Is Britney Spears and Elton John’s Fun Single ‘Hold Me Closer’ the Beginning of Her Comeback?

Britney’s back, bitch.

After weeks of teases, nostalgic cover art, and a bizarrely haphazard debut at a French restaurant, Elton John has released “Hold Me Closer,” his new collaboration with Britney Spears that officially ends her six-year musical drought.

And what a thirst-quencher it is. Spears’ track record of collaborations hasn’t always been stellar—for every Madonna and Rihanna smash she’s had, there’s been an unfortunate Iggy Azalea or G-Eazy misstep. Thankfully, this one’s a winner that finds Spears back in a familiar club groove, only slightly shedding the robo-Britney vocal effects that plagued her post-Blackout releases and instead unlocking the deeper register we (finally) got to hear on her last studio album, 2016’s underrated Glory.

Her vocals here are relatively subdued, but she’s a perfectly fine match for John, as the pop royals deliver the well-worn chorus of “Tiny Dancer,” filtered through a Euro disco club lens. This isn’t Russell Hammond melancholily singing along to “Tiny Dancer” the morning after an acid-fueled bender. This is more like what happened the night before, when he was inspired to scream “I’m a golden god!” from a rooftop. In other words, it’s fun. Breezy. Euphoric, even, especially when Spears tosses in some playful ad-libs and a couple of her iconic “baby’s” and “mmm-yeah’s.”

Much like “Cold Heart (PNAU Remix),” John’s hit 2021 collaboration with Dua Lipa, “Hold Me Closer” is a slick mash-up of classic Elton tunes. The new song features that aforementioned “Tiny Dancer” chorus, while the verses are taken from “The One,” the sweeping, piano-driven title track of his 23rd studio album, released in 1992.

And that’s where we get some poignant context for this new collab. The One was John’s first album following his rehabilitation from drug and alcohol addiction. The singer’s manager John Rein told the Los Angeles Times in 1992, “He had had a lot of fear going in to make the album because he hadn’t made an album sober [in some time].” John later explained to Rolling Stone, “I was used to making records under the haze of alcohol or drugs. And here I was, 100 percent sober, so it was tough.”

Eventually, he got his songwriting groove back and completed the album, which propelled him back to pop stardom and became his first Top 10 album in the U.S. since 1976. It also marked the beginning of a wildly prolific time in his career in the early ’90s, when he wrote and performed the Oscar-winning soundtrack to Disney’s The Lion King and shot back to the top of the album and singles charts.