Rolling Stone's 10 Favorite Dancing Musicians

Rock, hip-hop, R&B and pop all evolved out of music designed for dancing, and so it should come as no surprise that many of the greatest musicians of all time happen to be world class dancers. With this is mind, we asked our readers to name their favorite dancing musician of all time. Here are the results.

01. Michael Jackson

02. Britney Spears

03. James Brown

04. Mick Jagger

05. Lady Gaga (WHAT?)

06. Prince

07. Madonna

08. Janet Jackson

09. Nicole Scherzinger

10. Thom Yorke

Britney Spears took a whopping percentage of the votes in this poll, clearly establishing the pop starlet as your favorite female dancer. The music video for the 2001 hit "I'm A Slave 4 U" is prime Britney, with the singer deliberately subverting her still-girlish appearance with overt, unapologetic sexuality.

Source: RollingStones:com

Vote Britney Queen Of Pop

Rolling Stone magazine this week declared that Lady GaGa is the Queen of Pop, but do you agree? They were pretty strict in their criteria - a solo album in the last three years was a must - and used a sort-of-scientific ranking method to come to their conclusion.

Here at Digital Spy, we're much more in favour of the brutal simplicity of mob rule democracy. So, we've created our very own 11-name shortlist and invite you to vote in our exclusive poll. You can also tell us just why you've made your choice in the comments box below.

VOTE HERE

PS: BRITNEY WIN WITH 41,6%

LADY GAGA 30,7%

CHRISTINA AGUILERA 7,2%

MADONNA 5,4% 

BEYONCE 4,2%

RIHANNA 3,1%

Britney Spears

41.6%

Britney talks about new album with Rolling Stone

Do your kids like the new record? What have they said about it?


Yes. They definitely dance to it but its kind of funny because they are still confused …. It’s like, ‘who is this Britney Spears singer in contrast to mommy?’

How has your involvement in the record-making process changed over the years?

I have always been heavily involved in every album I have ever made. I’m very stubborn when it comes to recording and will only record songs I love, which is why it takes me a long time to make an album. I have to feel connected before I record and the song has to spark something inside me. Very few songs do that. I guess it’s a good process because I love all of my music. I know there are a lot of artists that hate songs they recorded. I don’t feel that way.

What was your idea for the overall sound of this album?

I wanted to make a fresh-sounding album for the clubs or something that you play in your car when you’re going out at night that gets you excited but I wanted it to sound different from everything else out right now. I also wanted to experiment with all the different types of music I love which is why you hear a mixture of pop, hip-hop and dance throughout the album. I also really wanted to play with my voice and change up my sound here and there which was really fun.

You hear traces of some real cutting-edge dance music on the album – for instance, the dubstep break on “Hold It Against Me.” How do you find new sounds?

I listen to a lot of different music from all over the world and I guess I just gravitate towards what sounds fresh and what makes me want to move. I really didn’t want to record anything on this album that could be mistaken for anyone else out there. I think my first two singles, “Hold It Against Me” and “Till The World Ends,” sound completely different from anything else and I think when my fans hear the rest of Femme Fatale they’ll see how fresh every song is.

Do you still go out to clubs? What kind of dance music do you like?

I don’t go out that much anymore but when I do, I definitely like to go out and dance. I’m a big vibe person when it comes to music so a song really has to make me feel a certain way in order for me to fall in love with it. I love hard pounding dance songs with really beautiful melodies over them. Those are my favorites.

What kind of music do you listen to at home?

I love the Peas but I also love Deadmau5. I guess I’m all over the place. Lately I have been listening to Robyn and Adele non-stop but I also love to find new artists that very few people know about. It’s one of my favorite things to do because it’s like being part of a secret. Friends and people around me are always showing me new artists that they love and that’s how I learned about Sabi and ended up working with her on “(Drop Dead) Beautiful.” I have always wanted to feature a new artist on one of my albums and she is really cool.

What led to your collaboration with willi.am? What was it like working with him?

The Peas make incredibly catchy, fun pop/dance records and I LOVE will.i.am’s style. I have always wanted to do a song with him and would love to work with him more in the future. He is so interesting.

Dr. Luke has become a big-name producer in his own right since your last album – is it different working with him now?

Not really. We have known each other for a really long time. Most people don’t know this but we actually worked together when I was recording “Blackout.” He was incredible back then and he has only gotten better over the years.

Dr. Luke said last fall that “I want [the sound] to get harder in some ways, and maybe a little more deep into electronic — grimier.” Did you have that same agenda for the album? Do you feel like you accomplished that?

When we first sat down to talk about Femme Fatale I knew I wanted to make a dance album that was ahead of everything else out there but unique to me which is why I was so picky with the recording process. I only wanted songs that I immediately connected to. I also wanted to make sure that this album was completely different from Circus or anything else I had ever recorded. I love Circus but I wanted something darker and edgier. I also wanted to make an album and didn’t want to just record a bunch of songs and put them together. I think Femme Fatale is really connected from start to finish.

What is it about Max Martin that makes you so comfortable collaborating with him? How much bigger of a role did he take on this album than he did for “Circus”?

Max played a huge role on this album and he has been there since the beginning so there is such a huge level of trust. He gets exactly what I am saying when I tell him what I want and don’t want musically. His melodies are incredible and he is always coming up with weird sounds, which I love. The whistle on “I Wanna Go” still gets me every time I hear it. Who would have thought of that? There is nobody I feel more comfortable collaborating with in the studio.

How would you characterize the studio relationship between Max and Dr. Luke?

They are two peas in a pod. It’s a total bromance

Rolling Stones review Femme Fatale

★★★★/5

Britney Spears is pop music’s stealth avant-gardist. For years, critics have dismissed her as a cipher with a wisp of a voice. But from the minute she burst on the scene — heralded by the keyboard power chords of “. . . Baby One More Time” — her music has steered bubblegum into weirder, woollier territory. “Toxic” was a mélange of Bollywood and spy-movie guitar; “Piece of Me” was an essay on 21st-century tabloid infamy crooned over 22nd-century club rhythms. Then there’s this year’s “Hold It Against Me,” which dissolves into a furious dubstep breakdown — easily the most assaultive beat on the Hot 100 right now.
Femme Fatale may be Britney’s best album; certainly it’s her strangest. Conceptually it’s straightforward: a party record packed with sex and sadness. Max Martin and Dr. Luke, the world’s two biggest hitmakers, are responsible for seven of 12 songs: big melodies and bigger Eurodisco thumps. But other producers go nuts, tossing the kitchen sink at Britney. The Bloodshy-helmed “How I Roll” is sputtering, oddly beautiful techno. In “Big Fat Bass,” Will.i.am turns Britney into a cyborg obsessed with low-end. (“The bass is getting bigger!” she exults.) On nearly every track, Britney’s voice is twisted, shredded, processed, roboticized. Maybe this is because she doesn’t have much of a voice; it’s certainly because she, more than almost any other pop diva, is simply game. Femme fatale? Not so much. But say this for Britney: She’s an adventuress.

Source: Rolling Stones Magazine

DR. LUKE REVEALS FEMME FATALE DETAILS

Britney Spears announced today that her new album, due March 15, is titled Femme Fatale – but the superstar singer and her Los Angeles producers are still choosing songs and determining the final direction of the overall sound. “It’s not done,” Dr. Luke, co-producing the album with longtime Britney collaborator Max Martin and Montreal dance-pop songwriter Billboard, tells Rolling Stone.

“We’re in the middle of it right now. It’s a little bit fluid right now. I can’t even say at this stage what songs for sure are making it and what songs aren’t. We’re working with a lot of producers and overseeing it with her A&R and record label and management and trying to make something cohesive.”
The album, of course, will contain “Hold It Against Me,” co-written by Dr. Luke, Martin and Bonnie McKee.Originally, Dr. Luke and Martin, the Swedish songwriter behind some of Spears’ biggest hits, including “…Baby One More Time,” planned to give the song to Katy Perry. “We might have played it for her, but it definitely wasn’t a Katy Perry record,” Dr. Luke says by phone from Conway Recording Studio in Los Angeles. “We had it for a while. I wanted to make sure it didn’t sound like everything else I’ve done. I brought it into Billboard, and he just killed it. It can be hard in the verse, and the bridge is super, super hard, but the chorus is super-pop. You can play that chorus acoustically on a guitar and it’s still going to sound great.”
Top 40 radio stations continue to spin “Hold It Against Me” in regular rotation. “It feels like a really obvious, easy-to-listen-to first single,” says John Ivey, program director for KIIS in LA, which played the song once an hour the first day it came out. “You hear all those little parts that are so Britney – ‘here’s the video-breakdown-dance part of the song.’ That’s what my listeners love about her.“
Although her 2008 album Circus sold fewer than 2 million copies, not a huge number given Spears’ history of blockbuster sales, retailers have high hopes for the March release. “[Circus] ended up doing well, but we were a little cautious about it — a little tense comeback issues were going to be relevant,” says Mark Hudson, music buyer for Trans World Entertainment, who predicts the new album could sell 500,000 copies in its first week. “But this time around, her stock is higher.”
Dr. Luke also noted that he and Martin, the executive producers, plan on working on several songs directly in addition to “Hold It Against Me.” He also confirmed Bloodshy (who co-produced Spears’ classic “Toxic”) and Benny Blanco (who worked on Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok” and Perry’s “California Gurls”) were among several big names who would make production appearances.So far, Spears has dropped by the LA studio two or three times to lay down her vocals. “Britney’s really fast,” Dr. Luke says. “She gets it done.”

Source: RollingStone.com