Britney Spears

On her ninth album, Britney Spears sounds happy to have settled into her status as a grande dame of forward-thinking pop. Downtempo offerings like the gauzy come-on “Make Me…”, the reggae-inflected Tinashe duet “Slumber Party” and the cooing “Man On the Moon” put Spears’ sensual side on full display. On the wide-eyed, bouncy “Clumsy”, the swaggering “Do You Wanna Come Over?” and the vampy “What You Need”, she gets playful over booming beats. This expanded deluxe edition includes fresh remixes of “Mood Ring” and the brand-new single “Matches”, a glossy collaboration with the Backstreet Boys that feels like a long-time dream come true for early-aughts pop fanatics.

In the annals of radical art, there are “multiple use” names such as Luther Blissett, Monty Cantsin and Karen Eliot that anyone is invited to adopt as noms de plume. They’re meant to assert a communal conception of creativity, as opposed to the Western myth of individual genius, and to let imaginations explore taboo territories under cover of anonymity. The name Britney Spears may be ready to join that anti-pantheon…