Non-Urban Music Britney 'Telephone' original demo of the Gaga track

[Casey]

Yeah, Gaga wrote it for Britney, Britney recorded a demo of it and her label passed on it.

Anyway her demo leaked.

 

[Kobe]

I read about the song being intended for Britney. Nice to hear what the demo sounded like. Lady Gaga rocked it though!!

Got a random list of songs that were rejected by artists and later on recorded by another?

 

[Shadows]

Lady Gaga tore Britney a new one.

I think Britney is talentless.

In her whole career, I think she only made like 3-5 classic songs.

 

[Rukas]

Well I guess whoever made that decision at the label got fired as soon as Gaga's version became such a smash.

 

[Shadows]

^Maybe not, because I don't think Britney's version was so hot. Not only that, but this clip made me appreciate Beyonce A LOT more in the song now.

 

[Flipmo]

I still think Britney on the song as a featuring would have been better than Beyonce's imo. Her verse with all that... 'HOLD UP SISTA HMMM HMMM *snap fingers*' attitude just doesn't do it for me.

 

[Casey]

Britney >>>>>>>>>>> Beyonce

Bear in mind folks this is a DEMO. Post-production and mixing are arguably THE most important part of a hit song, and therefore it's worthless trying to compare this demo to what was released.

Shadows, Britney is FAR from talentless. 3-5 classic songs? What rock have you been hiding under?

As someone who studies pop culture, I would consider all of the following to be classic pop songs, and you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone that would disagree.

Hit Me Baby One More Time
You Drive Me Crazy
Born To Make You Happy
Oops I Did It Again
Everytime
I'm a Slave 4 U
Boys (Co-Ed Remix feat. Pharrell)
Me Against The Music
Toxic
Gimme More
Piece Of Me
Break The Ice
Radar
Womanizer
Circus
If U Seek Amy
3

I love Gaga but overall she's not seeing Britney for at least another 5 years or 3 albums. Let's be real here.

 

[Kobe]

How would you define a classic pop song? Quality of lyrics and production? Chart performance? Radio airplay? General popularity?

I'll single out two songs from there as the ones I liked the first time I heard them.

1. (You drive me) Crazy (Stop Remix) NOT the LP version, they watered it down to much for my liking.
2. Gimme more

Some of the songs on that list were a bit too much of the N-sync/Backstreet Boys/Britney Spears, everywhere I go I hear their single, no matter what radio station I tune into I hear their music playing, even though I hate it as much as the rest of the world loves it, pop era that I really dreaded while I was growing up.

 

[Shadows]

You Drive Me Crazy
Oops I Did It Again
Piece Of Me
Womanizer

and Lucky I think it was?

Were like the only ones I think are classic. The other songs are good, but not all that, imo.

I always felt something were missing to make them classic. Although, I do think they are good songs.

Also, I feel like Gaga has had more than 5 classic songs, a lot more with only 2 albums.

There is no denying that you're right about the mixing, I didn't think of that.

 

[Casey]

I don't know how anyone could argue that "Gimme More", "I'm A Slave 4 U" and "Toxic" are not classic pop songs. Those songs are damn near flawless.

Kobe, the criteria would be stellar production and mixing, originality, and mass impact.

Whether the song is to your personal preference is not relevant.

 

[Casey]

For the record, this song 'Quicksand' from Britney's last album was also written by Gaga. So you can get a clearer picture of how a finished Britney song written by Gaga sounds compared to a demo.

 

[Shadows]

I don't know how anyone could argue that "Gimme More", "I'm A Slave 4 U" and "Toxic" are not classic pop songs. Those songs are damn near flawless.

Kobe, the criteria would be stellar production and mixing, originality, and mass impact.

Whether the song is to your personal preference is not relevant.

Gimme more is good, but skip able. Same with Toxic city. Maybe not slave 4 you, now that I think about it.

Even so, of the ones I listed, there were 5, u said there is 3 specifically that can't really be argued.

That still leaves her with 8.

I can list 8 Gaga classic tracks right now:

Monster
Paparazzi
Just Dance
Love Game
Bad Romance
Alejandro
Dance in the Dark
Starstruck

Possibly even Poker Face, though, sometimes that get's on my nerves, I can probably classify it with Slave 4 you.

As for quicksand, I never knew it was written by Gaga. After giving it another listen, I can totally tell.

So, Casey, if Britneys Telephone was mixed and mastered, do you think that Britneys would have been better?

Also, I probably wouldn't argue the whole Beyonce or Britney thing on the track. Britney should have re-mixed and did her own verse, taking out Beyonce.

 

[Casey]

I can list 8 Gaga classic tracks right now:

Monster
Paparazzi
Just Dance
Love Game
Bad Romance
Alejandro
Dance in the Dark
Starstruck

You're missing the point I was making.

I was talking singles with videos. That's a must for pop culture impact which is what I was referring to.

If you look at my list I didn't mention any Britney album tracks. If I had done, the list would easily be twice as long.

So if we take out the album tracks from your list, then you're left with 3. Possibly 4 soon, since there should be a video for Alejandro soon and I think the song has potential for serious impact with the right video.

Paparazzi
Just Dance
Bad Romance

And for the record, I like 'Lovegame' and 'Starstruck' but when push comes to shove they're still essentially both filler tracks. Slightly better than average, but nothing amazing.

 

[Flipmo]

Gaga still has time. That's all it comes down to imo. She's starting off well, but there's still a long way to go before she makes enough of an impact like Brittney has.

I wouldn't say that I'm a die heart fan here, but I can appreciate pop for what it is. I have to say though, Slave 4 U was a damn explosion onto the music and dance/pop scene, probably much bigger (from what I remember) than anything Gaga has released at the moment.

 

[Casey]

/\ Yep. The Neptunes scored big by ripping off the sound Prince had created 20 years earlier.

for comparison:

Britney Spears - I'm A Slave 4 U (2001)

Vanity 6 - Nasty Girl (1982) (written/produced by Prince)


Ironically enough, the choreography for the Britney video was done by Prince's ex-wife Mayte Garcia.

 

[S O F I]

You know a rap board has gone to shit when you have dudes debating Britney vs. Gaga.

 

[Casey]

You know a rap board has gone to shit when you have dudes debating Britney vs. Gaga.

Meh. I like both of them more than probably 80% of the hip-hop I hear these days.

 

[Casey]

Looks like no less of an authority than Rolling Stone magazine prefer the Britney version!

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/robsheffield/;kw=[blogs,Sheffield_April2010,145794]

Ever since Britney Spears' demo version of Lady Gaga's "Telephone" leaked this week, fans have been buzzing. Producer Rodney Jerkins quickly confirmed that it really was Britney singing, but any seasoned Britneyologist could already identify it by ear within a couple of bars — nobody else pronounces the consonant "r" or the long vowel "e" like our girl. It has all the distinctive vocal tics of Britney, or at least the laptop that does her singing. At this point, I've come to love Britney's demo even more than Gaga's already-brilliant hit version. Even though it's a more bare-bones production, it amps up all the seething rage in the song, stripping it down to the killer combo of a plucked harp and a jaded party girl strung out on Auto-Tune and paranoia.

"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.

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 pissed-off or seductive. In "Telephone," as in "Piece of Me," the Auto-Tune does for her voice what the harmonica does for Dylan's in "It Ain't Me, Babe" — a way of telling the world to keep its hands off you. Britney is talking to her phone, talking to the boy who keeps calling, talking herself out of compulsively checking her phone. The way her voice fades in and out of Auto-Tune — mostly in — is totally brilliant. Like Bob Dylan (and I swear this is the last time I'll mention his name right now, despite the millions of things he and Brit have in common) Britney loves to cross-fade between a human voice (hey world, take a look at me, I'm a star, I'm somebody, pay attention) and a machine voice (hey world, fuck off, you can't reach me, I don't believe you, you're a liar).

The point isn't whether Britney is punching the buttons herself. (When is that ever the point with a pop star?) It's the romance going on between the voice and the machine. 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.

Nothing could express the Britney cosmology like a phone song, since phone songs are usually a place where singers distort their vocals to sound like they're on the line — my favorite might be ELO's "Telephone Line," Kraftwerk's "The Telephone Call," or maybe Missy Elliott, Timbaland and Nicole Wray's "Make It Hot." But it's ideal for Britney — especially when the phone song doubles as an "I'm out on the club jumping on strange boys" anthem. She's kind of biz-zaaay. She's kind of biz-zaaay. You can't hurt her, can't even touch her, because she's kind of biz-zaaay. Call all you want but she's not at home, and you're not gonna reach her telephone.

I'm definitely not disparaging Gaga's version — I couldn't live without it, especially not her Beyoncé video epic. But "Telephone" has so much Britney in it, it's no big surprise to learn that Gaga may have written the song for her. Since Britney is the perfect pop star, and songs about telephones are always excellent, it's a just plain mathematical fact that Britney's "Telephone" is a perfect pop song, and the world is an infinitely better place because it exists.

Bizarro note: despite all the advances in phone technology over the past 25 years, both versions of "Telephone" end with the same recorded message from the Replacements' 1984 punk rock classic "Answering Machine." That Britney — she is so punk.

The more I listen to the demo, the more inclined I am to agree with Rolling Stone.

The stripped down nature of the song, the lack of Beyonce, and the fact that the song clearly sounds like what it is - ie, a song written for Britney, just all adds up to greatness. Not that Gaga's version isn't great, it is. But there's a chasm between the songs she writes for herself and the songs she writes for others. Maybe because I'm a professional songwriter who's spent the better part of the last 12 months writing female electronic pop vocals for my band, I can hear that more.

Also, I COMPLETELY agree that "Blackout" is the most influentual pop album of the last 5 years. Ironically enough, the only thing that comes close is "The Fame Monster".

 

[_carmi]

Blackout is the most underrated Britney album. If Britney's personal life would have not went to hell, it would have be given the recognition it deserves.

Whoever passed on this song from Britney's camp is clearly an idiot. Britney would have totally rocked it. Probably better than Gaga. Btw Gaga might have a great personality and great musical talent, I don't find her particularly special pop-wise. And I cannot stand Alejandro. That song sucks.

 

[THEV1LL4N]

Sometimes casey, "sometimes". how could you forget, sometimes?