Songoftheday 09/10/24 - Baby, can't you see I'm calling? A guy like you should wear a warning it's dangerous I'm falling...
"Toxic" - Britney Spears
from the album In The Zone (2003)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #9 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 16
Today's song is from Britney Spears, who had hoped her collaboration with the "queen of pop", Madonna, would supercharge both their careers on "Me And The Music", but the oversexual single fell flat, barely reaching the top-40 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 at the close of 2003. For the follow-up single, Britney left the writing to Swedish producers Christian "Bloodshy" Karlsson and Pontus "Avant" Winnberg with their frequent collaborator Henrik Jonback, but this time they also brought in a proven hitmaker in Cathy Dennis, who had a nice string of top ten hits in the early 1990s including her remake of "Touch Me (All Night Long)" which went to #2 on the Hot 100 as well as writing the classic "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" for Australian pop music icon Kylie Minogue. The result was "Toxic", a flurry of whooshing production around a boosted vocal from Britney. The lyrics are the well-trodden love is an addiction theme, but the words go by so quickly you're just swept away by the vibe. The production from Bloodshy and Avant has Spears cooing the verses but Dennis along with a couple of studio backup singers beef the high-sung chorus, with the surf-rock guitar and string flourishes in the back anchoring the organic part of the mostly robotic sound. The result is one of Britney's most enjoyable bops, and radio got back on board rightfully again. The high-budget music video had some racy parts that relegated it to late-night MTV, but in the age of multiple venues pre-YouTube, it reversed Britney's downward momentum in a big way...
"Toxic" brought Britney back to the top ten on the Hot 100 in March of 2004. On the radio, the song spent four weeks at #1 on the Mainstream Top-40 chart, popped on to the older-skewing Adult Top-40 list at #37, and peaked at #16 at the dance/R&B-oriented Rhythmic format. The remixes of the track, done by Armand Van Helden and Lenny Bertoldo among others, helped it top the Dance Club Play chart for a week and the Dance Airplay list for three weeks. Internationally, the single hit #1 in the United Kingdom, Canada (sales), Australia, Ireland, Norway, Hungary, Portugal, Croatia, and Czechia. It also reached the top-40 in Sweden (#2), New Zealand (#2), France (#3), Germany (#4), Italy (#4), Denmark (#4), Switzerland (#4), Romania (#4), Spain (#5), Austria (#5), the Netherlands (#6), Belgium (#6 Wallonia/#6 Flanders), Greece (#7), and Finland (#8). At the Grammy Awards in 2005, Britney won her so-far only Grammy Awards for "Toxic" for Best Dance Recording.
Both Britney and the In The Zone album will be back to the series.
(10/10)
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Next up it Britney debuting the song on her ABC TV special for the album...
Spears opened her Onyx Hotel tour supporting the album with "Toxic"...
In 2010, the song was featured on the musical show Glee in the episode centered on Britney's hits, with "Toxic" doing the best on the charts, reaching #16 on the Hot 100...
In 2021, London-based DJ's Altego did a "mash-up" of "Toxic" with Ginuwine's slinky hit "Pony", and eventually with label clearance was released officially, and reached #40 on Billboard's Mainstream Top-40 airplay chart...
Two years later, Irish singer Lisa Hannigan did a stripped down and haunting cover of the song for the TV show Fargo...
Lastly, back to Britney at the iHeart Festival in the midst of her Vegas stint...
Up tomorrow: This female-led goth-rock band just cannot die.
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