Criminal (Britney Spears song)

The vocals for the song were recorded at the Maratone studio in the capital of Sweden, Stockholm. Before the release, the song was recorded in BMI under the title “In Love With a Criminal” ^[1] . On the second of March, a month before the release of the album, Spears posted a seventeen-second passage on her Twitter profile, naming the song one of her favorites ^[2] . On the fifth of August, Spears posted a poll on her Facebook page asking fans what song from “Criminal”, “Inside Out” and “(Drop Dead) Beautiful” to make a single ^[3] . Criminal won the vote by a wide margin.

Overall, reviews on Criminal turned out to be positive. Andrew Leahy of The Washington Times said the song was a re-recording of Madonna’s “Papa Don't Preach” with a change in theme from teenage pregnancy to teenage crime ^[4] . Digital Copy Spy noted that although the songs from the album are written on the same theme, many of them contain their own zest, such as echoes of pagan motifs in the music of the flute of the song “Criminal” ^[5] . The Los Angeles Times journalist noted that the flute and awkward transitions between rock and ballad resemble the early work of Madonna or Abba ^[6] . The site Samesame.com.au noted that after eleven boring computer beep tracks, it was nice to hear a mid-tempo ballad with guitar sounds ^[7] . Genevieve Koski from The AV Club stated that the singer’s album contains not only “dance drugs” and the songs “Inside Out”, “Till the World Ends” and “Criminal” dilute the monotony of the synthesizer and bass ^[8] .

BBC Online Natalie Shaw commented on “Criminal” as a song that is completely different from the rest of the album with its fabulous flute tune ^[9] . Thomas Corner of the Chicago Sun-Times called Inside Out and Criminal boring mid-tempo boring tracks ^[10] . Andy Gill of The Independent said that the album is more artificial than natural and Criminal may surprise a simple listener with the unexpected appearance of a song that begins with live sounds of a flute and a folk- style guitar ^[11] . Evan Sadi from PopMatters remarked that when we got to the final track of the album, we hear that Spears is in love with a man who kills just for fun and fun - the fatal flaw of the album becomes obvious: Spears' worldview is completely narcissistic ^[12] .

After three successful singles from the album Femme Fatale, the fourth single could not repeat the success in the singer’s homeland, not even getting into the TOP 50 of the US national chart, having only been in 55th position ^[13] , however, in general, the song had some success , reaching the 8th line in Belgium, 13th in Finland and France, 16th in Canada. Even before the release of the album, the song hit the international chart of South Korea at the 55th line, then rising to 51st ^[14] .

In an interview with MTV News , immediately after VMA 2011, Britney said that the main objective of the Criminal video clip would simply make it interesting ^[27] . The clip shows the life of a joint Britney and the criminal. Showing bed scenes, shop robbery. This story ends with an escape from the police.