Because it’s the ultimate pop song, Rolling Stone believes

May 7, 2010 15:02 GMT  ·  By
Lady Gaga initially offered “Telephone” to Britney Spears and she made a demo for it
   Lady Gaga initially offered “Telephone” to Britney Spears and she made a demo for it

That Britney Spears is pivotal to pop music goes without saying. Rolling Stone even goes as far to say that Spears is not just an important part of pop music but is pop itself with all that it has good and bad to offer. In fact, Spears is so ultimately pop (with a few undertones of punk here and there) that she even makes Gaga’s version of “Telephone” (feat. Beyonce) pale in comparison with a demo she also recorded for the song and that was eventually turned down by her label, RS says in a review of the song.

We also informed you a while back that Gaga initially wrote “Telephone” for Britney Spears. Consequently, she recorded a demo for it but her label did not feel it went well with her album so they turned it down. Because Gaga was too fond of the song, she eventually decided to record it herself and, thus, it became the unheard of before pop phenomenon that it is today. With all this, Rolling Stone can’t but feel that Britney’s version is better because she makes it that much easier to relate to what she’s singing.

“‘Telephone’ actually sounds a lot like Britney’s 2007 hit ‘Piece of Me,’ proving yet again how much impact Britney has had on the sonics of current pop. People love to make fun of Britney, and why not, but if ‘Telephone’ proves anything, it’s that Blackout may be the most influential pop album of the past five years. The demo is lighter than Gaga’s production, cutting out all the rock bombast, but that just makes the song more linear and urgent. It reduces ‘Telephone’ to a drum machine, that harp, a magic box of vocal effects, and the concept that a girl’s soul and a magic box of vocal effects can sometimes be the exact same thing,” RS writes.

“Britney uses Auto-Tune the way Bob Dylan used his harmonica – for punctuation, for atmosphere, for an alienatingly weird sound effect. It’s a blast of vocal distortion, harsh on the surface, but expressive, capable of sounding wildly funny or abrasively [angered] or seductive. […] Part of what makes Britney the perfectest of perfect pop stars is the way she expresses her personality most passionately when she’s turning herself into a machine – surrendering to the beat, disappearing into the thrill of the pop moment, singing like a robot. That’s what makes her sound so human after all. In ‘Telephone,’ she doesn’t want to think any more, talk any more, feel any more – she just wants to hit the floor and dance to the rhythm machines until she turns into a machine herself,” the same review further reads.

Bottom line is that, while Gaga’s version is also one of the best pop tracks to see the light of day in recent years, Britney’s version is better because she doesn’t just sings it: Britney is “Telephone” just as Britney is pop pure and simple. Below is Spears’ demo of the song: you judge for yourselves whether the Rolling Stone reviewer is right or not.