Two years ago, Britney Spears announced that she would “never return to the music industry” and so far she has stuck to her word. They even kicked off their year by selling the rights to their music catalog to independent music publisher Primary Wave for an unspecified amount. But anyone hungry for new music from the pop icon can enjoy snippets of “She’ll Never Be Me,” a newly released song originally written and recorded with co-writer Justin Timberlake in 2001.
Spears originally recorded “She’ll Never Be Me” for her third studio album, brittanywhich celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, but the track was left unfinished and eventually removed from the record to give priority to other songs. The record, produced by Alex Greggs or Riprock ‘n’ Alex G, is weird, irregular, and distinctly 2001, in the sense that it was clearly made in a post-“Oops!…I Did It Again” pop world.
In 2022, Greggs explained the backstory of the song in detail real doll podcast. He said, “This song didn’t go on the album because the label didn’t like it. There was better stuff on it.” brittanyThe band’s biggest hit was “I’m a Slave 4 U”, although the album also included classics such as “Overprotected,” “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” and “Lonely.” The deep cut “What It’s Like to Be Me” was also written (and co-produced) by Timberlake.
Timberlake provided background vocals for “She’ll Never Be Me”, which features his own vocals. “Sometimes people don’t hear Justin’s voice until I tell them. I said, ‘Didn’t you hear Justin is in the back?'” Greggs said. “They get along so well together there. It’s a shame they never really got a chance to do anything else. It would have been nice to have a cute couple like that.” At that point, NSYNC still had some gas in the tank. “It wasn’t the right time,” Greggs said. “But if they had continued to live together, I’m sure that would have happened and that would have been a really good thing.”
Spears details the dissolution of her relationship with Timberlake in her 2023 memoir, the woman inside me. He wrote that the breakup “devastated” him, and said he thought about abandoning his music career altogether. The couple was together from 1999 to 2002. However, the real catalyst that caused Spears to walk away from the music industry had nothing to do with Timberlake.
In 2021, Spears was released from a 14-year conservatorship, under which many areas of her life – from her finances to her career – were out of her control. Following the end of the court-supervised arrangement, the pop star said, “Not doing my music anymore is my way of saying ‘fuck you,’ in a sense when it really only benefits my family by ignoring my actual work.”
25th anniversary edition of brittany Will be released on November 6 with five additional songs including “She’ll Never Be Me”.