As Britney Spears continues to show us that she has something of a fetish for repetition (as evidenced by her constantly twirling around to the same French song—Indila’s “S.O.S.”—in that elusive Hawaiian dance studio), she’s sanctioned, along with Elton John, another remix of “Hold Me Closer.” On the heels of the Purple Disco Machine Remix that provided, what else, a purple-ified version of the original “Hold Me Closer” video filmed in Mexico City, Elton and Brit have also provided fans with an entirely new visual for the Joel Corry remix of the single.
Alas, Brit still doesn’t opt to appear in this one either, skittish as she rightly is about the public eye and its according scrutiny. Though she does concede to “appearing” in a roundabout way by sanctioning the use of three of her most iconic looks from previous music videos and a tour. Tellingly, none of these looks are from the “era” in which she was forced to live her life in a conservatorship. So it is that we go “back to the start,” as it were, by opening on a dancer, Iara Raiane, wearing a riff on the “…Baby One More Time” schoolgirl uniform.
Directed by Rebekah Creative, the video was shot in London on a sound stage with an all-white backdrop. Because, with sartorial looks like these, the focus is drawn to said callbacks to the past anyway. One of which also includes a still-too-underrated look from Britney’s first tour, named after her hit album and single as well. It was on that tour that Brit’s “millennium” style was solidified with her white track pants (rounded out by adidas sneakers) featuring metallic pink “knee pads” that were complemented by a, in true Britney fashion, ultra-short metallic pink crop top. Dancer Gemma Nicholas is the one with the privilege to sport this ensemble, “updating” it with pink hair to color coordinate with the top and knee patches.
Then there’s Lia Hammond-Williams, who gets to wear the, at this point, all-too-played “Oops!…I Did It Again” catsuit, which has been shilled by Urban Outfitters for many a Halloween. And yes, there are three coordinating Elton “impersonators” as well, but they simply don’t stand out as much as the Britneys, who seek to remind viewers that, long ago, before she was shackled by her own family, she was just a carefree youth enjoying the frivolity that came with suddenly having a mound of disposable income.
As one of the few “relatable queen” celebrities (apart from her constantly taking a private jet, yet not being called out for it), she’s someone who would rather spend hundreds—nay, thousands—of dollars at Target on clothes and home goods than bother with haute couture (unless, of course, it’s for her custom-made Versace wedding dress). That’s why she resonated with so many tweens and teens at the height of her stardom; she was someone they could see themselves in (paving the way, ultimately, for the current queens of the teens, Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo). Before she was mutated into this “thing” to be dissected and pulled apart by tabloid media outlets, including the then-new phenomenon of internet gossip rags like Perez Hilton and TMZ.
Perhaps not able to forget what that feels like, Brit has no intention of “serving” herself up anymore, preferring that other people emulate her instead as a substitute. The least Elton-looking dancer (and not just because he’s a Black man), wearing head-to-toe white with angel wings, is also perhaps how Elton wants to see himself. With Britney still being far closer to the age she was when she first started than Mr. John. And, as Taylor Swift once reminded in Miss Americana, one tends to get stuck in the age they were when they initially became famous. It’s clear that Britney exhibits more than just flickers of that in her frequently-displayed state of arrested development. At the same time, who wouldn’t want to stay ensconced in a period before everything got so tainted by greed and betrayal? A.k.a. her own parents colluding to entrap her in what amounted to slavery.
As Joel Corry and his DJ booth show up in the center of it all, the jubilance of the song crescendos as the dancers do Britney proud with their choreo behind him. The two sets of three then go head-to-head in what comes across like one of those illustrious dance-offs that always seemed to be happening in 00s movies. And, according to tabloid myth, between Britney and Justin themselves at a club in Hollywood just after their breakup in 2002. The stuff of lore that managed to end up in the Lifetime movie, Britney Ever After.
As the white backdrop remains stagnant while the camera moves the dancers past us in a sideways motion, another icon of the 90s comes to mind: the “Macarena” video. But then, “Macarena” didn’t have all the bells and whistles of bothering with alternating colored lights as the dancers do their breakdown (complete with bubbles floating in the air to emphasize to us that Corry is very much an “Ibiza DJ”). And it’s one that Britney, who has always treated dancing like something close to religion, surely appreciates from her safe perch in Thousand Oaks. Maybe she’ll even show us her own rendition of it on Instagram someday.
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