I'm addicted to you, don't you know that you're toxic ? ☠️ @BritneySpears 🇺🇲 #FREEBRITNEY

Toxic is a song by American singer Britney Spears, taken from her fourth studio album In the Zone (2003). It was written and produced by Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg (known collectively as Bloodshy & Avant), with additional writing from Cathy Dennis and Henrik Jonback. Released as the second single from In the Zone, the song was initially offered to Kylie Minogue for her ninth studio album Body Language, but she turned it down. After trying to choose between "(I Got That) Boom Boom" and "Outrageous" to be the second single, Spears selected "Toxic" instead. A dance-pop and techno-pop song with elements of bhangra music, "Toxic" features varied instrumentation, such as drums, synthesizers and surf guitar. It is accompanied by high-pitched Bollywood strings, sampled from Lata Mangeshkar and S. P. Balasubrahmanyam's "Tere Mere Beech Mein" (1981), and breathy vocals. Its lyrics draw an extended metaphor of a lover as a dangerous yet addictive drug.

"Toxic" received acclaim from music critics, who praised its hook and chorus while calling it the strongest track on In the Zone. It won Best Dance Recording at the 47th Annual Grammy Awards, marking the first Grammy win of Spears' career. The song attained worldwide success, reaching the top five in 15 countries, while topping the charts in Australia, Canada, Hungary, Ireland, Norway and the United Kingdom. In the United States, it became her fourth top-ten single, peaking at number nine. The accompanying music video for "Toxic" was directed by Joseph Kahn and features references to Blade Runner, The Seven Year Itch and John Woo films. It features Spears as a secret agent in search of a vial of green liquid. After she steals it, she enters an apartment and poisons her boyfriend. The video also includes interspersed scenes of Spears naked with diamonds on her body. After Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson's Super Bowl incident, the video was considered too racy for MTV and was moved to late-night programming.

Spears has performed "Toxic" in live appearances, including the 2004 NRJ Music Awards and three of her concert tours. It was the opening number of The Onyx Hotel Tour (2004), where she sang atop a bus wearing a black catsuit; Spears also performed remixed versions of "Toxic" at The Circus Starring Britney Spears (2009), the Femme Fatale Tour (2011) and Britney: Piece of Me (2013). "Toxic" has been covered by artists such as Mark Ronson, A Static Lullaby, Reece Mastin and Ingrid Michaelson, and in the TV series Glee. It has also appeared in films such as Knocked Up, You Again and Pitch Perfect 3, and TV series Doctor Who and Chuck. "Toxic" has been included in lists by Pitchfork, NME and Rolling Stone as one of the best songs of the 2000s.

Toxic" is a classic dance-pop and techno-pop song, featuring elements of bhangra music. It features varied instrumentation, such as drums, synthesizers, violins, and high-pitched strings. It also contains surf guitar, that according to Caryn Ganz of Spin, "warps and struts like it's been fed into The Matrix." The music was also compared to the soundtracks of the James Bond film series.[11] The hook of "Toxic" samples a portion of "Tere Mere Beech Mein", from the soundtrack of the 1981 Hindi film Ek Duuje Ke Liye. However, it is not lifted verbatim from the score and mixes two different sections of the piece for the introduction section; later in the song, the cut-up sample is dropped in favor of a re-recorded string arrangement to improve the quality of the melody as evidenced by the multitrack recordings available on the internet. Spears sings the song with breathy vocals. Some of the refrains were inspired by pieces of classical music, such as "Flight of the Bumblebee", "Eine kleine Nachtmusik", and "Dumky Trio". NME described the song as presenting "piercing strings, hip-hop beats, eastern flavour and a dangerous escapade with temptation."

According to the sheet music published at Musicnotes.com by EMI Music Publishing, "Toxic" is composed in the key of C minor, with a tempo of 143 beats per minute. Spears's vocal range spans from the low note of F3 to the high note of G5. Lyrically, "Toxic" talks about being addicted to a lover. Spears refers to her addiction in the lyrics and sings lines such as "Too high / Can't come down / Losing my head / Spinning round and round" in a falsetto. A reviewer from Popdust called the verse "The most representative lyric of the song's delirious, disorienting charm." "Toxic" ends with an outro in which Spears sings the lines, "Intoxicate me now / With your lovin' now / I think I'm ready now."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_(song)

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Taken on: January 13, 2004

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