(Spears, Artani)
Album: Everytime – Single / In the Zone
Spears’s best ballad showcases two extremely underrated talents of hers: her songwriting and her innate ability to emote through song. This is her highest-ranking writing credit on this list and by all accounts the song on In the Zone where she exerted the most creative control. After Justin Timberlake cast a Britney lookalike in his “Cry Me a River” video (in case there was anyone left in the world who was confused about who the song was directed at), everyone was anticipating a potential Britney clapback on her upcoming project. And though there were rumored to be a few that were written and recorded (most notably “Rockstar,” which leaked in 2011), Spears seemingly took the high road with this haunting apology track. “Everytime” closes out an otherwise dance-heavy tracklist showing that the club girl still had a vulnerable side. Her voice is soft and her tone is sincere. The lyrics are simple but direct. Spears uses a subtle word change in the second and third chorus to great effect: “Every time I see you in my dreams I see your face, it’s haunting me,” shifts to “*you’re* haunting me.” It no longer feels like she’s coping with a memory, but something more deliberate and ominous on the part of her lost love. Spears wrote the song on the piano, and the production on the final track is sparce, allowing her emotional performance to be the focal point. The doubling of her vocals on the final chorus at “I fall” seems to emphasize the enduring hurt she feels. A beautifully shot David LaChapelle music video explored darker themes, including merciless paparazzi, an unraveling relationship, and death (supposedly originally meant to be portrayed as suicide). The Saturday Night Live performance of this song is a wonderful vocal moment for Spears. And for a song so seemingly personal, she has been generous in how frequently she has performed it in concert since its initial release. And no matter how many times we hear it, we will weep and wail along with the lyrics as if it was written about our own heartache.
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