The Meaning Behind Britney Spears’ Heavenly Ballad “Everytime”

Britney Spears’ “Everytime” came from a deeply personal place. The superstar cited it as one of the most personal songs on her 2003 album, In the Zone. The song arrived in the wake of her highly publicized breakup with Justin Timberlake in 2002 after three years of dating. Timberlake retaliated with his hit debut solo single, “Cry Me a River,” which shot to the top of the charts with its veiled references to why the relationship ended, which led many people to believe she had cheated, those rumors only growing when he cast a Spears look-a-like in the video.

But Spears took a gentler route by releasing the touching ballad “Everytime” which earned critical acclaim and reached the Top 15 on the Billboard Hot 100. It has long been speculated that the song was her response to “Cry Me a River.” “Everytime” could be viewed in a new light following a revelation Spears shared in an excerpt from her memoir, The Woman in Me, published in October 2023 that she was impregnated by Timberlake when they were dating and had an abortion.

“It was a surprise, but for me, it wasn’t a tragedy,” Spears said in the book, according to People. “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. But Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young…To this day, it’s one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life.”

The Meaning Behind the Song

Spears truly took the lead on “Everytime,” as it was one of nine songs she co-wrote on In the Zone. She teamed up with Greek-American artist Annet Artani to write the heartfelt ballad, with Spears coming up with the melody on the piano and then brought it to producer Guy Sigsworth to make tweaks.

“With ‘Everytime’ I wrote the whole thing from scratch on the piano,” she explained to Hip Online in 2003. “Musically there was no track or anything. I was just at my house and I did the whole thing by myself. And then I went and I played it for [Guy Sigmouth] and I just basically told him exactly how I wanted the song to sound…He got it just right. He was amazing. And so that song specifically, I did everything.”

Lyrically, the song was born out of a newfound friendship. In 2001, Artani was hired to be a background singer on Spears’ Dream Within a Dream Tour. While on the tour, she ended up dating the musical director, their short romance leading her to a friendship with Spears during the final tour stop in Mexico City.

[RELATED: Britney Spears Shares Excerpt from Upcoming Memoir: ‘I Didn’t Know What I Was Doing’]

“She was getting her nails done at the pool area. At one point, she called me over to tell me how cute me and the guy are and I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s not going to last.’ She goes, ‘What do you mean?’ and I was like, ‘Well, it looks like we’re going to break up,’ and she said, ‘Don’t worry about it, you’re going to hang out with me,’” Artani recalled to MuuMuse.

The two quickly became friends, sharing a bond over their mutual breakups and even attending Donatella Versace’s fashion show in Milan, Italy, together. “We commiserated because she, at that time, had broken up with Justin [Timberlake],” Artani explained. “He was talking shit about her at that time on the radio. He was getting personal. Here, she had a different type of image, and he was really exposing some stuff that she probably didn’t want out there, and in front of her little sister [Jamie Lynn Spears]…I remember her sister being mortified and her being mortified. I’m sure that that really hurt her.”

Instead, Spears took a softer approach to the harsh comments. Sitting around a piano in a “humongous house” in Lake Como, Italy, Spears and Artani started to write what would become “Everytime.” “It was a very organic, sad experience, but I think that’s where the truth comes out,” Artani observed.

“‘Everytime’ is just a really nice song because it’s kind of personal in a weird way,” Spears shared with Hip Online. “It’s one of the songs that when you hear, it’s like the kind of song when you go to heaven. It kind of takes you away. It takes you into a very cool consciousness I think.”

Spears herself has never confirmed or denied that the song is about Timberlake, telling Diane Sawyer in a 2003 interview: “I’ll let the song just speak for itself.”

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