Vilified, gaslit, disparaged as a threat to public morality — has any celebrity suffered more in the spotlight than Britney Spears over the past 20 years? Given all she’s gone through, it’s hugely encouraging to see the …Baby One More Time singer stepping back out from behind the velvet curtain.
It’s cheering, too, that she has chosen to do so by collaborating with Elton John, who has emerged as a keen supporter of younger talent and comes to Hold Me Closer fresh from knockout singles with Dua Lipa and Rina Sawayama.
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Sadly, all these good intentions fail to cohere on Hold Me Closer, a remix of Tiny Dancer, the Elton John—Bernie Taupin classic from 1971 (inspired by the free-spirited women they encountered in Laurel Canyon, not far from Spears’s home in Los Angeles). It’s a parping Euro-trance trifle, with Spears an ephemeral figure, her vocals so low in the mix that you have to check twice to confirm she’s there. Britney is the ghost haunting her own comeback.
That’s a shame, as she and Elton have a great deal in common. In the 1970s and 1980s his private life was seen as fair game, and he was scorned as the embodiment of safe, bland pop. He certainly sees parallels between his experience and that of Spears, whose mental-health issues were treated as a public sport by comedians and tabloids.
“It’s hard when you’re young,” he said this week. “Britney was broken. I was broken when I got sober. I was in a terrible place. I’ve been through that broken feeling and it’s horrible.”
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Spears was approached by Elton, who was buoyed by the success of Cold Heart, that 2021 collaboration with Dua Lipa, a mash-up of his hits Rocket Man, Sacrifice, Kiss the Bride and Where’s the Shoorah? Spears took some convincing — then, after the recording, Elton had to talk her around into releasing the track.
Hold Me Closer sounds like dance-floor fodder from a regional nightclub circa 1997. Imagine Saturday Night’s Whigfield collaborating with the Teletubbies — without the charm and pathos
That she’d be reluctant to put herself out there again is understandable. The circus around her conservatorship, which imposed limitations on her financial freedom, and the ensuing Free Britney movement would exhaust anyone, let alone a person who has had to grow up in public and understands how cruel and judgmental the world can be (especially if you are a woman — contrast public attitudes in the early 2000s towards her on the one hand and her ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake on the other).
“Most people don’t escape from that kind of stardom unscathed” was how St Vincent’s Annie Clark described Britney and her fame to The Irish Times last year. “I dare you to find somebody who did. When you get to a certain level, you cease to be a person to people. You start being an object of projection. You’re a symbol. A friend of mine said you’re an avatar covered in puke.”
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The conservatorship was suspended last November, and Spears recently married the model and actor Sam Asghari. But if she has found happiness, there is no trace of this new chapter in her life on Hold Me Closer.
Instead it sounds like dance-floor fodder from a regional nightclub circa 1997. Imagine Saturday Night’s Whigfield collaborating with the Teletubbies — without the charm and pathos. Britney Spears remains one of the most fascinating pop stars of her generation, and it isn’t beyond the bounds that she’ll make interesting music again. But Hold Me Closer is a missed opportunity.
