Over the years I have thoroughly enjoyed throwing together playlists for different occasions (making coffee, working out, weddings, seasons, etc.) and thought I'd share! Please let me know your thoughts, favourite mixes, as well as recommendations for future playlists. All feedback is welcome! Hope you enjoy them:
That Weekend Feeling
Skip to the good bit; weekend grooves to wave away any weekday blues.
Awesome Mix: Ultimate Edition (Mixtape)
A great hero, named Kevin Bacon, once taught an entire city full of people with sticks up their butts that, dancing, well, is the greatest thing there is. The legend of Footloose comes alive with Awesome Mix: Ultimate Edition - Songs from and inspired by the Guardians of the Galaxy series.
Morning Motivation: Steal Some Sunshine
Soak up the sun with energetic jams and breezy classics!
I'd Drink To That: Party Playlist
Mix it up with a party playlist to keep the night buzzing.
I'd Sing To That: Carpool Karaoke
Pack up and take those pipes on a roadtrip! The catchy. The memorable.
Just Jams 🎧
Nothing but jams to fill a pair of headphones or stadium.
Brendan's Listen Local
Funky & Thumpy! Some of my favourite energetic jams, classics, and BBQ party starters from our local Australian & New Zealand artists.
Friday Fire
It's Friday! Friends. Family. Fun.
Groovin' The Brew
Nothing but rockin' party grooves on tap.
Diverse Pop Sounds
It's pop, but not as you know it.
Break Thru
Ear Candy.
Sunday Sesh
Beers & bangers on a weekend!
Run To Paradise
Set up goals, and knock them down with an energetic running playlist.
Summer Daze
The heat is on with a playlist of crisp summer tunes.
Autumn Mix: Volume 1
A breezy & brilliant playlist for the ever-changing Autumn seasons.
Chilled Pop
Soft, chilled winter pop songs.
Warm Tunes
Warm songs of Spring, like a comforting embrace.
A Mid-Summer Night's Drink 🍻
Lord, what fun these mortals be!
Wind Down 🌚
When the night winds down, so does some great music.
90's Baby! 📼
It is the sound of the roller disco, BMX bike track and arcade!
The Hip Hip Hop
Only the hippest of the hip. My modern and classic hip hop favourites.
Indie Bops: It's ALT Good
Get your alternative bounce on.
Not Your Final Form: A Workout Playlist
All the other licks with the pumped up kicks to keep you going during a workout. My favourites and a few other choice tunes for pushing harder, faster, stronger.
Easy On The Ears
Easy, Easy, Easybeats.
Life Is Good ☀️
Today is gonna be a good day.
Dial M For Music
Deep, cathartic music.
JOY
Smile.
Vibe Hard
Get into the zone, and vibe-out to infectious tunes!
Rock & Roll Never Dies
Who says rock & roll is dead? Commercial radio? It's always been around; you've just got to roll with it and look harder. Get your kicks!
Brainfood
Introspective acoustic, calming strings, uplifting anthems, and a touch of nature. Food for the brain, and perfect background noise for studies.
Game Night 🎲
For every occasion... casino, tabletop, videogames; a soundtrack to a brilliant game night!
Sizzlers: BBQ Playlist 🍔
Fire up the burner and the anthems with a barbeque playlist hotter than the bright ball in the sky.
Kickstart My Heart: Classic Rock Radio
Rocking all over the world.
Rush Hour
Grinding Gears.
Riff Raff: Party Rock
Some rowdy rock to turn up the night.
RE : FRESH 🍹
SUPERDOPE. Piña colada's and Caribbean Rum.
The Driver
There's a voice in my head that drives my heel.
Country Road
Might as well cruise. Might as well banjo.
Born to be Wild
Life's an adventure; you can't be tamed.
Night Moves: Dancing In The Moonlight
Unwind with the moonbeams. Night drives & night lives.
Funk Right Off
Get Funk'd.
Rambling Roses 💐
Beauty and Love are as body and soul. Beauty is the mine, Love is the diamond.
Sweat. Reset.
Whatever it takes. 'Cause you love the adrenaline in your veins.
Power Pop: Marathon
Power pop to push and electrify a workout.
Cool Beans: Coffee Playlist
Recharge with some warm tunes.
Kitchen Crooners 🎀
Now we're cooking!
Now We're Cooking!
Tasty tunes for the Kitchen.
Pool Party
Dive in to great poolside swing.
Inspiration 💡 Takes Flight
Reach for the Sky!
Going Places
Always push forward.
First 💍
Songs for special days.
DisNeat - Taking The Mickey
Nothing but Disney favourites.
Road Trip: Spinning Wheels
Hear the call for adventure and hit the road.
Guilty Pleasures 🍨
You like the Grease soundtrack? Word.
Catchy AF POP
Pop that bops. Essentials and the catchiest of the catchy.
Acoustica
Stripped Back.
Playlist + Chill
Cool off with some chilled beats and sweet acoustic.
Making Waves
Unwind with breathy, breezy songs perfect for a walk on the beach.
The Playlist Of The Decade (New Years Eve)
We welcomed 2020 with the ultimate party playlist jam-packed with familiar throwbacks and modern favourites from the 2010's! Good times!
Rhythm Heaven
Step up and dance.
Sax on the Beach 🎷
Gratuitous? Nah! An instrument to elevate a song from good to great!
BedroX 🔥
Sparks.
Pump It Up: The Playlist of Champions 🏆
Winner winner, chicken dinner.
Retro Rewind
Twist & shout to killer Jukebox Classics.
Classic Se7ens
Nothing but 70's favourites.
Great Eight's
Nothing but 80's Favourites.
Noughty & Nice
Nothing but great 00's Throwbacks.
The Best Playlist Never Heard
It's unheard of!
Best Songs You Might Have Missed
Potentially slipped under the radar.
Songs for Soundtracks 🎬
Royale with cheese.
The Grand European Playlist
About to take off!
EPIC 🗡
Fortune & Glory!
SUPERHOT VR : ROCK
The champ is coming.
SUPERHOT VR : HIP-HOP
Kings never die.
SUPERHOT VR : ACTION
John Wick Schtick.
Cowboy Bebop : Spike Spiegel
Spike Spiegel is an ex-Syndicate goon and a bounty hunter aboard the Bebop. He is proficient in martial arts, zipcraft flying, and gunfights, but he also has comical and aloof sides of his personality. If there's three things he can't stand, it's kids, pets, and women with attitudes.
Cowboy Bebop : Faye Valentine
Faye Valentine is a coma survivor of over 50 years and she is trying to regain her memory. She got into a lot of debt upon entering this futuristic world, and she had to resort to a life of crime and hustling to survive... that is, until she decided to live on the Bebop and become a bounty hunter.
Cowboy Bebop : Jet Black
Jet Black is an ex-ISSP Special Forces Officer and the Captain of the Bebop. He is a bounty hunter and is called the "Black Dog" because once he sinks his teeth in he never lets go. Jet enjoys American Jazz music, taking care of Bonsai trees, and has a knack for investigative work.
Cowboy Bebop : Radical Edward
Edward is a net diver from Earth. Edward is a child prodigy for hacking and has an aptitude for anything mechanical, even though Edward has some eccentricities in other parts of her personality. For instance, Edward speaks in third person and sometimes behaves like a wild animal.
At The Movies 🎟
Lights, camera, playlist.
James Bond Classics 🍸
A martini, shaken, not stirred.
The Word Is Bond 🍸
The world is not enough; but this playlist comes pretty close.
Live Love LIVE
Blistering live performances.
Future Nostalgia
Neo-swing, retro swagger; it's future nostalgia.
B-Side Yourself
Hidden Gems, Deep Cuts & Rarities.
Punk'd
You're Gonna Go Far, Kid.
Building Houses: Hit By Hit
Baby let's play house.
Far ALT
A playlist rocking that weird shit.
Stay Home: The Safety Dance
Stay safe out there.
Day Tripper
A playlist for a long drive - a day trip.
In Tents
Music For Camping.
Roots
Bluesy classics to strut to.
All That Jazz
Get jazzy on it.
Focus Features
Take a breather.
Australiana
Paradise.
Drive Time
Coast to coast. Songs for a spin.
Stone Cold Classicals
It's classically classic.
Hall of Fame 💎
Songs for the career climbers and L.A. dreamers. Glitz & glam; all that jazz.
This is Halloween
Everybody Scream!
It's Beginning to Sound A Lot Like Christmas!
Christmas Classics.
Just For Laughs 🎭
What a Joker!
Two Nights In Tao🎙
Karaoke? There's a first time for everything.
GAME
Take control.
Game On : Borderlands Psycho-delic
CHOO CHOO THE PAIN TRAIN'S COMIN'
Red Dead Redemption II
Songs For Bloody Duels, Whiskey-Fueled Gambles, and Rolling Desert Plains.
Energy Shot
Keep animated with an energetic dose of catchy music!
Party Fillers
A background mix for any event.
The Essential AC/DC
AC/DC are an Australian rock band formed in Sydney in 1973 by Scottish-born brothers Malcolm and Angus Young. Although their music has been variously described as hard rock, blues rock, and heavy metal, the band themselves call it simply "rock and roll"
The Essential One Republic
OneRepublic is an American pop rock band formed in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 2002. It consists of lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Ryan Tedder, guitarist Zach Filkins, guitarist Drew Brown, bassist and cellist Brent Kutzle, drummer Eddie Fisher and keyboardist Brian Willett.
The Essential Shinedown
Shinedown is an American rock band from Jacksonville, Florida, formed by singer Brent Smith in 2001. Shinedown has sold more than ten million records worldwide, and has had the most number one singles on the Billboard Mainstream Rock charts out of any band, with 16.
The Essential Dua Lipa
Dua Lipa is an English singer and songwriter. After working as a model, she signed with Warner Music Group in 2015 and released her self-titled debut album in 2017. The success of the singles helped her self-titled album become one of the most-streamed albums on Spotify.
The Essential Preatures
The Preatures are an Australian band from Sydney. The band was formed in 2010 and features Isabella 'Izzi' Manfredi on vocals/keyboards, Jack Moffitt (guitar), Thomas Champion (bass) and Luke Davison (drums). The band won the Vanda & Young Songwriting Competition with their song Is This How You Feel.
The Essential Maroon 5
Maroon 5 is an American pop rock band from Los Angeles, California. It currently consists of lead vocalist Adam Levine, keyboardist and rhythm guitarist Jesse Carmichael, lead guitarist James Valentine, drummer Matt Flynn, keyboardist PJ Morton and multi-instrumentalist Sam Farrar.
The Essential INXS
INXS were an Australian rock band, formed in 1977 in Sydney. INXS was fronted by Hutchence, whose magnetic stage presence made him the focal point of the band. Initially known for their new wave/pop style, the band later developed a harder pub rock style that included funk and dance elements.
The Essential Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. The group, whose best-known line-up comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, are regarded as the most influential band of all time. The Beatles are the best-selling music act of all time.
The Essential Volbeat
Volbeat are a Danish rock band formed in Copenhagen in 2001. They play a fusion of rock and roll, heavy metal and rockabilly. Their current line-up consists of vocalist and guitarist Michael Poulsen, guitarist Rob Caggiano, drummer Jon Larsen and bassist Kaspar Boye Larsen.
The Essential Chromeo
Chromeo is a Canadian electro-funk duo from Montreal, formed in 2002 by musicians David "Dave 1" Macklovitch and Patrick "P-Thugg" Gemayel. Their sound draws from blue-eyed soul, dance music, rock, synth-pop, disco and funk. As of 2018, the band has released five studio albums.
The Essential Queen
Queen are a British rock band formed in London in 1970. Their classic line-up was Freddie Mercury (lead vocals, piano), Brian May (guitar, vocals), Roger Taylor (drums, vocals) and John Deacon (bass). With estimated record sales ranging from 170 million to 300 million, they are one of the biggest.
The Essential Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, and dancer. Dubbed the "King of Pop", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century.
The Essential Brian Setzer
Brian Robert Setzer (born April 10, 1959) is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He found widespread success in the early 1980s with the 1950s-style rockabilly group Stray Cats, and revitalized his career in the early 1990s with his swing revival band, the Brian Setzer Orchestra.
The Essential Florida Georgia Line
Florida Georgia Line are an American country music duo consisting of vocalists Tyler Hubbard and Brian Kelley. Their 2012 debut single "Cruise" broke two major sales records: it was downloaded over seven million times, making it the first country song ever to receive the Diamond certification.
The Essential KISS
Kiss is an American rock band formed in New York City in January 1973 by Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Peter Criss, and Ace Frehley. Well known for its members' face paint and stage outfits, the group rose to prominence in the mid-to-late 1970s with its elaborate live performances.
The Essential Sheppard
Sheppard is an Australian indie pop band from Brisbane, formed in 2009. At the 2014 ARIA's ceremony, they were nominated for Album of the Year, Best Group, Best Independent Release, Best Pop Release, Song of the Year, Producer of the Year, and Best Video.
The Essential Matchbox 20
Matchbox Twenty is an American rock band, formed in Orlando, Florida, in 1995. The group currently consists of Rob Thomas (lead vocals, guitar, keyboards), Brian Yale (bass guitar), Paul Doucette (drums, rhythm guitar, backing vocals), and Kyle Cook (lead guitar, vocals).
The Essential Coldplay
Coldplay are a British rock band that were formed in London in 1996 consisting of vocalist and pianist Chris Martin, guitarist Jonny Buckland, bassist Guy Berryman, and drummer Will Champion. Coldplay have sold more than 100 million records worldwide, making them one of the world's best-selling.
The Essential Daughtry
Daughtry is an American rock band formed and fronted by namesake Chris Daughtry, who was a finalist on the fifth season of American Idol. Their self-titled debut album was released in November 2006 and reached number one on the Billboard 200. To date, Daughtry has sold over 9 million albums.
The Essential Black Eyed Peas
The Black Eyed Peas are an American musical group, consisting of rappers will.i.am*, apl.de.ap, Taboo, J. Rey Soul and singer Fergie. Originally an alternative hip hop group, they subsequently refashioned themselves as a more marketable pop-rap act and have become best-selling artists.*

2 Parts here, second is down below. And you probably wont believe it or you already know about it and this proves it.
How TikTok is supporting our community through COVID-19
Community Guidelines
Introduction Violent extremism Hateful behavior Illegal activities and regulated goods Violent and graphic content Suicide, self-harm, and dangerous acts Harassment and bullying Adult nudity and sexual activities Minor safety Integrity and authenticity Platform security
Introduction
Last updated, December 2020
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Part 2, they send you back to the TikTokers page and it goes around and around. They wont do anything unless it will get them in trouble, if they can get in trouble for it then they will step in. But only then.
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Hey. A friend of mine told me about this subreddit, and that it’s a good place to talk about players and GMs doing horrible things. I’ve been GMing for half a decade now, and I mostly run D&D, Pathfinder, and World of Darkness. Let me tell you about the first game I ever ran, and how one guy came very close to making me swear off tabletop gaming for good.
It’s a long story and I've never posted a thread on Reddit before, so I apologize in advance if this seems like a wall of text. It took me a long time before I realized how much abuse I suffered running this game, and I’m hoping this will give me a little closure.
Fair Warning: This story covers sexual violence, torture, and bullying.
It all began when I was first getting into RPGs, regularly visiting the Board Game club at my university and joining in a few games of 3.5 and Pathfinder. I was young and very excited to get into tabletop gaming; I loved acting and role-playing, and the fantasy genre ignited my wild, impressionable imagination in ways nothing else could. I was playing a few games here and there at the time, and while I was having fun I was also doing a little research into the Adventure Path campaigns that Paizo was pushing out. It wasn’t enough for me to be a player... I wanted to be a GM.
I eventually chose the one that had Drow in it, because I thought the Drow were cool and the story had some really fun moments in it (A boss fight with meteors raining down around you? Hell yeah!). One day I heard that someone at the club was finishing up their Living Greyhawk game, and an empty slot for a fortnightly game was made available. Eagerly I shot up my hand and took the slot, setting up a start date for anyone who was interested in playing. A few of the club’s members cited interest and agreed to join up. But one of them (and the term has never been more appropriate) was That Guy.
For the sake of keeping anonymity intact, I will call this guy Bruce. Bruce had been a member of the club for some time now, and was one of the most extroverted members there. He was quick to start a conversation with you, and was very good at getting shy people out of their shells. He was also the first person I met who knew about Vampire: The Masquerade beyond Bloodlines, and he dazzled me with his story about how his character survived Gehenna. So naturally, being young and naïve, I was quickly impressed. But behind that charismatic illusion was a darker side to him that didn’t take long to reveal itself.
It started with everyone presenting their characters. Bruce had made a Tiefling, and asked if he could have his alignment set to Lawful Evil. Preferring the party’s alignment to lean towards good, I expressed my hesitation. Bruce frowned and said I was being unfair, complaining that he really wanted to play an evil character after such a long time. Turning to a friend (who I’ll call Todd) for support, Bruce asked him how many years it had been since he was ever allowed to play an evil character. I can’t recall the exact number he got, but I recall feeling guilty enough to cave in. He thanked me, and handed his character sheet over to be examined.
The game began simply enough: I described the glitz and glamour of a casino, and pointed out the various games of chance that were available (the book actually had rules for how to play them, which I thought were really cool). Todd eagerly went to the poker table, and the rest of the party spread out to explore and indulge themselves. Bruce’s character was last to arrive, and began looking around for any pockets to pick. He succeeded on a perception check, and I pointed up to the catwalk above the game floor, along with the guards patrolling above in search of cheats and thieves. I then asked for his next move.
“I leave and never come back.”
I froze in place, blinking before I asked a simple “what”. He calmly repeated himself, then pulled up his laptop and headphones and zoned out of the session. Naïve as I was, I was terrified that I did something wrong. Why else would he lose interest in playing the game, other than I was being a bad GM? I ended up recovering from the shock and moved on by starting the first encounter, but the guilt never left my mind.
I was eventually able to convince him to get back into the game by pointing out the fighting inside the Casino. The encounter was eventually over, and the casino’s owner came downstairs to thank the party for stopping the robbers from looting his business. When he offered to hire them as employees, everyone agreed when they heard they’d get a rent-free roof over their heads. Bruce also agreed... then presented a sheet of paper for the owner to sign. It was a contract, legally binding the owner to make Bruce the co-owner of the Casino. He weaved a long, convincing story about how he had a number of ideas to renovate the Casino and add dancers and an inn to the building, increasing its revenue. Not wanting to upset him any further, I had the character agree to the terms.
After the session, Bruce took me aside after I asked him if I did anything wrong. Still calm and friendly, he explained that he wanted me to get the most out of these sessions as I could, learning and adapting to changes, and growing as a GM. What he did then was a “test” to see if I could be a good GM, and promised me that he would continue giving me a difficult time to help me improve. Impressionable as I was back then, and desperate not to upset any of my players, I accepted his reasoning. He grinned, patted me on the shoulder, and told me he looked forward to next time.
After a couple of sessions, it became clear he was the new owner of the Casino; having muscled the original owner out of the position, and eventually killing him when the book had him betray the party. Shortly after, the party finally encountered their first Drow. Bruce brought up the fact that his character grew up hearing horror stories about the Drow, and frantically chased after her. The fight was pretty cool, and the Drow was pretty close to killing off one of the other characters. Bruce had the final blow, but instead asked if he could switch to his sap and deliver some non-con damage. Not knowing what I was in for, I allowed it.
With the Drow unconscious, he threw her over his shoulder and carried her back to the Casino. Heading into the owner’s bedroom, he ordered the rest of the party to stay outside before locking the door behind him. Tying her down to the bed, he woke her up and told her he was going to make her his sex slave. As the Drow I objected, and suddenly he pushed his hand into her mouth, grabbed her tongue, and cut it off with a knife. He smiled, telling me he was going to break her before he put her to work. He then described how he began to cut her, just enough to make her feel the pain, before tearing her clothes off and spreading her legs.
“And I spend the entire night with her.” He finished, sitting back in satisfaction.
I still ask myself how I, barely through my early twenties, starting this game with the purist of intentions, was able to cope with that. Or why I didn’t stop the game then and there, and asked Bruce not to bring that shit into it. If someone tried to pull this on me now, I would have told them to leave my table and apologize to anyone they would have offended. But back then, I didn’t have any friends outside of High School, and I so desperately wanted to be considered a good GM in front of my peers. And, of course, I was reluctantly believing his bullshit about how giving me a hard time would somehow make me a better GM. But even then, I realized what kind of person I had brought into my game. What I didn’t realize was how much power he had over me.
Next session, he came in with plans to add a brothel to the casino, using the earnings to buy out the building next to it. He had Todd heal the Drow every day to full HP before he started raping and torturing her again. By this time, we were between books and I was prepping for the second part of the campaign. I tried setting up some side-quests to keep the party active, but Bruce refused to tag along. Instead, he presented me with a list of mercenaries his character had hired to replace him should this ever happen. All so he could have his character focus on building his business, hire his prostitutes, design their outfits, and of course continue raping and torturing the Drow (or as he referred to her: his “Star Attraction”).
During one session, however, Bruce was absent. Almost immediately, the mood shifted and I was starting to have fun again. The game was going how I hoped it would from the very beginning. One of the players, a newcomer, was rather curious what Bruce was hiding in his bedroom. Succeeding on a lockpick check, he got inside and saw the Drow. Seeing how much pain she was in, he mercifully slit her throat and closed the door. A moment of relief swept over me, hoping this might discourage Bruce from doing anything like this again.
It ended up making things worse. Much, much worse.
When Bruce heard the news, he was outraged. Declaring PvP, he blindsided the other player’s character with a sneak attack before mutilating the corpse in revenge (he didn’t give the other player a chance to react). Turning his attention towards me, he accused me of going behind his back to undermine him, before demanding that I retcon the whole thing. I apologized and did what he asked, continuing the game as he went silent. But after twenty minutes, he got up from his chair and left the room. I got a text from him a few hours later, declaring that he was leaving the game and I had failed his test.
Ignorant of his manipulative tactics, I panicked a little. It was at this point, I was already becoming a little paranoid over him. I was convinced Bruce was going to go on /tg/ and warn everyone in our area to steer clear of me. When we met up at the club, I did my best to get back on his good side. I distinctly remember letting him berate me freely as we stood in the parking lot, comparing me to the worst GMs he had ever been with (whose crimes I later found out were just kicking him out for being inactive in every session). After letting him dress me down for a few more minutes, he finally agreed to come back into my game. But on one condition:
“Let me be a half-demon.”
Beaten down and riddled with false guilt, I agreed to the terms. Next session Bruce returned to our table, bragging about his character’s new wings and tail. He then looked at me with a smug grin and pointed out that the latter gave him two attacks in one turn. He waited for me to object, and when I nodded and mumbled that I would allow it, he giggled and nestled into his chair.
From that point on, the sessions became an unpleasant chore. Every encounter he would gleefully mock and ridicule my lack of tactical experience. He began subverting the setting without my permission, gloating how he turned the little pirate town the party was living in into the Fashion Capital of Varisia, and how everyone in the city loved and adored him. When we encountered Drow, he was already making plans on what kind of position they would hold as his sex slaves. One Drow he threw a net over before he started singing and miming himself dancing towards her. At one point, he bought a Helmet of Opposite Alignment and started using it to brainwash them (I know I know, that item doesn’t work that way) into giving him their undying loyalty and being grateful to him. And when he noticed I started throwing less and less female Drow at them, he declared his character was bisexual and ordered the party to capture one of the male Drow archers they were fighting. “The one with the tight, supple ass.”
At this point, I would like to make note that around this time I was slowly coming to terms with my own bisexuality. That sentence had me going back into the closet with a padlock out of disgust.
Bruce also found ways to keep me in line too. He would chastise me if I came in late or did anything “rude”. When I tried standing up for myself, he slammed his hand on the table in front of me and pointed at my face, warning me not to fuck with him. During one session, he noticed I was getting quiet as I scrolled through the PDFs and kicked my chair. “Hurry the fuck up, GM,” he said “I’m getting bored.” And one time, when he noticed I answered one of his questions with an irritated tone, he started screaming at me.
He even admitted he would derail the entire campaign if it meant he could stay in his city (yeah, HIS city) hoarding as much gold and power as possible. He was willing to sabotage the entire campaign just so he could put the game’s focus on his character. I tried asking on the Paizo forums how to handle this, which had a lot of people asking questions on how the hell one player had so much power in the first place. The next day, Bruce made an implication that he saw my post. I never went back to those forums again.
It came to a merciful end when Todd, having a convenient attack of conscience, finally couldn’t take it anymore and began arguing with him. Bruce, probably in an attempt to guilt Todd into backing down, declared he was leaving the game again. Both left without even speaking to me. The party sorcerer suggested that maybe he could run something for a while, and after two years of keeping this game together I welcomed the departure.
When I first got into GMing, I was excited and optimistic; convinced I would have so much fun running this game, and that it would all lead to me making my own homebrew fantasy world. At the end of this game, I was a tired and broken mess. I became such an angry, irritated man through it all, taking my frustration out on other people and snapping at the smallest of problems. I even began to hate tabletop gaming in general, and my attendance at the club dropped severely if only because Bruce was there, waiting for opportunities to mock me for not having a gaming PC or other things I couldn’t afford. It’s fair to say that if I had not been strong enough to give it a second chance, I would have not only have given up on ever playing RPGs again but outright condemn everyone in the hobby as absolute scum.
Why? Because one time, when I finally had the courage to stand up against Bruce and told him I didn’t like him adding rape and torture into my game, he replied with this:
“Yeah, well, you’re gonna meet a lot of players who are like me, so you should just get fucking used to it.”
Those words stuck with me ever since. If every other player was just like Bruce, than why bother?
A year after the game ended, I started getting back into therapy and even considered taking medication. It was also around the same time my grandfather died, and I realized I had strayed from the virtues I admired him for: kindness, honesty, bravery, and temperance. So I changed my pace; I found a new line of work, I started going back to gym, I started up a Tumblr blog (while it lasted), and I reconnected with the friends I had lost. I even went back to the club, when one of my friends told me Bruce stopped attending, and suggested I GM a game for a few newbies. I started running Curse of the Crimson Throne, and in the span of a few weeks I found the innocent magic of tabletop gaming again. I survived.
As of this year, I’m currently running 5e D&D with my own homebrew setting, just like my younger self always dreamed of doing. I get told that I’m a pretty good GM from a lot of friends and acquaintances, and the newbies I ran Crimson Throne for have credited me for inspiring them to run games of their own!
As for Bruce himself? I’ve cut most if not all of my ties with him. We still have mutual friends, and I get most of my news about him from them. He’s apparently gotten worse since we parted ways, and that it’s not uncommon to hear him complain about Muslims, Jews, the Chinese, and Indians; the latter he allegedly once referred to as “the filthiest of all the races”. He still prays on new GMs when he can, only they had the lick of sense to kick him out before he gets his claws in, thanks to word-of-mouth. Needless to say, those mutual friends are also trying to cut ties with him.
It took me so long to come to terms with the abuse he inflicted on me, and I’ve always wondered why he would do all of that just for personal gain in a fictional world. A few friends suggest that he might have Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and looking back I think they might be right. It explains why he acted the way he did with me. But he’s spiraling down into a pit of his own despair, and I couldn’t be happier for it.
I dunno why I decided on writing this now... not because I should have sent this story out sooner, but more for the lingering fear of being judged. But if you took the time to read it all, thank you so much.
TL;DR: Naive First-time GM runs a game, and local narcissist joins in. Narcissist adds gratuitous rape and torture into the story, and bullies the GM into giving him what he wants. Naive GM becomes bitter and miserable, and almost quits.

In November of 2019, after a hell week in Pharmacy school (5 quizzes and an exam), along with my car breaking down in the middle of that week, it was safe to say I was overly stressed. During everything, though, I felt fine and was handling things well. For months I had been complaining of severe neck pain and long episodes of brain fog that I blamed on being too much nicotine from the new Juul I was using from quitting smoking months prior. I reduced the nicotine percentage and was slightly better. The Friday of that hell week though, unbeknownst to me would be the turning point I never knew was coming. Thursday, November 7th, I laid down in bed and started the hour-long process of going to bed for me, as it usually takes me that long, or longer, to fall asleep. Normal thoughts of the day raced through my head light a tornado like they always do. But, my brain somehow picked out this random thought and decided to focus on it. “What would it feel like to die?” more specifically, “Hey, think about the nothing-ness that IS death afterwards”. Now I am actually religious, so this didn’t compute with me. I felt a little guilty that I actually wondered what it would be like if there was just nothing-ness after I died. Like……eternal nothing-ness. I thought to myself “will I ever be conscious again?” or things like “what else is there after we die”. All of these thoughts I have thought of before and simply breezed by them and have never once stuck to them this long. However, something grabbed a hold of me that night and didn’t let go for a while. As I lay there, I could feel the physical sensations of fear streaking throughout my body. It was almost hot and cold sensations at the same time. They were in my chest and my arms and flowed through my legs…….then it stopped. I was able to brush everything off and finally fall asleep. Then….. the next day started my journey with the worst depressive episode I’ve ever been through in my life. Friday, November 8th, 2019, I woke up in time for school as I normally do at 6:00am, got shower and got dressed and headed out the door. I noticed I felt more tired and foggy head than normal and thought it was just because I was tired. I powered through and got to school. But something was still off. I was….. more inside myself. I felt so….. disconnected from everyone. My friends weren’t my friends. The people I sat with at my table at school felt more like objects. I was really taken back by this feeling and felt a general since of discomfort the whole day. As I am an avid nap taker, I thought I might as well and leave school a little early and go home to rest and nap these feelings away. Figuring I would wake up refreshed and feeling much better, I let myself sleep as long as I wanted to since it was Friday and I had no obligations that pressing weighing down on me yet. As I awoke from the nap, I immediately had a heavier and quicker breath. I was so confused as to why this was happening. Then the thoughts of death came back. Was I having an existential crisis? Then I felt the fear. Pure, raw, and screeching fear associated with the nothing-ness that was death. I could feel the cold and hot sensations again. And this time, it came with the intense tremors. I started to feel like I was going crazy. Like, “Hey, I guess pharmacy school has finally broke me. Here we go.” I got extremely nauseous and started to dry heave until I eventually threw up what little was in my system. Then, for a little while it calmed down enough to somewhat function. My fiancée had gotten home and was wondering why I was home so early. I told him that I wasn’t feeling great and came home early. I told him I was feeling sad, but nothing else. He tried to generally cheer me up but nothing helped. Which worried me even more. Why was I not feeling happy? Actually if I think about it, I cant feel happy at all! I don’t want to do anything but lay on the couch. This weekend I needed to study for a major exam and I wanted to vomit at the thought of sitting down and studying. I physically shook when trying to pull out my laptop and study. I was getting increasingly dizzy and that started to worry me even more. I thought for sure I was going crazy. Surely thoughts of death was the first sign and that I was going downhill fast. I decided to just relax that Saturday and just wait things out. I ended up breaking down that day while watching a video titled “How to get over an Existential crisis”. As the guy talked about the step of getting over the fear of death, I thought about death more, and this consumed my body with panic and that deep feeling of emptiness. As I broke down, I asked my fiancée for help, finally. He was very shocked and taken back by how emotional I was. He thought I just needed to just cry it out and offered his shoulder to cry on. However, as I cried in his arms, (mind you, this was the hardest and deepest Ive ever cried before) I could tell I was headed for something bad if I didn’t seek help. But, I chose, again, to sit on the couch, relax, and take it easy and see how I felt later. As long as I didn’t move from my comfortable position on the couch underneath my weighted blanket, I was okay. However, when I would stand up to go to the bathroom, my mind would race and my legs and hands would start to shake and my chest felt like it was imploding in on itself and the feelings of utter terror felt like they were physically dragging me down. It felt like I was walking through thick mud and was trapped. Sunday came and went with me generally looking up videos on “ panic disorder”, “existential crisis”, and “midlife crisis”, and even “how to recover from burnout”. I stumbled across this video of an Irish woman who was a licensed therapist that worked with people suffering with panic attacks and anxiety. She demonstrated some techniques on how to reduce the fear behind the panic by hyperventilating and bringing on the symptoms of panic in order to tell yourself that these feelings would not harm me. After doing the exercise once I was in immediate temporary relief from the symptoms. I cried when I felt them subside, suddenly I found something that would help. And I clung to it like my life depended on it. I did it over and over and over and over that evening. It helped for a while. But then it was time to go to sleep again, and that brought on the panic of having to endure the next morning. As expected I woke up Monday morning realizing I was not going to be able to go to school because of how I was feeling. When I woke up that Monday morning, I felt the worst feeling of dread I have ever experienced in my life. I didn’t want to exist anymore, I felt like I could NOT go on. My knees buckled under the weight of my hopelessness and I broke down crying again. This time even harder and longer. My fiancée and I decided that I would be going to the doctor that day. He asked me if I could go by myself so that he could go to school since he is in his second year of medical school and was super stressed about his work load. I said yes, realizing all I needed to do was talk to someone and they would give me some medicine and then I would be fine. I walked in to the examination room and talked to a young black lady who was the nurse about my experience over the last couple of days. I told her about my thoughts of death, and how permanent that felt to me and my fear around that. Then I told her I had been having symptoms of panic and that I was just really scared and had no idea what to do now because I was in pharmacy school and didn’t know how to handle this and school. She so supportive and reassuring, telling me she had been there before as she has bipolar disorder. I cried again. This lady I just met was being so nice to me and reassuring me I was not alone. Then, she told me to hang tight and that she would be right back. Then another nurse comes and tells me that the are making me go to the emergency room. I was slightly confused as I never once told the nurse that I was having suicidal thoughts. She told me that when depressed patients bring up the ideas of death, that they are at risk for suicidial ideation and that I need to make sure I go the emergency room immediately. I walked out of the office so confused on why they wouldn’t help me, but I called my fiancée and told him what was going on. He said he only had a short time before his class was ending and that he would go with me after his class was over. I went home and change and waited, very anxiously, for him to get done. When we got to the ER, I was immediately whisked back by a nurse who saw me in the waiting room. While we were walking back to my room, she leaned over and whispered “So……… thoughts of suicide?”. I was immediately angry at the nurse at the doctors’ office who had been so nice. She straight up told the nurse at the hospital I was having thoughts of suicide! Hello? I’m afraid of death, I don’t want to kill myself. I brushed it off as I was finally getting the help I thought I needed. However, I was slightly wrong. I didn’t realize this until way later. As soon as I stretched out in my hospital bed, 3 people came in to assess me. All while my head was spinning, I had to answer so many question about my health and how long had this been going on. I bet I had to recount the entire thing about 5 times. But, finally my doctor came in and reassured me that I had had my first run in with extreme anxiety with panic symptoms. He assured me that it was manageable and gave me a hydroxyzine and a Xanax to calm me down enough to go home and get some rest. I was discharged feeling GREAT. That Xanax work really quick and soon enough I was angry at myself for letting my mind go that far into despair. I am a fairly rational person, and am usually the one people go to for advice on deeper topics like self-esteem and confidence. But, I found myself to be a hypocrite. Why was this happening to me? Was I scared of school? Was I just legit going crazy? I had no idea what was going on and how I was going to handle this on top of going to school? I was terrified that school had broken me at this point, and the thought of going back scared me so much that I was willing to take a leave of absence based on medical issues. I wanted to run away from school as fast as possible. The stress of all of it had left me shattered on the floor. The next morning I went back to the doctor to clarify that I was not at all suicidal and wanted to talk to the doctor about the anxiety I had been feeling lately. I talked to the doctor and we both decided that it would be best if I started taking Lexapro 10mg once a day for the depression, and Wellbutrin XL 150mg once a day for my anxiety. I decided I HAD to go back to classes on Wednesday because there were quizzes and tests I had to do so that I wouldn’t get left behind. While sitting in class, I was looking around me at the people in my class and could not feel the connection with anyone. I looked at my friends across the room at their assigned tables and felt I had never met them before. I was fear stricken the entire day. I was so afraid of what I was feeling, I shut down. As I went to lab, I could feel the panic streaking through again. In a flash, I could feel buzzes fly across my chest. I could physically here the buzzing in my ears and it was like I could only see the things that were in my direct line of sight. On the outside, I was just a little jumpy and sweaty. On the inside, however, I was fully experiencing World War III inside my own body. I stuck it out the whole day and call my fiancée trying to tell him I couldn’t do this. I explained to him that I was scared of what school was doing to my mental health and that I could take a leave of absence on the basis that my mental health was declining fast. He immediately responded with panic. We are both students living on our own and have no means of income instead of our loans we use to get by. How were we going to live with just one persons’ income? How was it fair to him that he pull all of the weight? How was he going to look after me, go to medical school, and provide the money necessary to live? I resisted and threw out excuses but deep down I knew he was right. But, in my head at the time, I really thought I was going crazy. And how in the hell was I suppose to continue school while Im this sick? So he suggested that I go to the doctor again and get some advice on what to do rather than to quit school. This started my deep dive in to learning about everything I could to help me along day to day in order to get better. I went to school on Thursday fulling expecting panic attacks all day. And I was right. I went to lab again with a full panic episode and took breaks as often as I could to go to the bathroom and breath for a little while. This didn’t really help but it got me away from the staring eyes of my classmates. After school I went back to my apartment. My fiancée had not gotten back from school yet as I had left early because I didn’t have anything else pressing that day. As I sat on the couch, I stared at the wall trying to understand what was happening. I was still in fear from the car ride home where it felt like the car I was driving was going to collapse in on me. As I stared off, I started getting more and more fearful of what was happening. Thousands of questions were going through my mind about what was happening. What I really going crazy? Could I be in the process of dying? Was I having a heart attack? Had this triggered a psychotic break? Was I suppose to be expecting to hear voices now or see snakes in the room with me? Was I becoming increasingly paranoid of other peoples’ intentions toward me? All of these question in my head hit me like a ton of bricks several time over. So much so that I found myself on the floor of the bathroom dry heaving. I remember thinking, “I HAVE to do something about this. This can’t be right. I have to call someone.”. The only person that came to mind to call was my mom. She had always known how to calm me down sometimes in difficult situations. I quickly and with intense tremors, called my mother. I felt so much relief when I heard her voice on the other end. “Hello?” “What’s wrong?” “Are you okay?”. I wanted to explain so much. I wanted to tell her I was scared. I wanted to tell her everything that had happened in that very moment. But all I could get out was, “I need help.” I remember saying this while staring at my dark chestnut bathroom sink cabinet while on the floor in a fetal position. I had used my shirt as a pillow to keep my self comfortable. But I didn’t feel like I deserved it. My mom tried to gather as much information as she could but all I could say for about 3 minutes of the phone call was “I need help”. I know this scared her but I was at my lowest I’ve ever been. It was urgent. It was life threaten (or so it felt). I then told her, “just talk”. As she talked to me I felt more and more relief. I finally got up off of the floor and sat on the couch and just spilled my guts to her. I was so afraid of what she would think, but I didn’t care. I needed to tell someone. She was really sweet about everything as I cried, trying to apologize that I couldn’t handle my shit. She was in Oregon for my dads work and said she would get on the next flight and come help me. This alone brought me a little more relief. Friday was not better, in fact it was exactly the same. Panic, anxiety, trapped feelings, disconnection, no appetite. By this point all I wanted to do was lay on the couch and not move for the rest of my life. I cried again that night and call my mother again. She reminded me she would be there with me the next week on that Saturday. I tried to pull it together and find out somethings that maybe would help. I researched until I could find some similarities to what I was going through. The first thing I came across was “panic disorder”. I was terrified. I would have to live with these symptoms for the rest of my life? No…. I couldn’t…… I couldn’t live like this everyday. I refused to believe it. What would help patients with panic disorder? Exercise. That was what I was going to do to help. I walked around our entire apartment complex for 30 mins a day to see if it would help. I also found journaling and meditation. I tried those things every day and everything was still the same. I changed trajectories with my diagnosis and thought maybe it is just really bad anxiety and I wouldn’t have to live with these panic symptoms forever. But, I remember trying to get out of my apartment that weekend and thinking to myself, “Are you paranoid of other peoples intentions?” “People are looking at you”, “What if you were going through a paranoid mental break?”. It was like a scary movie that never ended. I went to target to try and get some fruit, which seemed like the only thing I could eat without wanting to throw up. I remember walking through target with flashes of panic streaking throughout my body and feeling so uncomfortable and scared about what was going on with me. I got my groceries and quickly left. I told my fiancée about the experience and he suggested that I actively tell myself that I am not going crazy. That seemed to be the primary thought that was scaring me so much. And of course, like I always do, I researched “going crazy”. This time though, it actually helped. Whatever resource I used, it stated that, “If you have to question if you’re going crazy, you’re probably not going crazy.” It explained how people that actually have problems with different realities and hallucinations, both auditory and visually, normally feel as if they are real and don’t notice that its out of their ordinary life. They simply can’t see, “if they are going crazy” or not. It was crude, but it worked. I worked on that idea for a couple of days and it really worked. I was slightly better, and when I say slightly, I mean slightly. The panic flashes weren’t as intense, but they were still there. I decided to continue to walk around the apartment again as the effects weren’t going to be immediate. However, the only way I kept myself from panicking while I walked was listening to motivational videos. And it had to be continuous. As soon as one video would be over, I would have to quickly choose another or I would be in my head again and going on a downward spiral. At several moments, I would look at the different trees around and just glance at some of the cars in their assigned parking spot and I wouldn’t think they were real. It was like I was seeing them, but from a perspective I couldn’t place. And of course, this frightened me. WHAT WAS HAPPENING? This central theme continued, even when my mother had gotten to my apartment to help with things. I would go to school, come back, cry, try to explain my feelings and then go to sleep. I couldn’t get a grip on things. One night I got home and was crying and felt so overwhelmed with dealing with all of these emotions and feelings that I tried to get some emotional support from my mother and she cracked. She was mentally drained from worrying about me so often that she decided to tell me to call my dad for help. I totally understood and called my father. He gave me some practical advice. “Just let that shit go, son” I laughed inside feeling like that was utter nonsense because that’s what I had been trying to do all along. But when I thought about it, I was so caught up in all of these fears associated with what was going on. All of those question were still swirling around in my head and I decided right then to just let it go….. it was as if an elephant standing steadfast on my chest had finally lifted his leg. I could feel my body changing in response to this new idea of letting my fears go. I came out of the room and to my mom’s surprise, she noticed color back in my face. I walked out of the room with hope. I could work on letting all of my fears go and try to get better. With this newfound hope I was going to be dedicated in finding solutions. I scoured the internet for anything and everything that could possibly help people with what I was going through. Yoga, meditation, diet, exercise, supplements, sleep hygiene, no sugar, low carb, keto diet, journaling, radical acceptance, therapy, CBT therapy, ECT therapy. I looked at everything and watched 10 videos on every topic to find what was going to work. I made it my mission to find a plan that was going to work for me. I finally narrowed it down to meditation, yoga, journaling, and my diet. For the next couple of weeks, this is what I did as well as try to find myself a therapist. I did yoga a couple of days and journaled and cried because I was overwhelmed and walked and tried to start eating more. I could feel myself slowly getting better but it was as if I was getting better centimeters at a time. Recovery was moving painfully slow and I would often get really overwhelmed and frustrated at myself. I wanted to just sleep ALL the time. I remember one day my mother wanted us to go to the casino just to get out and do something. I had a great time with her that night. However, the next day I was so physically and emotionally drained I slept literally all day and all night until the next morning. I only got up to use the bathroom and eat a little. In mid December, I was starting to get better. I would have maybe 2-3 good days followed by really bad days. We even decided to go to Arkansas to see a friend for a week and everyday I was there was a bad day. I tried to make the most of it, but the awareness of the physical sensations and the irrational fears were to strong to ignore or handle all of the time. Often I would wake up already shaking from anxiety. My jaw would be so clenched my teeth would chatter. I would be freezing and already dreading the day ahead. After we got back from Arkansas, things got slightly better. And I finally had found a therapist. Her name is Amanda. She’s about 4 foot 11 inches tall but she packs a punch when she notices a bad habit of mine or a bad label I have about myself. I have always had a great preconception of therapy. My friends always spoke highly of it. We all thought everyone needed therapy. So I was really excited to talk to Amanda about what was going on in my life. For me, it seemed like if I were to talk to my fiancée or my mother about anything and everything that was going on in my head, it would just make them worry about me even more. That worry would negatively effect their days and cause them more stress than was needed. So I appreciated Amanda. I was thankful she was available. The first session was just the intake session and she seemed super sympathetic and listened to me word vomit all over her. I even think at one point, she said, “Okay, this is just the intake day.” I was spouting out all of my problems already. But it seemed like I couldn’t help it. Words just came flowing out. About my family dynamic, my parents, my love life, my past traumas, the irrational thoughts in my head, what had been going on the month, my fears….. everything. She documented everything she deemed necessary and sent me on my way, telling me that therapy was a process and that change is not going to happen quickly. I was fully aware of this. After the intake session I was on a euphoric high. I had gotten a lot of stuff off of my chest and I felt like I could float away. It felt like for the first time, someone had actually listened to me. My whole life I had been the one people come to to listen to their problems and try and help with whatever they were going through, but I hadn’t had anyone to do that for me. Everyone seemed to be so caught up in their lives to have time for me. Because I was the irresponsible one or my problems felt childish to them. But Amanda just sat there and listened. She listened to EVERYTHING and didn’t judge me for anything. She corrected my language here and there when I would label myself badly but, for the most part she was sympathetic. I read somewhere that therapy was a place for the people who talk to listen, and for the people that listen to talk. I was the latter. I had been so preoccupied from listening to everyone that I forgot to assert myself when I needed someone to listen to me. That was Amanda. After the first therapy session, I was hopeful. For the first time since the beginning of this all, I was hopeful that this wouldn’t last forever. Those were my worst fears. That this would now be forever. That pharmacy school had triggered something that would now be a forever thing for me. For the next couple of weeks I would stick to what I knew worked, or at least somewhat worked. Yoga, meditation, journaling, getting my appetite back up, these were all things I thought were going to get me back to normal. I continued to search and search and search for self help information. I probably watched 1000 videos and read even more articles on every symptom and anything that would help them. I tried out supplement, vitamins, routines, sleep hygiene, light therapy, and anything little thing I could do to help at least a little. I noticed that in the mornings, my anxiety would be super extreme and then get progressively better. At night, it would feel as if I had never been anxious before in my life. I got scared to fall asleep because I didn’t want to deal with the morning anxiety. What was most distressing was my heart palpitations. I would wake up and suddenly feel like I was in the middle of running a marathon, sweating, breathing faster, super tense and could hear the vibrations of my body. I had to try to get a handle on this. I looked up some solutions and read that some patients who experience anxiety from the sensations usually are more fearful of the heart palpitations. Doctors usually can prescribe a beta blocker like metoprolol or propranolol to reduce the heart rate and without the heart palpitations, the anxiety and panic symptoms would decrease naturally. So, that’s what I thought my best option would be. I went back to my doctor and talk to her about all of this and she agreed. I was put on a low dose 12.5mg of metoprolol. After the first dose I could notice the effects the next morning. I was super anxious but I wasn’t in a panic. I was so thankful for this because it allowed me to breath in the mornings without feeling to fearful. It was Christmas break finally and I wanted to use this break to refresh and try to work harder on myself. The break was filled with setbacks and nights of crying from being overwhelmed. But they were also filled with random moments of intense love and joy as well. I noticed one night, while snuggling with my dog, a huge sense of love for him. I spent probably 30 minutes straight just cuddling him and hugging him. For weeks, my body and spirit had been stripped of my ability to feel anything. The love for my fiancée was gone, my sense of humor, my enjoyment of the thing I normally enjoyed, I couldn’t even feel the love for my sweet dog Teddy. But at this moment, I basked in this feeling. I didn’t want it to end. I missed this feeling so much. But I knew it would fade, so I stayed with it as long as possible. New year’s was even better. I spent New Year’s Eve with amazing friends and family. We played card games and board games and popped fireworks. We even bought lanterns that flew up in the air when you lit a candle underneath them and wrote all the things we wanted to leave in the past and all the things we wanted to bring into the new year. We all cried at the things we realized were holding us back and made a symbolic gesture to really do better this year and “let that shit go”. It was funny how my dads quote seemingly came into certain aspects of all of this. As the new year hit, I was hopeful again. I was having more good days than bad days. However, there were other things that were still bothering me. There was an extremely uneasy feeling I would get from time to time. Mainly on the car rides to school. It was that damn derealization. I HATED feeling like this. At random moments throughout the day I was SO aware of…..reality. Like, I knew I was a human and we are all humans, and all just doing things to fill the day and go to bed at night. It was as if I was a robot with no emotion, strictly actions. Or that, at times, it felt there was no point to anything we ever did. And for me, it scared me more than anything. Then there was the tension headaches, moments of extreme fatigue, morning depression, and anxiety. I was going to wait and see if things got better as time progressed. I started class finally and cried the day before and the day of school. I felt an overwhelming sense of anxiety the whole day of school. That same sense of disconnectedness that scared me to begin with. I was there all over again. I needed to get out…. So I left early that first day. I told my friend that I was leaving early because I thought I was going to start crying in class. She understood and told me to feel better. I got home and balled my eyes out. I didn’t want this anymore. I didn’t want to go through life feeling like this anymore. I was overwhelmed. I felt like my relationship was slipping, my grade were inevitably going to slip, my friend were pulling away, and I was going to be stuck like this forever. But after a talk with my fiancée he assured me he was not going anywhere and that I had made tons of progress and that I couldn’t forget that. He always knew how to calm me down and rationalize everything I was worried about. I always forgot about the progress I’ve made while I’m in one of those anxiety states. I would try to remember the phrase, “trust the process”. It usually calmed me down because it gave me a sense that it wasn’t going to be like this forever. I went to sleep dreading the morning and more so going to school the next day. I went to sleep like I normally did since I developed a night time routine. I started taking melatonin at 9pm so that I would be super tired by 10pm. In between 9pm and 10pm was my “buffer zone” I started journaling and reading during that hour, which I really enjoyed now. My fiancée got me into reading and I started to fall in love with fantasy books. So I journaled about my day on some nights and read the “Mistborn” series on the other nights. I even found a couple of prompted gratitude and anxiety journal I really like. Then I would listen to a wind down meditation that was 10 minutes that relied on me consciously relaxing all of my muscles, or turning them off for the night. It helped me fall asleep quicker. I hated the fact that it usually would take me an hour or more to fall asleep every night, so I wanted to change that. I developed a night routine that I really enjoyed and looked forward to. My days and nights were slowly filling with things I truly enjoyed and looked forward to. I started drinking green tea (decaf), eating oatmeal in the mornings, listening to inspirational videos, eating more fruit, and writing. I never knew how great writing would feel. I think throughout my life, I never had the privacy that I needed to write whatever I wanted. If I ever had a journal when I was younger, my mother always found it and read it. I got so embarrassed by one of the journal entries that my mom confronted me about that I never wrote in one again. Now that I had complete trust in my fiancée not reading my journals, I had the freedom I always craved to write down my unbridled emotions about the day without the fear of someone judging me. It was my outlet that was always going to agree with me, never look at me like I’m weird, or pass me off as childish or irresponsible. With my night time routine in place, I took that night as any other night and finally went to sleep. I woke up the next morning fully expecting to cry and find some excuse not to go to school and stay home in bed, but those thoughts never came. I was kind of excited to see my friends again. So my goal that day was to stay the whole day at school no matter how scared I was. I got to school expecting so much to happen. Panic, anxiety, disconnection, nausea, and even sadness…….but nothing. I was fine. I was able to concentrate in class and occasionally go to the bathroom to breathe and think. It wasn’t a perfect day, but I made it all day. I ended the school day with the panicky idea that I was trapped at school, which sucked because I had made it so far and I was already back to panic. But it didn’t last too long, maybe an hour or two. I got home and did some yoga and was back to, somewhat, normal. The next few days of school were okay, but I made it all day and continued to progress. I started noticing more and more everyday. One thing was, I was actually starting to…..enjoy pharmacy school again. I remember sitting in my Immunology class, really engaged and concentrated. I was getting back into my groove and was loving it. My therapist was thrilled about all of this. Now we come to today, January 23rd-ish 2020. My days are filling with a little worry about was symptoms I’m feeling. The only symptoms I feel now are very slight feelings of derealization, which are scary still, but don’t last near as long, maybe 20 minutes or so; tension headaches, small amounts of fatigue and sleepiness, and still that damn morning depression. I’ve shamefully skipped a couple of days of class due to the morning depression, but I’m still working on that. I still journal when I want and meditate every night. I also do yoga, not as often as I want, but I’m planning on starting back soon when my schedule gets a little less hectic. I have things I’m looking forward to as well. Im moving down to the coast soon with my fiancée and starting with a fresh new city. Im a couple of months away from my introductory rotations as a student pharmacist. I’m going to be living in the same apartment complex as my 3 friends from school and im so excited to be able to hang out with them more and spend more time with the people that mean the most to me. I want to start focusing on that more as well as diving deeper into the things that excite me about my career. Research is one of my passions and I am set up to start working with a professor of mine next term and I am beyond excited about that. She is someone I look up to and would love for her to be my mentor. I want to look on the positive side of things more and be way more gratuitous about the things I already have. Most of last year was focused on the things that I didn’t have and wanted and all the things my life lacked. I was so unappreciative of the things around me. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I kind of appreciate what happened to me. It really has opened my eyes to the things that are most important in life. I’m excited about the future.

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“I can't believe this is my eighth studio album and I know I keep telling you that it is my most personal record yet, but its true and I'm really proud of that”

This quote from The Legendary Miss Britney Spears would most likely haunt her for the rest of the career, especially because it came in the eve of the release of her infamous 2013 album Britney Jean, whose title anticipated a rare introspective look into a star with over a decade on the spotlight (most of the times for the wrong reasons)… also, it came right after her previous album, 2011’s Femme Fatale, became her first full-length effort without any songwriting input from the Princess of Pop, although a Japanese bonus track features a co-writing credit from her.
Of course Britney Jean deserves most of the criticism it receives and yet, it also deserves way more than just being outright ignored even by most of Britney’s diehard fans: Britney Jean is more than just Work Bitch and 13 b-sides, is more than Brit’s most dated-on-arrival release… Britney Jean is a case study of what was pop in its time, what changed and why it stopped being as popular as it once was….

POP BEFORE BRITNEY JEAN

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Early 00s pop music was being left aside by the general public during the heydays of gangsta rap, Timbaland/Pharrell-infused R&B and rock/nu-metal… at least until around the period between 2007 and 2009, the start of the Golden Era for popheads: The anthemic choruses, the prominent synths, the light and care-free nature of the lyrics, everything was there to pump you up and make you dance… however everything would change in 2013, when streaming was finally introduced to the Billboard formula. After the satirical K-pop track Gangnam Style by Psy took the world by storm, it was noticed how in the United States the song was blocked from the top spot by the inconsequential One More Night by Maroon 5, even if Style had the lead in sales for most of the 12 weeks it stayed at the Top 10 (as you might have guessed, radio had something to do with that), pushing Billboard to update their methodology and add streaming to the mix.
The first song that benefited from the change in the tracking methodology would prophetize what would come next for the charts in general: Harlem Shake, a nearly-instrumental meme song debuted at the top spot and stayed there for 6 weeks total. Another novelty song, Ylvis’ The Fox (What Does The Fox Say?) would visit the Top 10 later in the year based on virality alone.
Although rap, indie music and more traditional pop music found their way during this year, the presence of outliers like Lorde’s Royals, genre-defying tracks like Avicii’s Wake Me Up! (a country/folk tinted EDM anthem) and Florida Georgia Lane’s Cruise (considered the grandfather of the bro-country genre, made popular on pop radio thanks to a tackled-on rap feature by Nelly), and the aforementioned viral hits not only showed that general audiences were craving something new, but their success would pave the way for a big change in pop music.

BRITNEY BEFORE BRITNEY JEAN

"Sometimes you don't need to use words to go through what you need to go through, sometimes it's an emotion you need to feel when you dance, that you need to touch. And the only thing that can touch it is when you move a certain way."
Britney Spears on the For The Record documentary, one of the rare glimpses she gave us on her life before Britney Jean

Britney, of course, was partially a pioneer and a tail-rider of the maximalistic electro sound of the era, as proven by the influence and cult following of what most people consider her magnum opus, or at least her more direct and honest album, 2007’s Blackout, which is ironic considering that Britney only has two writing credits in the whole project and how even The Unstoppable Danja called it ‘impersonal’.
After Blackout, Britney would continue to ride the same sonic palette with her follow-up, 2008’s Circus and then move onto Femme Fatale, which, in spite of its “forward-thinking” nature (as described by the label-appointed producer and current persona non grata Dr. Luke) and slick production, it was heavily criticized for its anonymity and lack of input of the singer in the record, which led to Britney to defend herself stating, rightfully, that she had nothing to prove.

THE MAKING OF A PERSONAL ALBUM

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The mastermind behind Britney Jean was none other than hitmaker will.i.am, whose involvement on the record came as a surprise to no one given how they have collaborated twice at that point and get along really well (you can read more about it in this post I made a couple of months ago), however, the Black Eyed Peas frontman doesn’t deserves all of the credit for the record as Britney herself decided that she would be more involved and had a pivotal role into the making of this record.
Although the early stages of the album pointed towards a more hip-hop release, will.i.am’s involvement and her chemistry with Britney put her forward into the recording and making of the album.
Realizing that she wanted a more straightforward release that wasn’t as bouncy and genre-hopping as her predecessors, Britney searched with will.i.am a series of collaborators that could help her bring her ideas to life, as she didn’t wanted to sing impersonal songs that her team just happened to receive; this, unfortunately, ruled out the involvement of the Saint Patron of pop production Max Martin, although it relegated Dr. Luke to a sole bonus track so that’s a win in my book. Britney Jean is her only release in which she’s credited as a co-writer in each track, including bonus tracks… her closest before that was In The Zone in which 9 of the 14 (including bonus) tracks sported a Britney co-write.

THE PERKS OF BEING A PERSONAL ALBUM

I have been through a lot in the past few years and it has really inspired me to dig deeper and write songs that I think everyone can relate to […] I want to show you the different sides of Britney Spears.
I am a performer.
I am a Mom.
I am funny.
I am your friend!
I am Britney Jean.
Britney Jean Spears

Britney has never been the kind of performer that would pour her soul into her lyrics, and even have occasionally distanced her private life from her lyrics (she famously rejected the Timberlake-bashing Sweet Dreams My LA Ex, later given to ex-S Club 7 member Rachel Stevens as her debut single), although in the few glimpses we have gotten from her real persona (the stunning Everytime and the dubious My Baby for example) have always leaved her fans with the idea of her getting more involved with the subject matter of the tracks… I mean, the exploration of fame in tracks like Circus and Piece of Me are great, but what about explorations of who is Britney?
Britney Jean is her first album released in her 30s, and after finally deciding to get this involved in the songwriting department 15 years into her singing career was no fluke: chalk it up to coincidence, to the fact that it was long due given her background (Britney had lived A LOT of unwanted stuff during her career, married twice, had two kids, survived the most public mental breakdown unimaginable and more while being one of the most successful female performers currently working… also, that year she had ended her engagement with her manager Jason Trawick) or to misogyny (if you wanna go there) but female singers seems to go personal and/or mature in their 30s, with some popular examples including Madonna’s Like A Prayer (described by her as being "about my mother, my father, and bonds with my family"), Mariah Carey’s post-divorce genre-bender Butterfly (if her birth year is believed to be 1969), Beyoncé’s whole post-Matthew Knowles era (4 was released three months before she turned 30), Nicki Minaj’s back-to-my-roots release The Pinkprint and Katy Perry’s purposeful woke pop release Witness (Katy, I love you but 💀) among others.
Another thing to consider is that doing “personal” songs have always being interpreted as tracks with stripped-away or piano-driven arrangement, something that Britney, who had sung about being on the club or having sex (or even both on the same track) so many times it kinda become her trademark, is not something she’s might get allowed to do, especially when the current-at-the-time pop scene and Britney’s then-current sound were a far cry from the kind of sound these “confessional” tell-all songs normally have.

#BritneyPleaseSavePopMusic

(this was a real hashtag that was worldwide trending topic on Twitter in September 2013)
With the anticipation of what a Britney-fied personal record would sound like, anticipation was in an all-time high among fans… so it was natural that her most introspective record would be anchored with an EDM song called Work Bitch. In Britney’s defense, will.i.am pointed out almost immediately how the braggadocio track didn’t represented the album but it was rather about Britney Spears herself.
Promoted with what was heavily rumored to be a 6.5-million-dollars budgeted video which was supposedly heavily sanitized from its originally sexed-up original version (more on that later), the video itself represented most of the promotion the whole album received, as the album’s second and final single (Perfume) was left to rot in negligence after the album’s release.
Outside of a couple of TV appearances (not performances, just interviews), including one to promote her then-upcoming “2-year” Las Vegas residency Britney Spears: Piece of Me, and an E! documentary about the making-of the album and said residency, no actual promotion took place for Britney Jean, which led to the inevitable.

BRITNEY UNLEASHES HER MOST “PERSONAL” ALBUM

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Britney Jean was unleashed to the world on December 3rd of 2013, one day after the Princess’ birthday, and was a big commercial disappointment, debuting at number 4 on Billboard with sales of 107,000 copies (a little bit more than a third of the sales of Femme Fatale), even lower than those of her debut album …Baby One More Time; 3 years after its release, BJ had sold less in the United States than FF in its opening week, although it was eventually certified Gold by the RIAA… this February. Internationally, the release didn’t fare any better and debuted at record-low positions for her releases in most international markets, including missing the Top 30 in the UK.
As most of you already know, reviews we’re nasty all around, the worst of Britney’s career. Because of the somewhat mean content of some of those reviews, I would instead resume what are the biggest perks critics had with the release:

• The album’s production (carried mostly by will.i.am protégé Anthony Preston, who hasn’t done anything ever since) was considered monotone, repetitive, dated, backward-thinking, overproduced and by-the-numbers. The album, full, on EDM beats and synthesizers, doesn’t really have that much of a breathing spot as there’s not that much of musical variety.
• Lyrically, the album was considered a disappointment considered its nature as a “personal album”, with the lyricism being considered somewhat superficial given the self-titled naming and Britney’s hype surrounding the content itself.
• Vocally, Britney Jean was ripped apart by critics and even some listeners. When the opening track’s autotune-less “warm up” vocal sessions leaked in 2014, critics complained about Britney’s (lack of) vocal talent and added fuel to the debate about wherever she’s actually talented at all, accusations that the song producer William Orbit dismissed.

SING A SONG OF SIXPENCE, MISS BRITNEY SPEARS

After one of the songs leaked ahead of the album’s release, there were accusations that backing vocalist Myah Marie (who had appeared on Brit’s previous two albums) was the lead singer not only on said leaked track but also in a large portion of the album (this is what she sounds like), accusations that Marie herself denied as well as Britney’s reps.
Her representatives claimed that Marie wasn’t involved in neither Perfume nor Passenger, the tracks that were the source of most of the controversy, and ultimately she wasn’t credited in none of those songs, although she’s credited as a (not background) vocalist in several of the other tracks of the album (mostly the Preston-produced songs as Work Bitch, Tik Tik Boom, Til It's Gone, Chillin' With You and Now That I Found You), including Alien (in which she’s not credited), who had a vocal steam leak in 2014 which showcases how uncanny is Myah’s impression of Britney is. A credited background singer is Sia in her co-composed single Perfume, which was the source of a weird misstep when Britney was caught lip-syncing to a version of the song with Sia’s vocals forefront in the mix.
A lot has been said about how Britney’s signature singing ‘baby’ voice is not her real one, how do they compare and how much damage has done to Brit’s current vocal chops, and even though she can still sing wherever she wants to, it’s quite obvious that she’s not that comfortable with it and, as such, she prefers to enhance her voice with the use of technology and some studio trickery… also, she might have gotten used to it considering how effortless and vivid were her earlier performances… here’s I’m A Slave 4 U at the 2001 VMAs just because how iconic it is.

BRITNEY JEAN… BY BRITNEY JEAN SPEARS

"People can take everything away from you, but they can never take away your truth.
The question is: Can you handle mine?"
Britney Spears in a song that’s not from this album and not originally from her

Described by critics as “a concept album about the loneliness of pop life”, Britney Jean actually open with quite a promise with Alien, a mid-tempo, melancholic, airy, ethereal dance pop opener that works as a more teenage-sounding version of Ray of Light, which is not surprising considering the involvement of said album’s mastermind (the aforementioned William Orbit) and that sonically picks-up where FF closer Criminal left off, but lyrically is quite different, as it portrays Britney having an intimate and personal realization that she, after years of tumultuous and erratic events, has lost grip of who she was and how she felt like an extraterrestrial in her own world; however she realizes that she’s not longer alone as she looks at the glow in the stars as a light to guide her home away from her insecurities of the past, and to feel safe and finally finding comfort in her true skin, as the chorus repeats the catchphrase ‘not alone’ “until it is pitchshifted up like a departing space ship”
Originally intended to include Gaga in the song (and also supposed to be released as a single, which unfortunately didn’t happened), Alien was considered the conceptual and musical highlight of the project by critics, and is easily the most personal, vulnerable and my personal highlight of the project… which made everything that came afterward a hard pill to swallow. Before that, I can’t help to mention THE GLITCH (2:14 in the song), which was apparently, as everything wrong with music of the period, will.i.am’s fault.
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Work Bitch (alternatively known in censored form as Work Work, or in the explicit version as Bitch Bitch) is a hard hitting EDM smasher and heavy mood-whiplash, which was definitely not co-written by Sebastian Ingrosso, in which Britney gently asks us (over a basic club beat which grows more overloaded as the song moves forward) is we want a hot body, an European luxury car (either a Bugatti, a Maserati or a Lambo ^{skirrt skirrt skirrt}) or to sip martinis while partying in a big mansion in France, only to disappoint us by calling us bitches and telling us to better work as if we were supermodels and she was RuPaul.
WB is, if you wanna practice some mental gymnastics, more ‘personal’ than its given credit for, as Britney details how much benefits she gets from hustling all these years, and inviting us to dance with that smashing wall-of-sound-laden beat that drowns most of the track. Way more forward-thinking and exciting that everything that comes after it, WB has become somewhat of a new classic for the Princess of Pop, and is pretty much deserved of said designation.
Perfume, co-written by Sia, is another album highlight (actually Britney’s favorite from the album) and one of the finest ballads of Brit’s late-catalogue. Written about her ex-fiancé Jason Trawick, the song deals with Britney’s insecurity about a current relationship, with Britney singing with some of her strongest vocals in years about how she believes that her partner is cheating on her and how she puts on her perfume in order to mark her territory. Released with a tie-in with her perfume Fantasy, the song kinda flopped worldwide and halted all of the promotion of the album, however it still remains (alongside the rawer Dreaming Mix, included as a bonus track) as one of the most interesting songs in 2010s Britney catalogue.
The music video, directed by known troll and middling talented videomaker Joseph Khan, has an unreleased director’s cut in which the straightforward concept of a cheating partner is changed to that of Britney playing the Angelina Jolie role in a gone-wrong version of Mr. and Mrs. Smith sans the boyfriend who is also an assassin.
It Should Be Easy finds Britney’s voice drown in both the auto-tune setting used by Kanye for the Runaway coda and the vocals of guest-star will.i.am in the chorus, all while produceco-writer David Guetta rehashes Swedish House Mafia (which originally broke up the same year in which BJ was released). The song, about Britney imagining a bright-normal-future with a man who had stolen her heart, stating that love “shouldn't be complicated”. Although I like this song, and her team obviously likes it to as it commissioned remixes to be serviced to clubs, it signals when things start to go somewhat downhill.
Tik Tik Boom, the T.I.-assisted fifth track, was always dubbed as a potential third single (remixes were commissioned but nothing official ever came up), and it’s not hard to see why: as one of her rare collaborations with a rapper, the static-y, dance-floor ready production presents Britney teasing a male partner with a night of… well… tik tik boom… that means sex, doing so while serving some circa-2001 sexy vocals as T.I. raps about treating her like an animal up to the point that PETA (which hates Britney) should be called in response. It’s fast, it’s straightforward and yet, it’s kinda forgettable and also very disappointing coming from or Princess Urbanney.
Guetta comes back with Body Ache, another outdated EDM bop in which Brit (accompanied by vocoder and several dozens of vocal distortion treatments) sings about the kind of ‘I wanna dance so hard it gonna turn you on’ anthem which Miss Spears can do on her sleep, with a backtrack that sounds straight out of the EDM will.i.am was doing with the Peas during the Beginning/E.N.D. era. Also it ends in a somewhat anticlimactic way.
Personal Britney makes a return with this track that wouldn’t be too out of place in FF: The Guetta co-written Til It’s Gone, in which Brit realizes that, after losing the love of her life (Trawick), her life would never be the same, or how “you never know what you got 'til it's gone”. Coming some two years to late sonically, in terms of lyrics the track it’s another story, as some interesting imagery pops here and there and it’s nice to leave the dance floor behind, especially when talking about a woman who (at least in the previous albums) rarely shut up about them.
Katy Perry arrives on the record but not as a feature, but as a writer, in the Diplo-produced, Sia-co-written and Prism outtake Passenger, in which some interesting EDM beats moves out of the way after the opening (they come back, don’t worry) to reveal a refreshing and very welcome electropop rock song with some great Britney vocals about letting someone to guide her after she’s willing to let herself be his ‘passenger’. Great lyrics, daring production, good vocal performance… it’s not hard to see why critics loved this track so much, and it’s a shame it gets buried among so much underwhelming stuff.
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Chillin’ with You, the album’s most infamous moment, finds Britney dueting with her sister, ex-Nickelodeon star and attempted country singer Zoey Meredith Brooks, about hanging out together and drinking wine (Brit likes red, Chase Matthews' ex likes white wine) while, as the southern white suburban moms they are, they feel they have nothing else to worry about. Although the lyrics are… well… cute, and the subject matter is decidedly novel by Britney’s standards, the mixture of country and EDM doesn’t mash as well as the producers might had expected… also, the fact that their vocals were so obviously recorded in different sessions (as showed by the kind of chemistry you only see in cheesy 70s movies starring John Travolta and Lily Tomlin) makes the whole ordeal so surreal.
The album closer in the standard edition is Don’t Cry, a FUCK YOU MR. TRAWICK song in which Britney reassures his man that it’s not worthy to cry as their relationship was always directed to end no matter what they do, and how she’s gonna go to not see him all tear eyed. The bouncy but subdued dubstep back track by pop goblin and producer will.i.am enhances what is arguably Britney’s best vocals in the whole album and some really nice lyrics which still doesn’t work as an album closer.
Sia comes back in the first bonus track of the deluxe edition, Brightest Morning Star, and she brings with her current pop Pariah (that would be Dr. Luke, but he’s only in this track) to the mix, on a track about God (or maybe about her kids, according to Dr. Puke), or at least one that implies to be one; in Sia’s words: ‘Britney was extremely sweet. She came in with the title ‘Brightest Morning Star’ and told me that’s how Jesus found his way. She wanted to write a kind of gospel song that wasn’t ramming it down your throat’. Despite the good intentions, BGS is no Jesus Walks and it gets short in the musical department, with a surprisingly weak instrumental which doesn’t do any good service to the song.
Britney continues her religious quest with Hold on Tight, a mid-tempo ballad that in which Miss Spears details how God comes into her dreams (or it might be an Incubus?) showing her the path to righteousness, even when the road is not as friendly with her, and… to be honest, this is my least favorite song on the album, it’s just so forgettable even if it’s quite refreshing in the context of BJ.
To end the evening, Britney continues her unintentional audition to become a gospel singer with Now That I Found You, a shameless EDM track (with early-10s euphoric drop and everything) about how incomplete she was until she found Him (to be honest, this could also be another love song, but after two bonus tracks about God it’s easy to see where she was pointing towards with the vague lyrics) and how everything is better now. Unlike the forgettable predecessors, NTIFY is fun (dated? Sure… but also fun), it’s bright, it’s colorful, it’s happy, and one of my favorite songs on the record… even if co-writer Guetta basically ripped off his own hit Without You from 3 years before.

u/radiofan15’s UNWANTED OPINION ABOUT BRITNEY JEAN

Britney Jean is not an autobiography, it’s not a tell-all gossip-venting machine, it’s a clean, overproduced product of misdirection and lack of focus… and yet it’s actually fascinating in several ways: it’s arguably the greatest resume you would find of how pop music sounded in between 2008 and 2013, it’s a great bridge between the impersonal heavily-polished Femme Fatale and the serviceable and engaging Glory, which saw Britney leading the way on how everything would sound from the start.
It’s quite ironic how the album’s naming (taking a cue from Janet Jackson’s Damita Jo, her actual middle name) plays against it, as self-titled releases (unless they are debut albums) are associated with being in control of your output or reinventions (pop examples includes Paramore as their first release as a trio, Beyoncé to fit the minimalistic sounds and Janet Jackson’s janet. to showcase independence from the Jackson family) and unless you’re Led Zeppelin, Peter Gabriel or Weezer, the idea of having a second eponymous release usually means that audiences should expect to experience the performer in a never-seen before way. 2001’s Britney was the album that give a meaning to the phrase “I’m not that innocent” spurred in her previous effort, with lyrics talking about womanhood and sexuality being complemented with R&B vibes and rock/hip-hop elements. Britney Jean, when compared to Femme Fatale, is way behind the difference between Britney and Oops!... I Did It Again, which in retrospective is even worse as the relative freshness and reinvention of Glory leaves the ‘openness’ and ‘variety’ of BJ in shambles.
One of the album’s biggest mistakes is in its sequencing: the first three tracks are the obvious highlights, the next three are basically DOA EDM songs, the next four are the most “adventurous” musically speaking and the bonus tracks are all about God. Taking out some of the ‘pure club’ anthems could theoretically create an album more deserving of its ‘personal’ label, going full Spinal Tap and amp up the production values to do something crazier might have given us something that was at least digestible in a single listening.
The album, as it is, is not perfect, but it’s far from the dumpster fire more people called it, including some of the most interesting Britney songwriting in years (or even her career) and some tracks that are already started to show signs of cult classic. The only positive thing most people seems to agree with is how short it is: with the alternative mix of Perfume included, BJ is ‘only’ 50 minutes long (the standard edition is just 36 minutes long), which is something most performers (even today) seems to struggle with.
Also, she didn’t came to play games with the art cover and aesthetics this era, the album cover and the booklet is her most gorgeous to date, with the former having her most flattering front picture of any of her albums and the neon typography creating a very pleasing contrast with her elegant black-and-white imagery (in the deluxe edition) or the elegantly, milky pastel coloring of the standard edition.

THERE CAN BE 100 LISTENERS IN THE ROOM AND 99 LEAVE BUT ONE... - BRITNEY JEAN THE DAY IT DEBUTED

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Britney and her team gave up quite easily on Britney Jean and, honestly, they shouldn’t be blamed: the offer to have a Vegas Residency with a salary of $15 million dollars per year seems like the kind of offer a pop star and mother of two with enough money already for several timelines would accept, with the album itself being more of an afterthought.
Britney was originally slated to remain on the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino for two years but ultimately extended her run for another two years, before finally touring overseas (without an album attached to the performances) during 2017 and 2018.
Because of the lack of promotion, Britney Jean underperformed when compared to Miss Spears’ previous releases, with estimated worldwide sales (as of April 2018) being close to 1.3 million copies, less than a third of Femme Fatale’s sales.
Truth be told, BJ flopped hard… HOWEVER, not everything would have turned out that terrible (not even in a million years it would have sold as much a FF but at least the downfall could have been smaller) with some actual promotion and interest from Brit herself.

SOME REACHING… I MEAN… THE SIGNIFICANCE OF BRITNEY JEAN

BJ is, in my opinion, a compilation of the era, the resume of “in the previous episode of” that you get on serialized TV shows, a farewell to the bombastic era of synth-heavy EDM club anthems with gratuitous drops and interchangeable lyrics. During the genre’s opus, some performers tried to bend this sound (and their equivalents) to their benefit, either mixing it with their style or playing with the boundaries of the sound: it could be a Taylor Swift doing a We Are Never Getting Back Together to get a broad crossover hit, a Lady Gaga mixing multiple genres to create a sonically complex pastiche called Born This Way, or even straight-up jumping almost seamlessly from rap/R&B to club bangers like Nicki Minaj did in Roman Reloaded. Britney in Britney Jean did almost the opposite of that.
Britney Jean is, in some ways, a time capsule of the era in its rawest and purest form (some might differ and replace those buzzwords with generic and bland), with the average user being able to trace mostly any track to a style, influence, sub-genre or even performer. Listening to BJ is like watching a 70s movie in VHS in an old, square TV, basically an unintentional period piece that reflects the volatile, bombastic and extravagant style of those golden years of 2008-2013, which, within the mindset of Britney Jean sounds kinda tired and bland, surprising no one when that branch of pop went back into obscurity and irrelevance almost as fast as grunge music did when Kurt Cobain died.
Britney Jean came up in a time of transition of popular music, with streaming showing the kind of power it had on the charts and more subdued, minimalistic music taking the world by storm. Popular music, as you might already noticed, evolved into a slower, more melodic, calculated, numb, almost anticlimatic entity which was more fitting with our current social and political climate. To paraphrase Todd in the Shadows: 2013 had a hit literally called Happy and 2018 had both a hit called SAD! and another called Happier with a video about a dog that dies.
In terms of Britneyology (both the study of Britney Spears and the religion dedicated to her persona), BJ is also a glimpse into Britney the full-fledged artist. Britney has never been the kind of performer that gets heavily involved into her music, with Britney’s role being generally limited to the choice of songs, sequencing, development of sounds and themes with her assigned team of writers and producers, and performing of course; sometimes Britney gets involved into the heavier portions of her music (the classic Everytime is a great example of it) but most of the time she remains quite anonymous, with her voice and choice being overwritten by the men on charge, something that became quite apparent during and after the Dark Ages (2004-2008) with the cancelling of the legendary Original Doll, her lack of songwriting credits in both Blackout and Circus, and her much-criticized anonymity in Femme Fatale.
BJ was Britney deciding who does want to work with, what does she wants to sing and even how to equilibrate her musical and visual persona. Britney has always being in control of how is she portrayed on official media, most famously rejecting an animated concept for the video of …Baby One More Time in favor of a Lolita-inspired take on catholic school girls, and then the slow process from jailbait to grownup woman. During the post-production of the Work Bitch video, she clashed with director Ben Mor over the kind of content the video should show, as she was a mother in her 30s now instead of an unreachable male gaze fantasy.
With BJ, the Legendary Miss Britney Spears showed us how much she has changed since that controversial 2003/2004 period (the last time she was that involved with an album) in which she received the Kiss of Death from Madonna, suffered her infamous accident and, of course, married twice in a calendar year. This new Britney was a much-different person, and her voice deserved to be heard, and even if the results weren’t the greatest, it was a step into the right director for Britney to get what she always wanted: being a full-fledged artist capable of taking her own decisions and learning from her mistakes.

POP AFTER BRITNEY JEAN

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Coincidentally in 2014 most of the ambassadors of the dominant pop sound of the early 10s were either taking a musical break, flopping or changing lanes, so that year paved the way for the transition of what do we define as popular music, with the winners of the evolution race being trap (Fetty Wap’s Trap Queen), meme music from awful people (Bobby Shmurda’s Hot Nathans) or untalented losers (T-Wayne’s Nasty Freestyle, Silentó’s Watch Me), trop pop (OMI’s Cheerleader, Justin Bieber’s entire Purpose era) or whatever outlier track dared to pass through those filters.
What happened afterwards is a horror story most of popheads tells in fire camps a la Are You Afraid of the Dark?

BRITNEY AFTER BRITNEY JEAN

Glory , the follow-up Britney Jean, received very positives reviews and was considered a strong return-to-form for Britney, and even if it wasn’t as successful as her label might have wanted, the truth is that, at the end of the day, whatever Britney decides to do next (and considering the direction she seems to be taking) it can be as underwhelming as Britney Jean.
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