Domingo 4 Dic 2005, 12:43

Early in her career, the public observed a noticeable shift in the behavior and image of pop star Britney Spears. The artist that began as a talented teenager singing songs of heartbreak and relationships had grown into a woman with a sexy image and a hunger for excess. The 2003 album In the Zone contains some clear examples of the exoticism found in her music of late. I will use two songs, “Toxic” and “Outrageous”, to show how through both the lyrics and music Spears portrays the semiotics of exoticism.
Most listeners primarily relate to the lyrics of a recording before they begin to deeply analyze aspects of the music so I will begin there. Each song portrays a different overall theme that could be taken by society as somewhat forbidding. As one could guess with “Outrageous”, the lyrics portray Spears as an individual driven to excess in various ways. She depicts both images of sexual desire (“outrageous when I move my body…outrageous in my sexy jeans…outrageous: my sex drive”) as well as the luxury of superstardom (“outrageous: my shopping spree” and later mentioning the red carpet, traveling, etc. in the second verse.) “Toxic” is much sparser lyrically but still presents a clear scenario, where Spears is attracted so much to a target of sexual desire that it comes off as an addiction. The second verse particularly portrays the male in question as a drug, stating that she “needs a hit” and making it clear that she is enjoying how dangerous the whole situation is. Further reading into the pre-chorus and chorus reveals an even more explicit depiction of this idea. Addiction itself can also be linked to the idea of excess, where someone with an addiction for something is more likely to feed that addiction more often as they become further entrapped. These excesses are, for nearly all of Spears’s audience, a fantasy rather than a reality and therefore become exotic in nature. While the lyrics clearly paint a picture of exoticism, certain musical elements of each song further develop this.
While the song has no Middle Eastern context, “Outrageous” is written to evoke elements of an Arabic music through both the beat and the melodic material. Rather than providing a straight-ahead beat pattern, the electronic percussion used in the song are often springing off of syncopations that create a more exotic feel. Layered on top of this is a vocal melody that includes elements of an exotic scale, specifically an augmented second that takes place between scale degrees b2 and 3. Paired with Spears’s voice is a synthesizer manipulated to sound like some sort of reed instrument, further evoking a Middle Eastern sound. This melodic element has two very recognizable cousins, one of them occurring much earlier than 2003. Ellie Hisama’s essay “From L’Etranger to ‘Killing an Arab’” explores a similar relationship in a 1986 song by the Cure. While that song had the context of an Albert Camus novel as its reason for evoking such exoticism, Spears has used a similar means to merely make the song more seductive and striking to the listener. Such exoticism would perhaps also put more attention on the lyrics. The other similar example to this that I allude to is Kelis’s “Milkshake”. While the 2003 album Tasty which features “Milkshake” was released a month after In the Zone, the song had been released as a single in late August and was finding itself all over the airwaves. In an interlude-passage Kelis sings a motive based on scale degrees b2 and 1, evoking here and in other places a feeling of Phrygian modality. Further assisting the exoticism of this song is the use of antique cymbals (commonly known as finger cymbals), evoking more exoticism in the form of what most people associate this instrument with - belly dancing. All of these elements combine for one common goal – to highlight the lyrics that clearly allude to (and make subject of) a particular sexual act. These other examples show that the Middle Eastern exoticism evoked by “Outrageous” is an effective means of enhancing such a song both through creating an foreign atmosphere (as The Cure did with “Killing and Arab”) and highlighting the exotic nature of the lyrics themselves (as Kellis’s “Milkshake” does.)
“Toxic” is, musically speaking, a much different song from “Outrageous”. Providing the semiotics in this song is a string motive that frames a tritone and/or a diminished triad (scale degrees b5-2-3-1 in a minor mode). As the tritone is not part of traditional diatonic theory in relation to a tonic chord, this motive provides a tension and ultimately an exoticism for the song. This register of the violin is a particularly bright and expressive one, saved by the master composers for the tense moments they need it most. Its use in a pop song is, therefore, also quite exotic and striking. While this “Toxic” motive provides the initial exotic drive for the song, the two chord progressions used in the chorus highlight more modal inflections. These progressions are:

First line of chorus: Cm Eb7 D7 Db7 (Cm)
Second line: Cm Eb7 Ab G7 Db7 (Cm)

Note that the last c minor chord of each progression is placed in parentheses because they actually occur on the downbeat of the following phrase as an elision is taking place. The chords in bold, when removed from the progression, present something much more common and normal in root movement. Each of these chord progressions highlights half-step movements and both of them feature a scale degree b2-1 relationship just as “Outrageous” does. This relationship further proves that this lowered second scale degree is a major part of evoking exoticism in these songs.
While these elements enough prove the presence of exoticism in these two songs, further study of the video for “Toxic” shows some of the ideas of excess presented visually. In the video Spears plays an attractive, provocatively-dressed airplane stewardess who is constantly imposing on male passengers’ sexual comfort zones. It also provides an image of the taboo idea of joining the “mile-high club”, or having sexual relations in an airplane bathroom. At other points in the video, Spears appears as different movie character-types that I will simply refer to as “superhero scenes.” In these superhero scenes Spears is often wearing something tight and featuring a different hair color, bold shades of red and black. All of these fantasy-type situations, along with the acts that the characters partake in (secret missions, riding a motorcycle through a busy city, and escaping large explosions just to name a few) continue to raise the level of excess and exoticism present in the video. These scenes, plus a particular set of cut-scenes featuring Spears in a nude-colored bodysuit, skew the audience’s interpretation of who it is that is “toxic.” While Spears’s lyrics depict the male as such, an argument could be made that the video widens the appeal of the song by making Spears incredibly desirable and “toxic” herself.
From lyrical cues to musical ones, several interrelated elements help to provide exoticism in the recent music of Britney Spears. Furthermore, elements of her image as portrayed in music videos enhance (and often help to widen the appeal) of these elements. However, before the listener plays too deeply into this element of Spears’s work that they become too much an example of Theodor Adorno’s passive audience, one still needs to strive to found the deepest meaning in music. For that, I will highlight the bridge of “Outrageous” and then pose a question. As the key of the song mutates from a minor tonal center to a sudden major one, Spears sings:

I just wanna be happy in a place where love is free.
Can you take me there, somebody?

I ask the listener this: Does Spears wish to settle down from her outrageousness and to what extent if this is the most we hear of this idea?