Halsey to Sample Britney Spears’ ‘Lucky’ on New Single
“When I was five, it always felt like Britney was singing directly to me,” Halsey says
Halsey; Britney Spears FRAZER HARRISON/WIREIMAGE; SCOTT GRIES/IMAGEDIRECT
Halsey is taking it back to the Oops… I Did It Again era. On Monday, Halsey shared a snippet of her upcoming single “Lucky,” revealing that the track samples Britney Spears‘ 2000 classic.
“When I was five, it always felt like Britney was singing directly to me. 24 years later, these words hit different,” she wrote on Instagram. “Love you forever.”
The snippet soundtracked a video of Halsey with her new pink hair, rose-colored glasses, short shorts, and fur boots, emulating the Y2K style that surrounded Spears’ music.
“But I’m so lucky, I’m a star/But I cry, cry, cry in the lonely heart thinking/If there’s nothing missing in my life/Then why do these tears come at night?” she sings in the snippet, slightly changing Spears’ original words with a first-person spin.
Over the last several days, Halsey has been sharing teaser videos to promote “Lucky,” including a silly clip pretending to be a Disney Channel star, posing for an imaginary tabloid at a gas station, and sipping strawberry milk for a fake Got Milk advertisement.
Halsey has long been a fan of Spears and has tweeted about the singer, including one about her film Crossroads, dating back to 2014. She cited “old Britney” as an inspiration for her song “Walls Could Talk.” In 2021, as the singer battled her conservatorship, Halsey shared a tweet in support of Spears: “Bless Britney and I hope with my whole heart she is awarded freedom from this abusive system. She deserves it more than anything. I admire her courage in speaking up for herself today.”
Before sharing the colorful teasers of her new era, Halsey released “The End,” a precursor to her fifth album that showcased her opening up about her health struggles after being diagnosed with Lupus SLE and a rare T-cell lymphoproliferative disorder.
“Every couple of years now, a doctor says I’m sick/Pulls out a brand new bag of tricks/And then they lay it on me/And at first, it was my brain, then a skeleton in pain/And I don’t like to complain, but I’m saying sorry,” she sang on the track.
Halsey’s latest LP, the rock-infused album If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power co-produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Rose, dropped back in 2021. The new music will also serve as her first release under Columbia Records.
From Rolling Stone US.
