Britney Spears She'll Never Be Me

In the increasingly common tradition of musicians (mostly pop stars) releasing anniversary editions of their albums (see also: Mariah Carey with the Glitter Soundtrack), Britney Spears’ third record, Britney, is slated to follow in the footsteps of Oops!…I Did It Again with an upcoming anniversary edition of its own (with the album originally released on Halloween of 2001). And already, it seems as if it’s one-upping the rather lackluster re-release of Oops!…I Did It Again thanks to the mere presence of a previously unreleased (at least not officially) song like “She’ll Never Be.” A song that set many tongues wagging by sheer (non-)virtue of Justin Timberlake being credited as one of the co-songwriters, alongside Spears herself, Brad Daymond and Alex Greggs.

But based on the lyrics, it seems like it’s all Britney who came up with it, especially considering that it was penned during a time when things with Timberlake were starting to get tenuous, what with this being 2001 and rumors of Timberlake’s infidelity manifesting in a certain image of him “palling around” with All Saints’ Nicole Appleton in 2000. Indeed, Spears mentions in her memoir, The Woman in Me, that Timberlake was unfaithful on more than one occasion (yet somehow, she got painted as the “whore” for making out with Wade Robson, as Spears tells it, “one time” at a bar—though there are some who dispute this claim). Knowing this about Timberlake and how it all ended between them, well, it lends an even more layered meaning to “She’ll Never Be Me.” Both in general and when Spears insists, “You know I’m one of a kind/Can’t get me out of your mind/And when you look in my eyes/It’s not hard for you to realize/She’ll never be me.”

There’s also the prophetic intro to the song, “Hey boy, what is this I see?/Your girl, she looks just like me.” Lyrics that not only foretold Timberlake’s very-in-poor-taste “Cry Me a River” video, but also something that Spears herself decided to call out recently on Instagram: the fact that all the pop girls of the moment (so yeah, it’s shade at Gen Z) are copying her. And, in her estimation, failing at doing so.

Spears’ main callout behind why? A lack of authenticity (which is somewhat hilarious considering that marketing departments everywhere are trying to cater to Gen Z’s supposed hard-on for that quality). In her statement, Spears pronounced, “A lot girls last year have definitely done the complete image I used to have when I was younger. And yo that’s cool but at least mine was real… I was that nerd in school that was real as hell… the world has become fake… people who are actually real get hated on… which is a shame… To all the girls who say I’m History…I’M PROPHECY. I’m the original apple B [that’s “apple bottom,” for those who couldn’t get it] school girl who did backflips and backhand springs and fell in love with people on every set I ever went to.”

Whether Spears is referring to the likes of Sabrina Carpenter, Addison Rae or, even more freshly, Adéla (who, incidentally, liked the post) is at one’s discretion. Because it’s true, there are many current “main pop girls” pulling from Spears’ oeuvre. Thus, proving Spears’ 2001-era flex, “Your girl, she looks just like me/Blonde hair and dressed to a T/You tell me, ‘How can this be?’/Does she know I was the one/Who used to turn you on?”

The goading self-confidence of such declarations are manifest in Spears’ Instagram post. Almost as if, for once in her life, she’s deciding that it’s okay not to be humble about the influence she had (and has, clearly) on pop culture. To an almost Madonna level, as a matter of fact (almost, mind you). And, talking of Madonna, Spears’ uncharacteristic “flare-up” about being copied by other pop stars isn’t exactly “kosher” if one wants to talk about the pot calling the kettle black. For it’s no secret that Spears pulled some of her own “act” from the legendary pop stars that came before her. Not least of which is Madonna and Janet Jackson. The latter of whom she recently bowed down to by gushing (once again on Instagram), “The feeling she gives with her voice when she sings is so pure and genuine… She’s not trying to be sexy… She just is… She can’t help it… She has always been god to me. She’s not just a singer, she is an entertainer in people’s eyes… She’s my girl crush this month.” Never mind that Spears would probably react badly/weirdly to a comment like that being made about her. As she now has to the notion that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

Nonetheless, Spears herself embodies the qualities she was mentioning about Janet Jackson (in fact, one could imagine a Britney “copier” [e.g., Addison Rae] saying this very same thing about her). The kind of qualities that make her feel that when she was doing what she did, it was more authentic, more genuine (even though, at the time, she was written off as “manufactured”). And that, as a result, to this day, “You can’t deny/That everywhere you go/See my face, hear my name.”