After making headlines for everything but music, Britney Spears is back with an album industry insiders say should top the charts despite her.

Over the past year the one-time Mouseketeer shaved her head, spent time in rehab, went through an ugly divorce, lost custody of her children and attacked a photographer’s car.

And in an odd habit yielding endless tabloid references to the title of her biggest album — “Oops!… I Did It Again” — she kept getting photographed without her underwear.

Now Spears is hoping that the release of “Blackout,” her first studio album in four years on October 30, will revive her reputation. The album has already produced “Gimme More,” which topped U.S. digital charts and critics expect a hit.

But some critics who have heard her latest opus say the album’s likely success has little to with her abilities and more to do with the producers.

The New York Daily News noted all the “studio trickery” made her sound like a “Brit-Bot” machine.

“If a blow-up sex doll could sing, this is what she’d sound like,” wrote Jim Farber. “In terms of studio trickery, Paris Hilton’s album was practically ‘unplugged’ compared to this.”

“How wonderful it is that, in the world of slick pop, even if stars can’t deliver, the machine behind them still can,” he said, adding that her personal woes don’t mean “Britney Spears can’t turn up on some slammin’ new songs.”