Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Popular Culture
Episode: Natasha Lasky, "Britney Spears's Blackout" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Description: Britney Spears barely survived 2007. She divorced her husband, lost custody of her kids, went to rehab, shaved her head and assaulted a paparazzo. In the midst of her public breakdown, she managed to record an album, Blackout. Critics thought it spelled the end for Britney Spears' career.But Blackout turned out to be one of the most influential albums of the aughts. It not only brought glitchy digital noise and dubstep into the Top 40, but also transformed Britney into a new kind of pop star, one who shrugged off mainstream ubiquity for the devotion of smaller groups of...