Words.
"Happy 30th birthday, Britney. It's safe to say you had the awesomest 20s of any pop star ever. Ten years ago, Britney rang in her 20s by to do "I'm A Slave 4 U," a song about seething party-girl desperation that compares her vagina to a kitty cat; she rings in her 30s with "How I Roll," a song about seething party-girl desperation that compares her vagina to a kitty cat. If you don't think that's artistic integrity, there's something wrong with you.
... Just look at her output in her 20s: "Boys" in 2002, "Toxic" in 2004, "Do Somethin'" in 2005, "Piece of Me" in 2007, "Womanizer" in 2008, "3" in 2009, "I Wanna Go" in 2011. She just never fucking stops, and never should. She's been easily the most influential pop singer of that timespan, expanding her signature Brit-growl into the distorto-robot glitch-glam computer-blue vocal style that everybody else imitates now.
...Britney always gets underrated as a hitmaker, because people like to assume she has nothing to do with her own music. That's understandable but not necessarily persuasive, given the freakishly consistent sicker-than-the-remix excellence of her musical output. She keeps nailing the fizziest, splashiest, bestest synth-pop records of the moment, in a deceptively quasi-anonymous robo-voice that any pop fan can recognize in seconds. If she gets snaps it's for being a star, or (that most chickenshit of compliments) an "icon," but how many brilliant hits does she have to release before people give Mrs. Oh My God That Britney's Shameless credit for doing it right?
...We've seen so many pretenders to her throne come and go. (Thanks for the memories, Miley! Don't ever change, Bonus Jonas!) We'll see more of them. People keep waiting for Britney to be over. They can keep waiting. When people stop claiming she's over, I guess that'll mean she's over. But they won't. And she won't be. So happy birthday, Britney. And gimme more."
ROLLING STONE: Happy 30th Birthday Britney Spears: Here's to 10 More Years of Pop Awesomeness
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