25 years after ‘Britney’, five new songs revisit Spears’ defining era

NEW YORK (AP):

Britney Spears was at a crossroads – and not just because the film Crossroads was soon to be released, marking her acting debut. The year was 2001. Spears, then just 19, was one of the most famous people on the planet, championed as the ultimate teen dream by legions of fans across the globe and a leering celebrity industry. That year, she’d performed during the Super Bowl half-time show and changed the course of fashion forever – first, showing up with beau Justin Timberlake in matching denim at the American Music Awards and then with an albino python around her neck during her performance at the MTV Video Music Awards.

She was entering adulthood, full steam ahead, after enjoying a meteoric run with her first two albums, 1999’s … Baby One More Time and 2000’s Oops! … I Did It Again. Her third album, Britney, was released just ahead of her 20th birthday and would prove transformative.

Legacy Recordings on Friday released Britney (25th Anniversary Edition), an expanded reissue of her pivotal record, which went quadruple platinum in less than two months. The collection features two remixes and five previously unreleased songs from that era, her first new (or is it old?) music since she announced she would “never return to the music industry” in a 2024 Instagram post.

The release is an opportunity to reflect on the album and Spears’ unique position in popular culture’s imagination – particularly following the news of the last few years. In 2021, she was released from a court conservatorship that controlled her life and money for nearly 14 years. And, in February, it was announced that she had sold the rights to her music catalogue to Primary Wave for an undisclosed sum.

LISTENING TO ‘BRITNEY’, 25 YEARS LATER

The album opens with a spoken-word declaration. Back in 2001, it was considered a provocation – as it often is when a young woman expresses her own prerogative.

“I know I may be young,” Spears seduces over choppy R&B production, courtesy of The Neptunes, the award-winning duo of Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo. “But I’ve got feelings, too.”

The song is the single I’m a Slave 4 U, where Spears made it clear that the bubblegum pop of her previous releases had been traded in for something decidedly more mature. And that’s true even of the album’s songs written and produced by previous collaborators Max Martin and Rami Yacoub – tracks like Bombastic Love still sparkle, but with newfound edge.

If Spears was borrowing from the teen-to-adult pop star trajectory laid forth by forebears like Madonna or Janet Jackson on Britney, she did so while keeping it PG-13 – hinting at developed sensuality as a means to express self-definition, but remaining accessible and agreeable to her younger audience. To put it another way, she toes the line: “ I’m not a girl, not yet a woman”, as the single goes.

That’s all while proclamations of autonomy – sexual and otherwise – punctuate the album. “ Say hello to the girl that I am,” she invites on Overprotected. “ Now I live for me,” she flips the script on Lonely. “ She’s in control,” on the funky, erotic Boys.

A sense of self-reflection is amplified by the fact that the album is self-titled, and that Spears co-wrote five songs on the original album: Lonely, Anticipating, Let Me Be, That’s Where You Take Me, and the spiky Cinderella.

The first of the five archival tracks is She’ll Never Be Me, co-written with Timberlake, her then-boyfriend, who also sings background. Timberlake co-wrote a track on the original album, but the new release comes after Spears wrote about their relationship in her 2023 memoir, sharing deeply personal details about a pregnancy, abortion and painful breakup.

As far as how it fits in with the rest of the album, the song slots in nicely with its vocal effects and propulsive Y2K production – by any measure, it makes for a fine B-side.

The same could be said of the rest, from the slow-burn fake-out Am I A Sinner and Latin pop-informed rhythms of Right Now (Taste the Victory) to the glitchy, proto-hyperpop When I Say So and soulful, unusually lengthy My Big Secret, which features Spears’ strongest vocal performance of the whole album. It’s a stunning falsetto.

Tabloid press’ obsession

Thematically, a number of these tracks could be read as a response to the tabloid press’ obsession with Spears’ virginity at the time of its release. “I don’t want to mislead you,” she sings on When I Say So.

And on Am I A Sinner she may very well be reflecting on an unjust media – or any bad relationship: “ Tell me, am I a sinner? / Tell me, am I wrong? / Something’s wrong with the picture / This is not my fault.”

Since the release of her bestselling memoir, The Woman in Me – which details her childhood, rise to stardom, marriages, motherhood and conservatorship – fans have worked to recontextualise how Spears was portrayed early on in her career. These songs will no doubt inspire more detective work. But others may approach it more simply, through the rose-coloured glasses of easy nostalgia.

In the end, it is an album written and recorded in the space between adolescence and adulthood, from the woman a generation looked to for guidance on doing the same.