Britney: "Would You Hold It Against Me?"

After many weeks full of temptation from teasers of her new hit single, "Hold It Against Me", Britney Spears' latest hit, which premiered tonight, seems to be a nostalgic piece. That's right, nostalgic. In the video, she stands in the middle of hundreds of screens that play her old music videos, including "Lucky", "Baby One More Time" and "Sometimes", the songs that made her the superstar she is today.


For the past few weeks, 14 teasers of the video have been put up on Spears' YouTube page, including one that was uploaded earlier today. The first single off her upcoming album, "Femme Fatale", was first released on MTV, edited. Shortly after, the unedited version was uploaded on her YouTube page, which showed some scenes that weren't visible in the MTV version, such as Spears spraying her "Radiance by Britney Spears" perfume and going on Plentyoffish.com.

The music video is basically a "behind-the-scenes" kind of video, showing cameras that film Britney Spears looking/dancing at the cameras, and the equipment used for the video. There is also a fight scene between Britney and herself, which a body double was used for one. The video was directed by Swedish director Jonas Akerlund, who has directed music videos for other well-known pop icons such as Beyonce, Lenny Kravitz, Madonna and Lady Gaga.

This music video is no doubt, very different from all of her music videos: girl fight, behind-the-scenes, internet usage (and did I mention a Sony touch-screen monitor), some product shout-outs as well (MAKE UP FOREVER, SONY, Radiance). But what really sets it apart from her old music videos ("Baby One More Time", "...Oops, I Did It Again", "Britney", "In The Zone" days) is the lack of dancing on her part. Many might not notice since her backup dancers are covering for her (hence the word "backup"), but Britney use to trace every dance move for dance move with her dancers and these days it seems like she only does half of it, which is very disappointing. I think the one thing that has always stood out to me about Britney Spears was her choreography but for this video, and some that succeeded it, she has danced less and less.

Unedited version of "Hold It Against Me":