Blackout is the fifth studio album by American recording artist Britney Spears, released on October 26, 2007 by Jive Records, four years after her previous studio album In the Zone. Spears started writing songs for the album in November 2003, and began experimenting with a more acoustic sound. Following her marriage with Kevin Federline in 2004 and the birth of her first son the subsequent year, she began recording the album in 2006 with producers J. R. Rotem, Danja and Kara DioGuardi. She gave birth to her second son and filed for divorce in late 2006, after which she continued working with producers such as The Clutch and Bloodshy & Avant.
Recording sessions took place at various studios around the country, including at Spears' home in Los Angeles. Some of the producers claimed to be impressed with her work ethic and professionalism, despite all her problems in her personal life. Spears wanted to make a fun, danceable album with uptempo, high-energy music. Blackout is mainly an electropop and dance album, which incorporates elements of several musical genres such as funk, Euro disco and dubstep. The themes of the album range from fame, sex, love and dancing. The cover sleeve and images were shot by Ellen von Unwerth. The centerfold pictures, which feature Spears and a priest in suggestive poses in a confessional, were condemned by the Catholic League.
Blackout was to be released on November 13, 2007, but it was moved up to October 30 due to unauthorized leaks. Zomba Label Group sued Perez Hilton for posting at least ten leaks on his gossip blog; the parties reached a settlement in June 2009. Blackout received mostly positive reviews from music critics. Most called it her most progressive and consistent album yet, but others argued that its quality should have been attributed to the producers rather than Spears, and also criticized her vocals for being overly-processed. Blackout was set to debut at the top of the Billboard 200, but debuted at number two due to a last-minute rule change. The album topped the European Top 100 Albums and the Canadian and Irish charts, while peaking inside the top ten in another thirteen countries. By the end of 2008, Blackout had sold 3.1 million copies worldwide.
Three singles were released from the album. "Gimme More" reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and became a top-five hit in fourteen countries. "Piece of Me" reached the top-ten in twelve countries, including Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. Unlike her previous albums, Spears did not heavily promote Blackout. Her only performance to promote the album, "Gimme More" at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards, was universally panned by critics. Blackout has appeared on many of the end of the year and decade lists including reader polls by Billboard and Rolling Stone, while The Times named it as the fifth best pop album of the decade. In 2012, the album was added to the library and archives of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.Blackout is the fifth studio album by American recording artist Britney Spears, released on October 26, 2007 by Jive Records, four years after her previous studio album In the Zone. Spears started writing songs for the album in November 2003, and began experimenting with a more acoustic sound. Following her marriage with Kevin Federline in 2004 and the birth of her first son the subsequent year, she began recording the album in 2006 with producers J. R. Rotem, Danja and Kara DioGuardi. She gave birth to her second son and filed for divorce in late 2006, after which she continued working with producers such as The Clutch and Bloodshy & Avant.
Recording sessions took place at various studios around the country, including at Spears' home in Los Angeles. Some of the producers claimed to be impressed with her work ethic and professionalism, despite all her problems in her personal life. Spears wanted to make a fun, danceable album with uptempo, high-energy music. Blackout is mainly an electropop and dance album, which incorporates elements of several musical genres such as funk, Euro disco and dubstep. The themes of the album range from fame, sex, love and dancing. The cover sleeve and images were shot by Ellen von Unwerth. The centerfold pictures, which feature Spears and a priest in suggestive poses in a confessional, were condemned by the Catholic League.
Blackout was to be released on November 13, 2007, but it was moved up to October 30 due to unauthorized leaks. Zomba Label Group sued Perez Hilton for posting at least ten leaks on his gossip blog; the parties reached a settlement in June 2009. Blackout received mostly positive reviews from music critics. Most called it her most progressive and consistent album yet, but others argued that its quality should have been attributed to the producers rather than Spears, and also criticized her vocals for being overly-processed. Blackout was set to debut at the top of the Billboard 200, but debuted at number two due to a last-minute rule change. The album topped the European Top 100 Albums and the Canadian and Irish charts, while peaking inside the top ten in another thirteen countries. By the end of 2008, Blackout had sold 3.1 million copies worldwide.
Three singles were released from the album. "Gimme More" reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and became a top-five hit in fourteen countries. "Piece of Me" reached the top-ten in twelve countries, including Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. Unlike her previous albums, Spears did not heavily promote Blackout. Her only performance to promote the album, "Gimme More" at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards, was universally panned by critics. Blackout has appeared on many of the end of the year and decade lists including reader polls by Billboard and Rolling Stone, while The Times named it as the fifth best pop album of the decade. In 2012, the album was added to the library and archives of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.false2025-11-07 23:17:02Blackout20072007-10-302007-10-3044Pop111282211855939b6426d-0377-4b44-965e-707a4e49564545a663b5-b1cb-4a91-bff6-2bef7bbfdd760b8e14e1-d44d-3770-8617-5c6137a444a8/media/data/media5/Music/Britney Spears/Blackout/folder.jpgBritney SpearsBritney SpearsBritney Jean Spears (born December 2, 1981) is an American singer, songwriter, dancer and actress. Often referred to as the "Princess of Pop", she is credited with influencing the revival of teen pop during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Regarded as a pop icon, Spears has sold nearly 150 million records worldwide, including over 70 million solely in the United States, making her one of the world's best-selling music artists.After appearing in stage productions and television series, Spears signed with Jive Records in 1997 at age 15. Her first two studio albums, ...Baby One More Time (1999) and Oops!... I Did It Again (2000), are among the best-selling albums of all time and made Spears the best-selling teenage artist of all time. With first-week sales of over 1.3 million copies, Oops!... I Did It Again held the record for the fastest-selling album by a female artist in the United States for 15 years. Spears adopted a more mature and provocative style for her albums Britney (2001) and In the Zone (2003), and starred in the 2002 film Crossroads.
Spears was executive producer of her fifth studio album Blackout (2007), often referred to as her best work. Following a series of highly publicized personal problems, promotion for the album was limited, and Spears was involuntarily placed in a conservatorship. Since then, she released the chart-topping albums, Circus (2008) and Femme Fatale (2011), the latter of which became her most successful era of singles in the US charts. She embarked on a four-year concert residency, Britney: Piece of Me, at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas to promote her next two albums Britney Jean (2013) and Glory (2016). In 2019, Spears's legal battle over her conservatorship became more publicized and led to the establishment of the #FreeBritney movement. In 2021, the conservatorship was terminated following her public testimony in which she accused her management team and family of abuse.Spears has achieved six number-one albums on the Billboard 200 and four number-one singles on the US Billboard Hot 100: "...Baby One More Time", "Womanizer", "3", and "Hold It Against Me". As a featured artist, the "S&M" remix also topped the Billboard chart. Her singles "Oops!... I Did It Again", "Toxic", and "Scream & Shout" topped the charts in most countries. With "3" in 2009 and "Hold It Against Me" in 2011, Spears became the second artist after Mariah Carey in the Hot 100's history to debut at number one with two or more songs. Her heavily choreographed videos earned her the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award. She has earned numerous other awards and accolades, including a Grammy Award, 15 Guinness World Records, six MTV Video Music Awards, seven Billboard Music Awards (including the Millennium Award), the inaugural Radio Disney Icon Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Spears was ranked by Billboard as the eighth-biggest artist of the 2000s. In the United States, she is the fourth best-selling female album artist of the Nielsen SoundScan era as well as the best-selling female album artist of the 2000s. "...Baby One More Time" was named the greatest debut single of all time by Rolling Stone in 2020. In 2004, Spears launched a perfume brand with Elizabeth Arden, Inc.; sales exceeded $1.5 billion as of 2012. Forbes has reported Spears as the highest-paid female musician of 2002 and 2012. By 2012, she had topped Yahoo!'s list of most searched celebrities seven times in 12 years. Time named Spears one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2021, while also winning the reader poll by receiving the highest number of votes.