Britney Spears must confess that you haven’t heard her real voice in an “extremely long time”.
That’s why she chose to go back to the beginning with a powerful new rendition of her debut single ...Baby One More Time, which she belted out a cappella in a recent Instagram post.
“I haven’t shared my voice in an extremely long time … maybe too long,” she captioned two videos of herself singing a stripped-down version of the track from her first album, which became a global sensation and launched her career when she was just 16 years old.
Besides the raw vocals, this version contains one key difference: an explicit tweak to the relentlessly catchy chorus.
“Give me a fucking sign,” Britney sings in the clip. “Hit me baby one more time.”
In the caption, Britney explained that she had been planning to release a remix of the song for the past 14 years, but received no support from her team, while living under her conservatorship, which put strict limits on her professional and personal freedoms.
“The team said no,” she explained before taking aim at her sister, Jamie Lynn Spears, for participating in a performance of the pop star’s hits at the Radio Disney Music Awards back in 2017 much to her disapproval.
“They ruined it for me, embarrassed me and made me feel like absolutely nothing,” she wrote. “I share this because I am aware of my love and passion to sing … and my own family made a fool of me ... I’m not going to be a victim.”
Back in 2017, the chart-topping star said she was “pissed off” that her vocal abilities were often underestimated because of her use of playback during her Las Vegas residency, and subsequently shared a clip of herself singing live on Instagram.
Britney’s conservatorship was finally terminated by a judge in November 2021.
In the months since, she has fiercely criticised her family for their role in the legal arrangement, saying she was financially exploited and emotionally abused under her father Jamie Spears’ supervision since 2008.
Last week, the singer scored a major victory in her legal battle with her father as part of an ongoing investigation into his role as the conservator of her estate.
A judge ruled on Thursday that he must sit for a deposition to address a slew of troubling claims, including the allegation he put his daughter under constant surveillance by bugging her bedroom, which he has denied.
“It was a very good day for justice generally,” Britney’s attorney, Mathew Rosengart, told reporters after the hearing, per People.
“The day of reckoning for Mr. Spears has come, at least at this stage, in terms of the court ordering him to appear for his deposition.”