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It’s hard to see how “Radar” and “Gimme More” have much in common. And “Heaven on Earth” is at pretty much the opposite end of the pop spectrum from “Piece of Me”, “Freakshow” and “Toy Soldier”. I find it strange that so many fans base their high regard for “Blackout” on the grounds that it’s “all of a piece” and has a “consistent style” throughout. In fact, the only thing that’s consistent is that none of the songs are ballads.
Some reviewers have described “Heaven on Earth” as a ballad. Others have described it as a “Giorgio Moroder-style disco number”. Both descriptions can’t be right, although both can be wrong. Superficially it sounds like an 80s disco song, but there’s more to it than that. It’s a mid-tempo pop love song with some balladic passages in half time and such a pretty melody that Britney is enticed into singing it in her softest, sweetest style.
“Heaven on Earth” was written by San Fernando Valley-based electro-pop duo Freescha (Michael McGroarty and Nick Huntington) in collaboration with Nicole Morier, a member of LA-based band “Electrocute”. It was produced by Freescha and Kara DioGuardi and the vocal production was also by Kara. Freescha created all the music on the backing tracks and Nicole Morier contributed additional backing vocals.
The mix engineer was Tony Maserati (Masciarotte), the second on the album to be nicknamed after an Italian sports car. He’s a veteran of pop and hip-hop production, credited as one of the principal architects of the “New York Sound”, who has worked with hundreds of artists ranging from K.D. Lang and David Bowie to Mary J Blige and Alicia Keys. His work is characterised by “a smooth, classy high end” but also by a “powerful bass” - so there is going to be some contrast with Ms Lago’s bass-phobic approach.
The production and mixing may be conscientiously handled, but we should not ignore Britney’s input, says Kara DioGuardi: “When I worked with her, she was pregnant with her second child. Her spirits were up. She came to the studio on time. She worked really hard. She would get into her zone and was unstoppable. I had a great experience with her. I felt very confident about what we would do together. I have nothing but good things to say about her.”
Nicole Morier was also impressed: “She was super sweet and really fun to work with, as well as a total pro.” McGroarty and Huntington agreed. “She comes in with a musical instinct that’s genuine and immediate and spontaneous and very much her style. She was there to work. She was great - really easy to work with. She really liked the track and just nailed it the whole time. Every take I was blown away.”
In fact, “Heaven on Earth” was allegedly Britney’s favorite track on the album at one point. But her enthusiasm for it appeared to have waned by the time of the “Circus” tour, since it wasn’t included. Perhaps the reason is that its cheerful, guileless bounce is at odds with the edgier and more dramatic material selected for the tour setlist.
However, the apparently straightforward pop character of “Heaven on Earth” doesn’t mean that it’s insubstantial. In fact it’s the longest track on the album at 4 minutes, 53 seconds, and its length is no longer than is required for the natural unfolding of what is actually quite a complex song. With the 70s and 80s disco sounds referred to above, it may seem superficially old-fashioned or retro, but it’s far from traditional in structure.
The verse has no less than three parts: 1. “Your touch, your taste....” (a play on “your” and “you’re” that must’ve caused some stress to the internet lyric transcribers). 2. “I’ve waited all my life for you...” and 3. “The palest green....” And the chorus has two parts: 1. “Fell in love with you and everything that you are...” and 2. “Tell me that I’ll always be...” Meanwhile “Fall off the edge of my mind...” has the functional role of a middle-eight. To add to the complexity, the lines “Lay my head on your chest and drift away, Dream of you and I’m almost half-awake” are sung softly at the same time as “The palest green..... look and you stop”.
By comparison with the intricacies of the song, the stereo layout as perceived over headphones is pretty simple, but Maserati has allocated an appropriate space to each element. However, the lead vocal line is rarely at dead-center, except for “Lay my head on your chest...” and “Fell in love with you....” The extensive use of double tracking has dictated the creation of a narrow, double-tracked “V” either side of center, with the wider angles, especially to the left, reserved for whispered asides.
Instrumentally, the track is propelled forwards through Part 1 of the verse by centrally located double-time fast-plucked bass guitar in its higher range and electronic thumping. For Part 2, electronic snare and rimshots are added to the “kick”. In Part 3, subtle guitar and keyboard intrusions and a syndrum are heard off-center. During the chorus the electronic snare gives way to shuffling, abrasive, metallic percussion and there’s a grunting, contrapuntal bassline alternating with a very deep, rounded bass - again, centrally located. The chorus ends with a fusillade of electronic handclaps and the pattern is repeated in the next verse. Swirling electronic guitars precede the “Fall off the edge...” passage, and from 3.05 to the end of that passage a deep, fuzzy bass enters the fray.
Although the vocals have a distinctive Britney flavor, and she begins with her signature croak, it would probably be fair to say that she seems rather introspective. Normally she sings her faster material with a lot of edge and intensity, but here she’s so soft and gentle that one could almost have sympathised with the lazy-minded theory that she’d been swamped both by her personal issues and the production. Except that she recorded the track when she was pregnant with her second child, and was therefore healthy and strong. Britney, for all her alleged limitations, is a versatile and varied vocalist, and extremely creative in fashioning magic out of a song, so what’s happening here?
Perhaps Britney was paying close attention to the words. And this is, for once, a sweet, simple, romantic love song, not the more typical celebration of partying and sex. As I mentioned above, the lovely melody would have appealed to Britney’s lyrical side. Kara DioGuardi also remarked that sometimes it seemed as if Britney was aiming her vocals at a man and sometimes at her son Preston, who was in the studio, and that may account for this almost lullaby-like approach. “Fall off the edge...” is positively dream-like and the coda even more so. When she sings “Yeah, I’m done” she probably expected a metaphorical drift into sleep long before that point.
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Really?
"I'm an emotional wreck right now."
I actually think this is one of her saddest songs.