Britney Spears took to social media on Friday (July 26) to share her disappointment over Halsey’s music video for her new single “Lucky,” which interpolates Spears’ 2000 song of the same name, as well as Monica’s “Angel of Mine.”
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”For obvious reasons, I’m very upset about the Halsey video,” Spears wrote in a statement posted to X. “I feel harassed, violated and bullied. I didn’t know an artist like her and someone I looked up to and admired would illustrate me in such an ignorant way by tailoring me as a superficial pop star with no heart or concern at all.”
Spears added that she will be reaching out to her lawyers, before concluding, “It feels illegal and down right cruel.”
In the music video, Halsey juxtaposes the lonely and sometimes superficial aspects of fame with the musical dreams of her inner child, as well as the health problems they actively face.
“I shaved my head four times because I wanted to/ And then I did it one more time ’cause I got sick,” she sings on the track. “I left the doctor’s office full of tears/ Became a single mom at my premiere/ And I told everybody I was fine for a whole damn year/ And that’s the biggest lie of my career.”
The video also finds Halsey modeling a crystal bodysuit to parallel Spears’ “Toxic” visual and smiling for paparazzi on a red carpet. She later removes the bright pink wig she’d been wearing throughout the visual to reveal a shaved head before sitting down to receive treatment through an IV. At the end, she symbolically sits next to the little girl who worships her, unaware of the full story, on a swing set.
Of her decision to pay tribute to Spears — who personally approvedthe “Lucky” sample, Halsey previously revealed — the “Closer” artist tweeted, “I remember the first time I heard her sing lucky and it hitting me at such a young age that I had no idea what her life was really like.”
