Britney Spears Didn't Write Femme Fatale Tracks: Does It Matter?

Ke$ha, Ryan Tedder and other Spears songwriters defend the pop 'icon' from criticism that she didn't pen songs on her latest release.
By Jocelyn Vena

Britney Spears
Photo: C. Flanigan/ WireImage

Britney Spears launched her career as a fresh face with the perfect amount of girl-next-door charm and sex appeal and rocketed her way up to pop superstardom. She followed her debut, ... Baby One More Time,with a series of chart-topping albums, including her latest release, Femme Fatale. And while fans are loving the new album, some critics are making a fuss over Spears' lack of songwriting credits.

Spears didn't write any of the tracks on her 1999 debut, but by her second album, Oops! ... I Did It Again, she had was making some songwriting contributions. Over the course of five albums, she has co-written 17 tracks, including hit singles "Everytime" and "Me Against the Music." With Femme Fatale, Brit left the writing to others. And many industry insiders are defending the star for not taking credit for work she didn't do on Femme Fatale.

Songwriter Heather Bright, who wrote the track "Trouble for Me" on Spears' latest, gave Spears credit for not pushing to get credit for a song she had nothing to do with.

"I would just like to address one thing! The media is talking trash about how Britney didn't write any of the songs on her album ... HELLO! Wake up everybody! NONE OF THESE ARTISTS WRITE THEIR OWN SONGS!!!!!!" she wrote, before slamming a laundry list of stars who do seek credit for songs they don't write. Bright also praised pop stars who in fact write their own songs.

Like Bright, Ke$ha, who penned the Femme Fatale track "Till the World Ends," defended the pop star. Not writing any songs on the album doesn't make Britney any less of an artist, Ke$ha said.

"I think people should be themselves and be their own artist, whatever that means for her," Ke$ha said in an interview with MTV Canada. "She's an amazing singer, an amazing performer and she's an icon. I don't think that that means she has to write. I do write my own music, some people don't and it doesn't at all make them any less of a brilliant artist, obviously, in her case, an icon."

While Spears didn't write for her current album, she explained that it was important to pick songs that were right for her.

"I really like to choose songs that empower people and make them feel good about themselves, first and foremost. I have a team of people that I work with, Max Martin and Dr. Luke, that are amazing producers," she told MTV News recently. "They bring me a load of songs but usually I'm very quick with the way I work and the type of songs that I like. And if I like it, then I'll record it."

"Gasoline" songwriter Claude Kelly told us that Spears always knows what's best for her.

"She's very, very much in control of what she records, how she sounds, how she portrays herself on the record," Kelly said of Britney's process. "There's no grand master puppeteering — that's kind of a myth. She knows what she's going to cut. She's not going to sing anything she doesn't want to and she has this amazing ability when she gets behind the mic. It's like eye of the tiger."

Songwriter and One Republic frontman Ryan Tedder also gave props to Spears for not taking credit for music she had nothing to do with. "I love that Britney does that. She knows where she is, and she shows up to the studio and says, 'What am I singing today guys? Okay, cool! Let me look at it,' " he said. "So to me it's whatever, be thankful for what you have."

Do you think Britney is less of a pop star because she doesn't write her own songs? Sound off in the comments.

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Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1661628/britney-spears-femme-fatale-write-songs.jhtml

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