May 162020
 

‘The Best Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.

britney spears covers

Last year, Rob Sheffield called 1999 “the year music exploded, the year when nothing made any damn sense, the year fans had to throw out any old-school rules for how pop worked.” If that’s true, then 2000 was the year when those new trends became the accepted norm. Back in January, we looked at covers of one of the year’s defining phenomenons – boy bands – and this month was tackle another: Britney, a pop supernova so massive she didn’t need a last name.

Her sophomore album Oops!… I Did It Again came out 20 years ago today, setting the record for the highest debut-week album sales by a female artist (it held for 15 years, until Adele’s 25). Though Spears was primarily a singles artist, her albums sold so much that even the deep cuts wormed their way into millions of teenage brains. When we compiled this list, I was pleasantly surprised it wasn’t just the half-dozen biggest hits being covered. Those songs got covered plenty, and still do (our number-four best cover of 2019 was a “Baby One More Time” – not a bad lifespan for a song written by a Swede whose grasp of English was a little rough), but musicians also dig into the album tracks and the singles that flopped.

Spears has shifted into the Vegas-residency stage of her career in recent years (not to mention Instagram star and cause-celebre hashtag). But even if she doesn’t have any more world-conquering hits in her, other artists are keeping her songs alive. Of the thousands of covers out there, here are the 25 best.

The list begins on Page 2.

Mar 022017
 
DeathinRome

Last month, we posted our three favorite covers of Britney Spears’ “Toxic.” Maybe we should have waited – neofolk band Death in Rome have just released a very strange version that might give those a run for its money!

The first clue that Death in Rome’s “Toxic” might not be your standard Britney-covers fare came in the Facebook band’s intro: “During the work on it, the song became for us an anthem on nihilisim and the mighty Emil Cioran. Enjoy, dance, be happy, it’s all in vain anyway.” Which, to be fair, is basically the message of Britney’s song “‘Til the World Ends.” But as if that wasn’t odd enough, they included a deeply depressing quote from philosopher Cioran: “There is no other world. Nor even this one. What, then, is there? The inner smile provoked in us by the patent nonexistence of both.” And this has what to do with Britney exactly? Continue reading »