- Britney Spears fans are reassessing the meaning of her song "Everytime" and its music video.
- It comes after Spears revealed she had an abortion while dating Justin Timberlake between 1999 and 2002.
Britney Spears fans are reassessing the meaning of her song '"Everytime" and its music video after the singer said she had an abortion while dating Justin Timberlake.
Spears and Timberlake began dating in 1999, when she was 17 and he was 18. They broke up in 2002.
Shortly after their split, Timberlake released his single "Cry Me a River" in 2002. The song's accompanying video features a woman who bears a resemblance to Spears cheating on Timberlake with another man.
Spears then released "Everytime," which fans speculated at the time was a response to Timberlake's track.
"Every time I see you in my dreams / I see your face, you're haunting me / I guess I need you baby," she sings on the track.
During an interview with MTV in 2004, Spears said of the song: "It's about heartbreak, it's about your first love, your first true love. That's something all people can relate to, because you all have that first love that you think you're going to be with the rest of your life."
The 41-year-old star, however, has never confirmed that the song is about Timberlake, and in light of her revelation about her abortion, fans are now theorizing the song is actually about her pregnancy.
"Everytime by Britney Spears has such a new meaning now. It being a lullaby saying how she needs her baby," wrote one fan on X, the platform previously known as Twitter.
Another fan wrote: "In Britney's Everytime video she is wearing a large baby pink bag in front of her stomach, that during a fight she tosses away. At the end of the video, it's (her) baby girl that is born."
—Stella (@Stella76011218) October 18, 2023
A Spears fan page shared a video of Spears performing the song, during which she appears to caress her stomach.
"it all makes sense now," they wrote.
—Britney Spears Crave (Fan Page) (@britneyscrave) October 17, 2023
"So, Britney Spears' Everytime is actually a lullaby for her unborn child with Justin Timberlake," theorized another fan. "This makes the meaning of the song a whole lot different now. She's drowning herself to be with her baby; that's my interpretation of the song & MV."
—·· (@kosabarjap) October 17, 2023
The news of Spears' abortion was shared by People on Tuesday.
In an excerpt from the singer's upcoming memoir published by the magazine, Spears says she had the abortion because Timberlake said he wasn't ready for fatherhood.
"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 writes in "The Woman In Me," per People.
"But Justin definitely wasn't happy about the pregnancy," she adds. "He said we weren't ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young."
Spears went on to say that she doesn't know if aborting the child was the right decision.
"If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it," she writes. "And yet Justin was so sure that he didn't want to be a father."
A representative for Timberlake did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.