I re-listened to Britney Spears' self-titled album 20 years after its release, and these 6 songs hit differently knowing about her conservatorship battle

Spears gave her interpretation of the song, which was the lead single off of her third album, during an episode of MTV's "Making the Video" in 2001: "It's basically saying, 'I'm a slave for the music.' Like, when you go into a club, you can't help yourself, you're enraptured in it."

The "I'm a Slave 4 U" video and lyrics suggest a sexier theme. The video features Spears and a crowd of dancers sweating together in an abandoned bathhouse while they perform choreography that sometimes requires them to rub up against each other's sculpted, glowing bodies. In the refrain,

Spears asks, "Baby, don't you wanna dance up on me/Leaving behind my name and age?"

Even barely out of my tweens at the time the song debuted, it was hard to believe that Spears was declaring her devotion to the rhythm of the song.

But 20 years later, it doesn't matter whether Spears was talking to a person or the concept of dancing at the time, because the lyrics sound like they could've come out of a journal entry she wrote right before appearing in court to speak out about the conditions she was enduring under her conservatorship, which was terminated Friday by a Los Angeles judge.

The opening lyrics of the song, where Spears sings about being allowed to do what she wants to do, are particularly resonant:

To be clear, "I'm a Slave 4 U" was written by Chad Hugo and Pharrell (aka The Neptunes) and was originally intended to be a song for Janet Jackson, as reported by Billboard.

But listening to the song now feels a bit eerie to me, given how Spears directly compared living and working under her conservatorship to "enslavement" during her explosive June 23 court testimony.

"Ma'am, I'm not here to be anyone's slave. I can say no to a dance move," the pop star told Judge Brenda Penny during her June testimony while recounting a time she says members of her team told her therapist she wasn't "cooperating" after she'd refused to do a dance move.

Spears also spoke about the ways she was "always threatened" by her father and former co-conservator, Jamie Spears, and others who "participated" in the conservatorship. "If I don't do this, what they tell me to enslave me to do, they're gonna punish me," she said in her June testimony.

The title of "Overprotected" most directly describes the life Spears said she's lived under conservatorship.

The song, the second single off of "Britney," was written by Max Martin and Rami Yacoub. But Spears told Daily Record around the time of the album's release that she related to this song "on a personal basis" because she felt "kind of overprotected." She said that it was hard for her to go out because "everything has to be organized in advance."

As the protagonist in "Overprotected," Spears sings at the beginning of the first verse, "I need to make mistakes just to learn who I am/And I don't want to be so damn protected."

In her June court testimony, the pop star said that she was forced to work against her will and that her "credit card, cash, phone, passport" were taken away. She also said that she was forced to perform in Las Vegas against her will.

"I tell them what I like, what I want, what I don't/But every time I do I stand corrected," the pop star sang in 2001.

Twenty years later, she took the stand to make sure no one could interrupt her and because of that, "Overprotected" will never sound the same to me again.

"Lonely" is the first song on "Britney" that Spears has a cowriting credit on. She wrote it with Josh Schwartz, Brian Kierulf, and Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins.

Even though it's about lost romance more than personal growth, pressures of fame, or independence, after Spears' June testimony, I can't get the bridge out of my head:

"I've lied and told the whole world: 'I'm OK and I'm happy.' It's a lie," Spears testified in June. "Because I've been in denial. I've been in shock. I am traumatized. You know, fake it till you make it."

She continued: "But now I'm telling you the truth, okay? I'm not happy. I can't sleep. I'm so angry it's insane. And I'm depressed. I cry every day."

"I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman" was the third single released off of "Britney," released to promote Spears' feature film debut, "Crossroads."

It's an awkwardly worded coming-of-age ballad, written by Martin, Yacoub, and Dido Armstrong. It mostly refers to Spears' "Crossroads" character Lucy's journey to find her mother, but Spears had just turned 20 when it was released as a single, so there is an obvious connection to her own age at the time.

Today, Spears is a 39-year-old woman. But there is a verse in the song that relates to the constraints she had been under for years:

"It's embarrassing and demoralizing what I've been through," Spears said to Judge Penny in court in her June testimony. "And mainly, I didn't want to say it openly, because I honestly don't think anyone would believe me."

"I just want my life back," she added.

Spears cowrote "Cinderella" with Martin and Yacoub.

It's a bit of a dark fairytale about the end of a fictional relationship with references to the story of Cinderella because of all of the labor the song's protagonist does in her relationship. Spears sings:

In her June court testimony, Spears told Judge Penny that she was tired of making "a living for so many people" and yet being told she's "not good enough."

"But I'm great at what I do," she continued, adding later: "All I want is to own my money, for this to end, and my boyfriend to drive me in his fucking car."

"Cinderella" reminds me of how intensely Spears has been fighting to take back power from her father.

"He loved the control to hurt his own daughter," she said in court back in June.

Spears told Daily Record in 2001 that "Let Me Be," a track she wrote with Schwartz and Kierulf, is about "being in a relationship and the guy is overbearing and you want to be your own person."

Listening in 2021, I can't help but take any reference to a romantic partner out of it and think about the words as they relate to her family and conservatorship, especially after hearing Spears say back in June that she and her partner Sam Asghari were prevented from taking the next steps in their relationship.

"I want to be able to get married and have a baby. I was told right now in the conservatorship, I'm not able to get married or have a baby," Spears testified in June. "I wanted to take the IUD out so I could start trying to have another baby. But this so-called team won't let me go to the doctor to take it out because they don't want me to have children – any more children."

Spears is constantly praising Asghari for staying by her side on Instagram and has opened up in numerous posts recently about how constraints of the conservatorship won't let her do what she wants to do.

However, she did reach one milestone within the confines of her conservatorship — she and Asghari got engaged in September 2021.