doesn’t seem to be going away. The original backlash surrounding Britney Jean was partially due to the vast drop in quality the album represented from Spears’ past efforts – but also down to a lot of questions over why the girl on the CD didn’t always sound quite like the Spears, who’s voice we’ve grown to know and love over the past ten years.
Some songs, they said, sounded less like a frog having passionate sex with a lamb than usual, so was it really Britney?
Recently more ‘stems’ , or parts of the raw track recordings featuring the original vocals – have been leaked by producers and used to create acoustic versions of some of the BJ songs. Great deal for fans, who now get to hear a new spin on their favourite tracks; but also painfully revealing for Spears.
One of the versions was an improvement on the original track and stood to prove how Will.I.Am’s production interference had really been a one-two punch of awful for this project.
The Proof
However the latest stem leak has arrived and it’s ‘Passenger‘ where Britney is mixed in with vocal interludes from featured writer and background vocalist Sia. As Britney’s vocals are suspiciously missing from all of the chorus and bridges in the song – the post of the track on Breatheheavy.com claims that Myah Marie sang all of the bridges and chorus parts of the final track for ‘time constraints rather than ability’. lololol
What this essentially means is that, on a track billed as Britney Spears, and sung as if it is Britney Spears, is not, in-fact, Britney Spears for almost half of the song’s run-time. It is not the only track on the album that features this vocal style, and thereby, it is unlikely to be the only one where Spears is not actually singing the whole song.
Sympathy for Lady Britney
This is a music business scandal which will be likely swept under the rug because the world feels bad for Britney. After all we’ve given Britney a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card because she’s a sweet girl who we did wrong, as a public, when she veered dangerously close to suicide.
Should we feel so perpetually bad for Brit Brit, and worried about her mental condition, that we let her away with artistic laziness on a scale so grand she is no longer recording entire tracks herself? Is her life so disgracefully busy with walking to Rite-Aids and buying wigs that we should no longer expect her to put in truly the most basic level of time dedication and effort to her recording career?
Everyone loves Britney Spears, and her positive attitude and upbeat approach to stardom has ensured the public has lasting goodwill for her. Yet at this stage in her career seeing such utter disengagement from the creative process (however tenuous Spears’ honest link to that process must have been in past) is a slap in the face to consumers and fans, who at least want to know when they shell over $3 for this CD in a bargain bin that they will be at the very least – hearing her.
source http://la-deli.com/britney-spears-last-album-wasnt-sung-britney-spears/#more-1479
summary: Britney is too lazy and/or so severely lacking in vocal ability that she is incapable of laying down more than one take for her tracks so they bring in "backup" singer Myah Marie to come in and mimic her voice to fool fans and consumers into believing it's Spears singing on records. Charli XCX who worked on the Britney Jean project before being unceremoniously cut also made some controversial statements in an interview hinting at this practice before succumbing to fan pressure and retracting her insinuations.
This isn't the first time fans have caught on to Spears' and her team's shady business practices as you'll remember the dance double controversy during the femme fatale era.
Dance doubles, voice doubles, what's next?
