Top 100 10s: 90. DUMBLONDE - "dreamsicle" (Patreon)

It’s no secret that Britney Spears’ Blackout is one of my favourite records ever, even if Britney’s subsequent barely-autonomous existence under her Dad’s conservatorship makes it a hard one to celebrate quite as fully these days. The maximalist artificial popscapes of Blackout - all those chonky synth tones, hardbody beats and glitched-out, treated and twisted vocals - have a pre-crash allure, and I’ve been attracted by pop music which has tried to create something in that style, building amongst those glittering CD-era ruins.

It’s tended to be a minority concern, though. The star who’s made the most of it is probably Charli XCX, and her career has fluxed erratically even as her art’s continued to develop. More typical is dumblonde, AKA the two of Danity Kane who weren’t Dawn Richard, and who made one of the great post-Blackout singles in “dreamsicle”, though not many paid it any mind.

A lot of these meta-pop singles have a nightmarish tint to them, sending their singers on some Matrix-bound bad trip or other. “dreamsicle” leans into that idea, its central hook a mocking cyborg chant - “WE WON’T WAKE UP THE DREAM IS NEVER DONE”, while synths phase in and out and beats snap around it, and the duo’s other vocal lines circle it like robot songbirds. It’s disorienting and thrilling, singers reporting back from a post-human party where they’re having a simply marvellous time.