Britney Reissue Adds a Lost Justin Timberlake Song. The Vault Was Unlocked
RCA's expanded edition of Britney Spears's 2001 album adds five never-released tracks, including one her ex co-wrote. She hasn't said a word about any of it.
By the Heckle Desk · · 2 min read
On Friday, RCA released a 25th anniversary edition of Britney, Britney Spears's third studio album from 2001. It adds five recordings that were never officially released: She'll Never Be Me, Am I a Sinner, When I Say So, My Big Secret and Right Now (Taste the Victory). The first of those came out early, on Oct. 9, and it has a credit that got everybody's attention. Justin Timberlake co-wrote it, along with the 'NSYNC producers Riprock 'n' Alex G, back when he and Spears were the most photographed couple in America.
Reports called it Spears's first new song in three years, which is a generous use of the word new. It's 25 years old. It's new the way a fossil is new to the museum. But in the music business, anything nobody's heard yet counts as fresh, and anything everybody's heard counts as a classic, and the only thing that doesn't sell is the middle.
The detail that makes the whole thing strange is that Spears herself doesn't appear to have said anything about the song or the reissue at all. The record company has opened the vault, polished up the tapes and put her name on the box, and the woman on the cover is somewhere else entirely. If you've followed her life at all, that arrangement may sound familiar.
And then there's Timberlake, who gets a fresh songwriting credit on a Britney Spears record a quarter century after the breakup. In 2001 a man in his position got a frosted-tip haircut and a matching denim outfit. In 2026 he gets royalties. That's the real lesson of growing old in pop music: the outfits fade, the publishing is forever.
None of this is a knock on the songs, which fans have been trading as rumors and leaks for years. It's a fine thing to hear a lost track from a great pop era. It just feels a bit like a family selling the attic while grandmother is out of the house.
Old records, like old letters, are worth more once the people who wrote them stop answering the phone. The labels know it, and they've got the keys.