“I thought Britney Spears wrote her own music”

Halsey previewed her latest single, “Lucky,” which samples Britney Spears’ hit of the same name and is taken from her 2000 sophomore album, Oops! I Did It Again.

Sharing the news with her fans, the 29-year-old Closer singer, who uses the pronouns “she” and “her,” revealed that at the age of five, “it always felt like Britney was singing directly to her.”

“24 years later, these words hit a different face. I love you forever,” she captioned a video of herself with pink hair, tiny shorts, and a white crop top with the word “Lucky” across the chest.

In Halsey’s new song, she sings almost the same chorus as Spears in her heartbreaking ballad, which goes: “But I’m so lucky, I’m a star, but I cry, cry, cry in my lonely heart, thinking: If I don’t lack anything in my life, then why do these tears come at night?”

The excerpt featured a slight variation from Spears’ original words, as Halsey chose to give the lyrics a first-person narration.

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In contrast, Spears originally sang, “She’s so lucky, she’s a star / but she cries, cries, cries in her lonely heart, thinking / if there’s nothing missing in my life / then why do these tears come at night?”

The track will be included on Halsey’s upcoming fifth studio album, which currently has no title.

Her release comes seven years after she was accused of insulting Spears following an interview in which she stated that Britney Spears wrote all of her own music.

In 2017, the mother of one said she had “never considered herself a CEO until recently.”

“At first it was naivety. I thought every artist did everything themselves. I thought Britney Spears wrote her own music – I thought every superstar designed their own live stage show, so I always just did those things,” she told Fast Company.

Halsey continued, “I’d obviously never been an artist before and we built the whole thing very organically. He never said no because he didn’t know what to do. And I just did everything myself because I didn’t have the resources otherwise.”

After the comments sparked a backlash, the three-time Grammy nominee posted on X (then Twitter): “Most things are easy to ignore, but this hurts because I just love her and have always spoken positively about her. Her genius is undeniable.”

“I love Britney so much and I wish people wouldn’t spread this stuff,” she added in a separate tweet in 2017. “I was just saying it takes a lot of people to finish a song.”

Despite her sincere apology, diehard fans of the “Toxic” singer were not so forgiving and accused her of “degrading artists in order to be relevant” during the interview shared by the X-account Pop Crave.

Halsey has apparently won Spears’ favor, as they now both follow each other on Instagram.

In 2021, as Spears fought to end her 13-year conservatorship, Halsey showed her support for the music icon by expressing her hope for her release.

“I hope with all my heart that she is freed from this abusive system,” wrote MaXXXine. “She deserves it more than anything. I admire her courage to stand up for herself today.”

She continued, “Also, fuck anyone who thinks they have the authority as an institution or individual to control a person’s reproductive health.”

Halsey’s new single follows the release of her song “The End,” in which she detailed her years-long, secret battle with her health.

Last month, Halsey announced that she had been diagnosed with both systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and a “rare” T-cell lymphoproliferative disease in 2022.

“I told myself I’m going to give myself two more years to be sick,” she said. “I’m going to be reborn at 30 and I’m not going to be sick and I’m going to look super hot and have tons of energy and I’m going to just repeat my 20s in my 30s.”

The new album, which will be released soon, is the follow-up to their fourth studio album, 2021’s ambitious If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power, which was produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails.

In 2022, Halsey shared on Instagram that she had been diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, Sjögre syndrome, mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS).