(Spears, Schwartz, Kierulf, Jerkins)
Album: Britney
What a difference three years can make! Play “Lonely” alongside a …Baby One More Time era track like “E-Mail My Heart,” and it may seem like an entirely different artist at work. Britney is no longer pining for online pen pals; she’s dismissing unworthy men who have wronged her. And she is angry! It’s one of several Britney tracks where Spears has co-writing credits, and one has to suspect that she was not in the best of moods when penning ”Lonely.” But Spears’s rage created one of the most fiery tracks on the album, and we are all better for it. With its stuttering bass and its punchy guitar, Britney spits venom in its almost spoken verses. At the bridge, Spears’s vocals get more melodic as the tone shifts from angry to reflective but foreboding. Then with the wail of an electric guitar, she delivers one of her most rockin’ choruses of her career. Perhaps paradoxically, this song rocks harder than “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” does. Rocker Brit is an underrated persona, and I maintain that she would have made a killer lead singer of a rock or new wave band, but we will cherish the few moments she dabbles in the genre. Paired with one of the best performances from her landmark Dream Within a Dream Tour where she has a dance-off with a digitized version of herself, we will always be left to wonder what could have been if “Lonely” were chosen as a single.
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