Britney Spears drops unreleased collaboration song with ex Justin Timberlake… but fans opt to ‘skip’ it 24 years after ugly split
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A previously unreleased Britney Spears track in collaboration with ex Justin Timberlake is currently streaming but some fans have opted to not give it any play in solidarity with the Toxic hitmaker 24 years after their split.
The 44-year-old pop star surprised many as she finally released the track titled She’ll Never Be Me which was originally recorded for her 2001 album Britney as Timberlake, 45, helped with the composition and lyrics of the song.
The two were famously dating at the time as they worked on the track with songwriters and producers Bradley Daymond and Alex Greggs, longtime NSYNC collaborators who work under the name Riprock ‘n’ Alex G.
The track was released ahead of the album’s 25th anniversary edition which is set to be released on November 6.
Interestingly, the track was released without much fanfare as there was no press release from her record label RCA nor any posts from Spears herself except for a Facebook Reel video.
Perhaps that has to do with the fact that Spears had sold her entire music catalog for around $200 million in February.
A previously unreleased Britney Spears track in collaboration with ex Justin Timberlake is currently streaming but some fans have opted to not give it any play in solidarity with the Toxic hitmaker 24 years after their split (Above, the former couple in LA in January 2001)
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Fans had a surprisingly lukewarm reaction to the new track as Spears fanpage @breatheheavy on Instagram posted the news as one fan wrote: ‘Remember, she sold her whole music catalog this year. Now she has no control over what is released and what they do with her music. She wouldn’t want this song released.’
Others were not happy that Timberlake had a writing credit and thus will ultimately profit monetarily from the release.
A fan commented: ‘Thanks for letting us know Justin Timberlake has a writting credit… skip.’
Spears famously dated Timberlake from 1999 to 2002 and despite it being nearly two-and-a-half decades fans still are not over it.
Timberlake has been feeling the wrath of Spears fans for the last few years, particularly following the release of her 2023 memoir The Woman In Me.
The book contained a series of explosive revelations about their romance: revealing he urged her to have an abortion when she fell pregnant and that he made her look like a ‘harlot who’d broken the heart of America’s golden boy’.
Timberlake was trolled by Spears fans as her side of the story finally came out two decades on and The Britney Army have continued to support her now.
In January her fans sent her 2011 song Selfish back up the charts after her ex dropped his new single with the same name.
Selfish (Justin’s version) was the lead single on his new album Everything I Thought It Was, his first studio album since 2018’s Man Of The Woods.
The 44-year-old pop star surprised many as she finally released the track titled She’ll Never Be Me which was originally recorded for her 2001 album Britney as Timberlake, 45, helped with the composition and lyrics of the song
The track was released ahead of the album’s 25th anniversary edition which is set to be released on November 6
One fan wrote about Spears selling her catalog earlier this year for around $200 million as they speculated that she would not have wanted this song to ever seen the light of day
The track was released ahead of the album’s 25th anniversary edition which is set to be released on November 6
Fans had a surprisingly lukewarm reaction to the new track as Spears fanpage @breatheheavy on Instagram posted the news
Spears made multiple accusations against her ex Justin in her 2023 memoir The Woman In Me, including criticizing his 2002 track Cry Me a River for how it made her look.
When they split his career soared. Albums and songs were promoted under the narrative that Spears broke his heart.
In the music video for Cry Me a River, he even used a Spears lookalike and she was vilified for their break-up.
In 2018 Timberlake said he was so emotional following his split from Spears that he unloaded his feelings by writing Cry Me a River in just two hours.
Yet in her 2023 memoir, Spears revealed she got pregnant by Timberlake in 2000 with the singer undergoing an abortion because the N*Sync star ‘didn’t want to be a father.’
The Toxic hitmaker detailed the ‘agonizing’ decision to terminate the pregnancy after conceiving in late 2000 when the pair were both 19.
The star claimed while she wanted the baby and ‘dreamed of having a family’ with Timberlake, he ‘wasn’t ready’ for the responsibilities of parenthood and thought the pair were too young.
She wrote: ‘It was a surprise, but for me, it wasn’t a tragedy. I loved Justin so much. I always expected us to have a family together one day. This would just be much earlier than I’d anticipated.
Spears dated Timberlake from 1999 to 2002; pictured 2002
‘He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young. I’m sure people will hate me for this, but I agreed not to have the baby.
‘I don’t know if that was the right decision. If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it. And yet Justin was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father.’
It was also claimed in the book Spears reveals she was raised ‘not to get an abortion’ due to religious reasons and what she had learned from her family, reports TMZ.
She went on to accuse Timberlake of cheating on her during their three-year relationship.
Spears didn’t name the person the hitmaker allegedly cheated on her with, referring to her as ‘another celebrity.’
Timberlake appeared to reference the criticism while performing at the opening of the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas in December 2023.
Ahead of launching into the hit song, he told the audience: ‘No disrespect.’