Britney Spears’ 2008 is ending with her new album Circus at number one in America – and she’s also the first ever SoundScan artist to have four albums sell 500,000 week-one copies.

So well done – Britney Spears’ year has ended better than it started. But then again she did start it in a mental hospital – Britney could have caught Ebola off a rabid zombie meerkat while falling down a lift shaft and the year would have still been an upswing for her.

Everyone loves a story of redemption, especially at this time of year. That’s why people love A Christmas Carol - it wouldn’t be nearly as popular if it ended with Ebeneezer Scrooge punching Tiny Tim down a flight of stairs, machine-gunning a puppy and then hanging himself in the middle of the town square, would it?

And Britney Spears’ year has been a little bit like A Christmas Carol. Not a huge amount, admittedly – instead of being visited by ghosts, Britney Spears was deemed too mentally unwell to feed or dress herself and then, rather than redeeming herself by welcoming a festive spirit of goodwill into her heart, Britney made a record where she went “UHH Pappi LOVE you! UHH Pappi LOVE you!” about 15 times in a row – but a bit.

Anyway, by getting her act together enough to release and promote a new album properly, the redemptive message is loud and clear – Britney Spears is still a bit mental but at least she’s got a proper haircut now – and the American public have rewarded her for it by buying Circus in droves.

You know what this means? Britney Spears is number one again! Reuters reports:

“Circus,” the sixth studio album for Spears, sold 505,000 copies in the United States during the week ended Dec. 7, one of the biggest debuts of the year. She becomes the only artist in tracking firm Nielsen SoundScan’s 17-year history to have four albums sell 500,000 copies or more in their first week.

While that’s enough of an impressive double-combo as it is, it’s not all – Circus by Britney Spears has also made history by being the best-ever selling album to sound like it was recorded by Professor Stephen Hawking’s wheelchair after it was struck by lightning and learnt to kill, plus it’s the only number one album of the year where the cover features a picture of the singer pulling a face like a laboratory puppy pleading with strangers to put it out of its misery.

So our hearty congratulations go to Britney Spears for the success of Circus. She’s back where she belongs now – at number one, drunk on success and on the precipice of a giant career-threatening mental breakdown. And so say all of us.

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But so far there’s been so much kerfuffle about everything surrounding Circus – like the documentaries, the artwork, the tracklisting, the likelihood of Britney Spears going berserk and smearing her genitals up and down a shop window a day after its release – that nobody really knows what Circus by Britney Spears actually sounds like.

Well, we do. And it seems like the classic Britney Spears sound is back – you know, sort of generic and forgettable and not very good. How do we know this? Because all of Circus by Britney Spears is available on the internet. Where on the internet? Why, right after the jump if you close your eyes and believe enough.

Since it’s her great big comeback album – the album where she’s controversially not going to shave all her hair off and run through the streets babbling unintelligible threats in a sub-Madonna British accent while promoting it – Britney Spears has piqued all sorts of interest with her new album Circus.

For instance, Circus is being released on Britney Spears’ birthday? Why is that? Does it signal her rebirth as a recording artist? And why is it called Circus anyway? Is it a reflection of the media attention that Britney Spears has received? Is it because Britney Spears has been made to feel like a performing bear? Is it because Britney Spears can only be kept in one place if there’s a man with a chair and a whip near her at all times? Is it because, instead of rational thought, the only noise going through Britney Spears’ head at any given time is a warped nightmarish version of Entrance Of The Gladiators by Julius Fučík?

To be honest we were hoping that some of these questions would be answered by next week’s Britney: For The Record documentary that’s being released to help promote Circus but, since most previews have described the documentary as basically an hour of anguished squealing, that’s not going to happen.

Instead we’ll just have to wait for Britney Spears to release Circus and then pick through it for clues about Britney’s mental state. Or, alternatively, since Britney Spears has decided to stream Circus through imeem for free a week before it comes out, we’ll just do that instead. And you can, too. Here, have a listen…

So it turns out that Circus by Britney Spears sounds like that one ‘N Sync album from seven years ago, then. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – at least seven years ago Britney hadn’t been sent doolally by childbirth, Kevin Federline and multiple appearances on How I Met Your Mother.

If you’re like us, you’re probably finding it quite hard to pick a favourite song on Circus. Not because the songs are all so good – or so bad, for that matter – but because this seems to be Britney’s ‘babble like a mental alien’ album. So, rather than pick a favourite song, we’ve decided to list our top three nonsensical Britney Spears yelps from Circus instead:

3 - Haha hihi haha ho” – If U Seek Amy

2 - “Glayeeass glayeeass glayeeass glayeeass” – Shattered glass

1 - “Oompapa oompapa oompapi oompapi ooh papi ooh papi ooh lammy ooh lappy ooh papi uh ow” – Mmm Papi

You’re welcome.

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But, aside from the fact that it’s called Circus and the lead single from it sounds like a berserk feminist cyborg running out of power, nobody knows a darn thing about Britney Spears’ new album. Until now, that is, because the album art and tracklisting to Circus by Britney Spears has just been released. We know. At least try to contain yourself.

From what we can tell from the sleeve, Circus by Britney Spears seems to be a concept album about a slightly morose woman spending so much money on lawyers in a failed attempt to win custody of her children that she’s resorted to getting her album art done on the cheap in one of those bleepy Japanese photobooths you find in arcades. As for the tracklisting, you’ll need to read on for that.

Britney Spears albums always reflect Britney’s state of mind at the time she made them. …Baby One More Time and Oops!… I Did It Again were released when Britney Spears was just a young girl with nothing to worry about other than her excessive and grammatically-confusing use of ellipsis. Britney showed that Britney Spears had become famous enough to carry an album by her first name alone. In The Zone showed Britney’s first sign of rebellion, where she stood in collection zone B at Argos even though her receipt clearly directed her to collection zone D. Then Blackout reflected the fact that Britney Spears could barely go a day without collapsing or vomiting onto boys.

And now Britney Spears is releasing Circus, a cute nod to the fact that watching Britney Spears perform these days is like watching a sad-eyed Russian bear covered in cigarette burns hop around joylessly on a metal platform that’s got an electrical current running through it.

The difference between Blackout and Circus is both clear and immediate. In the artwork to Blackout, Britney Spears can be seen getting off with a sexy priest, but the just-released cover of Circus shows that the old Britney Spears is back – the Britney Spears who couldn’t be any less offensive if she was made from digestive biscuits and rainwater.

But the patronisingly cheap-looking artwork to Circus isn’t all that’s just been released – the final tracklisting for the album has also been announced. So let’s analyse that instead:

1. Womanizer – Already a number one hit. Sample lyrics: “Womanizer womanizer/ womanizer/ Oh! Womanizer oh! Womanizer.”

2. Circus - The next single. Sample lyrics: “Circus circus circus/ circus oh!/ Circus circus oh! Circus/ circus/ Oh!”

3. Out From Under – An alarmingly graphic description of what it was like to be stuck underneath Adnan Ghalib in the moments directly after his ejaculation.

4. Kill The Lights – Originally entitled Kill The Whites.

5. Shattered Glass – An account of the time that Britney Spears smashed up a car with an umbrella. Alternative titles included Dented Bonnet, Ruptured Grill and Tatty Exhaust Pipe.

6. If U Seek Amy – A song about the amygdala, the part of the brain that controls arousal and fear and is therefore the only part of Britney Spears’ brain that actually works properly.

7. Unusual You – AKA The Lack Of Self-Awareness Song.

8. Blur – A song about 1990s Britpop band Blur. The belated follow-up to 2002’s Shed Seven.

9. Mmm Papi – Originally supposed to be a cover version of Oom Pa Pa from the musical Oliver that had to be changed at the last minute because Britney Spears can’t even pronounce simple words properly.

10. Mannequin – An appreciation of the 1987 sex doll comedy rendered wistful by the fact that the director Michael Gottileb never directed anything other movies after 1993’s Hulk Hogan film Mr Nanny.

11. Lace and Leather – Where Britney Spears describes her favourite bedroom outfit. Her favourite, mind you, not the one the wears most nights, otherwise it’d be called Incontinence Pants And A Boxer’s Gumshield To Stop Me Gnawing Through My Restraints.

12. My Baby – The song where Britney Spears realises she can’t remember what either of her children look like because it’s been so long she was last declared mentally well enough to see them.

13. Radar – A climactic reevaluation of the invention of radar. Includes the line “Your electromagnetic waves identify the range, altitude, direction or speed of both moving and fixed objects such as aircraft, ships, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain/ Oh baby baby.”

There’s just one thing missing – the grovelling atonement for all of her wrongs. But, wait, because that’s coming too – Britney Spears has announced a 90-minute MTV documentary all about her personal upsets, to be called something like but not necessarily Britney Spears: Yeah, Sorry About Shaving My Hair Off And Screaming About How I’m The Devil And Stuff.

It’s hoped that the documentary will be Britney Spears’ way of describing all the terrible mental anguish she’s been through in past through years, so that hopefully everyone can understand her side and put it behind them. Well, not all of Britney Spears’ mental anguish, obviously – it’s only a 90-minute documentary and she’ll probably want to spend more than a fifth of a nanosecond describing each of her individual character flaws.

There’s only one thing we want in our stockings this Christmas, and that’s a copy of Circus, the new album by Britney Spears. We want one because if it’s anything like the new Britney Spears single Womanizer, then it’ll consist of what sounds like Professor Stephen Hawking’s broken voice-machine repeating the word ‘circus’ monotonously for 50 or so minutes that was recorded while Britney Spears was out, say, terrorising a child or something.

But whether anyone else wants to buy the new Britney Spears album is another matter. For the bulk of people it’ll all depend on how Britney chooses to promote it. And to be honest, we’re not sure that she’s quite got the hang of it yet.

Remember the last Britney Spears album Blackout? Britney only did two pieces of promotion for that – one involved mumbling on a phone to Ryan Seacreast on her bed for 90 seconds, and the other involved the worst stage performance ever given by a human being. Needless to say, the promotion didn’t really work.

So for Circus, Britney Spears is pulling a new trick out of sleeve – the harrowing televised 90-minute exploration of mental illness.

For some reason, Britney Spears is under the impression that the only way she can sell albums these days is if she discusses her recent brushes with psychiatric despair in uncomfortable details for an hour and a half. And that’s what Britney Spears: For The Record is all about – to be shown on MTV on November 30, For The Record will be Britney’s way of wiping the slate clean about everything from her failed marriage to her loss of child custody to her stints in mental hospitals earlier this year. In the film, Britney states:

“I’ve been through a lot in the past two or three years, and there’s a lot that people don’t know. Sometimes I think I get kind of lonely because you don’t open the gate up that much, you know I mean? You’re guarded. You have to be that way, so I’m kind of stuck in this place and it’s like: How do you deal? And you just cope, and that’s what I do. I just cope with it, every day.”

For a young woman like Britney Spears to be forced to keep herself gated up like that is incredibly sad. At least until you remember that, on the rare occasions she does let her guard down, Britney tends to do things like smash up cars with umbrellas or babble relentlessly to herself in a made-up language. Hey Britney, maybe uptight repression is the way ahead, after all! It works pretty well for us!

Anyway, will Britney Spears: For The Record convince us that Britney’s worth taking a chance on again? Hard to say. Personally it all depends on what Britney apologises for. We’ve been burnt like this before, and so we’re only prepared to accept Britney Spears back into our lives if she says sorry for all those times she got her vagina out.

And she has to mean it too. That’s a dealbreaker.

Britney Spears is actually back. Back doing singing and dancing an dancing and stuff. As we recently reported, the new Britney Spears album Circus will be released in December. But it’s going to be preceded by a single called Womanizer, and that single’s been leaked, and we’ve got it here.

So does Womanizer mark Britney Spears’ stunning return to cultural relevancy? It’s actually hard to tell, because the leaked version is 38 seconds long and sounds like it was recorded from a mobile phone onto another mobile phone in a tin bucket full of jelly down a well in space. But we’ll just assume that it doesn’t, anyway. We’re bastards like that.

The most exciting thing about having Britney Spears back isn’t that she gets to wear nice clothes again or that we don’t have to start each story about her with the phrase ‘Troubled pop starlet Britney Spears’, but that we’ll finally get to hear Britney’s take on the year she’s just had.

Britney Spears has always managed to pass comment on her life in song – whether in Lucky, where Britney wryly commented on the pressures of fame; Piece Of Me, where Britney wryly attributed part of her meltdown to the prevalent tabloid celebrity culture of the day; or I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman, where Britney wryly commented on what we assume to be her tattered hymen.

And since the new Britney Spears album is called Circus, we can safely assume that it’ll be a no-holds barred account of the swirling mayhem that’s engulfed her life over the last 12 months. Since that’s included a stay in a mental asylum and losing custody of her own children, we’re bracing ourselves for a gruelling, emotionally stark journey.

And that much is clear on the first single from Circus, entitled Womanizer. Thanks to a DJ in Nashville who played 40 seconds of the song while it was still officially embargoed and got suspended for it, leaked snatches of Britney Spears’ Womanizer are all over the internet, allowing us all to hear Britney’s eloquent description of her own harrowing personal nadir ahead of its release. It’s a bruising listen, so be warned…

You can really hear Britney’s anguish in every single one of her tinny, barely audible “ooh ooh ooh ah-ah-ah”s, can’t you? It’s tragic, really. The personal turmoil really shines through in the way she seems to have just ripped off that Katy Perry song. We’re in bits. Honestly we are.

But still, on a brighter note the artwork for Womanizer by Britney Spears has got a snake in it. Hopefully that means that every single from Circus will reflect each of Britney’s most memorable MTV VMA appearances. First Womanizer has a snake in it, then the second single will feature Britney Spears getting off with an old lady. And the third one will have a dumpy homeless man in a wig and a bikini stumbling around like he doesn’t know what’s going on. Ace.

Yes, that’s right – Britney Spears has got a new album coming out soon. According to a just-released missive from her record label, Britney Spears’ new album is to be called Circus and will be released on December 2, with a new single entitled Womanizer coming out next week.

It’s exciting stuff, but why has Britney Spears chosen to call her new album Circus? Well it’s easy – Britney Spears wanted to name her album after the best description for the inside of her own head. Other contenders for the album title were Swirling Kaleidoscope Of Terrifying Cackles, The Theme-Tune To Taxi On An Unrelenting Loop and Barely-Pulsating Gloop.

Britney Spears is now in something of a privileged position when it comes to releasing albums. When her last album Blackout was released, Britney Spears basically promoted it by smearing dog poo on a dress and mumbling three words to Ryan Seacrest and nothing else.

What that means is that however Britney Spears chooses to promote her new album Circus, it’s going to be seen as a dazzling comeback on the scale of her triumphant MTV VMAs appearance last week where Britney Spears looked terrified and vague and wasn’t allowed to speak for more than half a second at a time in case she went berserk but at least did it wearing quite a nice dress.

Oh, yeah. Circus. Did we mention that Britney Spears has got a new album coming out called Circus? And it’s being released in December? And a new single is exactly one week away? We did? Well here’s the information we’ve just been emailed by Britney’s record label Jive:

Britney Spears announces her sixth studio album, Circus, set for release December 2nd. The first single from the album is titled “Womanizer” and was produced by the up-and-coming Atlanta production team The Outsyders. The album release date coincides with Spears’ birthday. Jive Records is preparing her latest album, Circus, a follow-up to her critically well received album, Blackout. For her latest effort, Britney has enlisted a stellar group of established producers/writers that include Dr. Luke (who wrote and produced the album’s title track, “Circus”), Danja, Max Martin, Bloodshy & Avant and Guy Sigsworth (Madonna, Alanis Morissette, Bjork).

That all looks as if it’s in working order. Max Martin’s back working for Britney Spears again, which is a positive sign. Well, not a positive sign as such, but at least a sign that Britney’s making a return to the kind of infectious pop that was fashionable a decade ago. And, compared to Blackout, where Britney Spears tried to rip-off Justin Timberlake’s last album and ended up sounding like a horrible mixture between a paper jam and a dial-up modem from 1997, that can only make the fans happy.

But still. Circus. Really, Britney? Circus? Apparently Circus is named after her life since the release of Blackout, but we’d tend to disagree on the basis that no circus we’ve ever been to has ever featured a bald red-eyed woman sitting on a pavement bawling for her life because she’s mentally ill and the authorities have taken her kids away from her. Jugglers, yes, but not that.

If Britney Spears really wanted to name her album after what her life has been like recently, she should have forgotten about Circus and called it Bleak East-European Arthouse Movie About The Unending Futility Of Existence.

Anyway, we’ll just have to wait and see what Circus by Britney Spears is like, but fingers crossed that it’s a return to form. Especially because if it’s a real success Britney will end up releasing a fragrance also called Circus, and we’d quite like it the army of idiots who normally buy Britney Spears fragrances all ended up stinking of monkey shit and gypsies.