"TILL THE WORLD ENDS"
In a world of endless gooning, Britney Spears' apocalypse anthem edges us to completion.
It’s only recently that the threat of apocalypse has become ambient.
In the past, the end of the world was appointment viewing, marked by date and time. January 1, 2000. December 21, 2012. The timestamp imbued apocalypse with a collective sense of build and release, forcing even the most hardened skeptics to spend their last hours on Earth intentionally. The rational self might know that civilization would reliably trudge along for another day, but a tiny part of your psyche had to consider what it would mean for everything to end. And, when apocalypse came and went—in the aftermath of imagining all your dead friends, family, and lovers—you had to reckon with the unexpected, shameful relief of believing it could have all been over.
There is perhaps no one who knows what the end of the world feels like better than Britney Spears—a Sagittarius who, when America’s gun was pointed at her temples, said “gimme more.” Two years into the conservatorship that did effectively end her world, she released Femme Fatale, her seventh studio album fashioned as pop music’s response to the sudden popularity of EDM and dubstep. The sound is clean, but not vacant—as if Blackout was rolling in Ibiza instead of doing lines in Los Angeles.
“I can't take it, take it, take no more”
Femme Fatale opens with “Till the World Ends,” a timely nod at the cosmic apocalypse promised by the Mayan calendar that broaches an evergreen fascination in American pop culture: living in the face of certain rapture.
“Never felt like, felt like this before”
The song is a slow build. The verses tense the body, but the chorus abruptly cuts off catharsis. You can’t come just yet.
“You know that I can take it to the next level, baby”
At the bridge, the song’s moaning refrain undulates in the ear:
“Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh.”
It intensifies, then pulls back momentarily. The wave crests, and you can’t hold it in anymore.
“If you feel it, let it happen.”
Orgasm crashes at the coastline of your mind, spilling over its crevices. A final sonic flare, and it’s all over. You’ve just been edged to completion by Britney Spears.
^^(the best remix of “Till the World Ends” starts at 19:00)^^
In a world of gooners, “Till the World Ends” is a sonic monument to its masturbatory parallel: edging. Gooning is clearly a byproduct of our troubled times—a mindless, low vibrational ritual that degrades the sanctity of pleasure by rendering it infinite. It’s no coincidence that gooning has surfaced in an era where the end of the world is totally diffuse and indefinite. There is no end in sight, because the end is omnipresent. Apocalypse is quotidian, like an air pollutant in our lungs. Some might even say this is the end.
It feels similarly obtuse to “dance until the world ends.” To me, this isn’t because the sentiment itself is problematic; it’s more so that most of those who dance in the face of rapture have never had to meaningfully consider the end. Their autonomy has never been threatened. Their bodies have never been destroyed. It’s this privilege that also drives gooning: living like the world is ending, without understanding what “the end” materially means.
The culture of edging, in stretching the limits of pleasure, acknowledges the inevitable conclusion of it. You will come, but let’s take our time. I appreciate a similar tangibility to cultural renderings of apocalypse, because, in reality, the end of the world is concrete. Entire worlds are ending every single day. Similarly, for Britney, the end of the world is finite—a single moment that will arrive, perhaps when we least expect it.
