Track Review: Britney Spears & will.i.am, ‘Mind Your Business’

For the past decade, Britney Spears’ music releases have been understandably sporadic due to her former conservatorship and its subsequent dissolution. Last year, she made an admirable Top 40 comeback alongside Elton John with “Hold Me Closer,” but its follow-up, a mind-bogglingly terrible collaboration with will.i.am, is a disaster.

Built around synths that recall Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” “Mind Your Business” combines otherwise relatively sparse production with verses that truthfully don’t deserve to be acknowledged for a song that can only be enjoyed under very specific circumstances. This is the kind of song that you flail your arms around to while borderline blackout drunk at a gay club at three in the morning. It’s quite literally the only way and the only time anything about this song makes a lick of sense.

“Mind Your Business” starts to come together (just a bit) when the drop arrives, and the “Unholy”-esque horror-evoking choir of backing vocals gives it a bit of body, but the song is somehow simultaneously too busy and too flat for a pleasant listening experience. It’s a bad song, plain and simple. And that doesn’t come as too much of a surprise, given that will.i.am at his most prolific was one of the least interesting producers in pop music, but there’s not even any edge or cheekiness here to offset the musical incoherence of the arrangement. Lyrically, there’s not much going on either. There’s an attempt to critique the invasiveness of the fans and media alike (“Paparazzi shot me, I am the economy / Follow me, follow me, follow me, follow, follow me”), but the ideas are so half-baked that they don’t amount to anything by the time the hook returns.

Honestly, it’s in everyone’s best interest to mind our business and never acknowledge this song again.

Score: 20