Britney Spears returns with Elton John in Hold Me Closer

Oops – he did it again.

Elton John Thursday night released his new single “Hold Me Closer,” a gorgeous duet with Britney Spears that fuses John’s early ’70s classic “Tiny Dancer” with the lead single from his 1992 album “The One.”

Although rude and delicious, the new song is an apparent attempt to replicate the success of “cold heartJohn’s 2021 collaboration with Dua Lipa, which blended many of his older tunes—most notably “Rocket Man” and “Sacrifice”—into a simple wireless taste that catapulted John to the top ten on Billboard’s Hot 100 for the first time in more than two decades.

And the gambit is likely to work: Produced by Andrew Watt, who paired Ozzy Osbourne with Post Malone a few years ago for manybroadcast timestake what you want“Hold Me Closer” is pop, sausage, and liveliness: three and a half minutes of sparkling electro-pop from LA-lady sung by the coolest 75-year-old in the world and the hottest blue jeans of a ’90s kid. You can’t really tell them apart thanks to the Auto-Tune buckets which makes the pairing even sweeter.

For Spears, 40, “Hold Me Closer” — which according to the song’s credits also intersperses”do not break My HeartJohn’s 1976 #1 chart-topping duet with Kiki D – serves as a kind of gig coming after a recent legal victory that freed her from the stressful tutelage that has governed her life and work for nearly 14 years. The song is her first new music since her album ‘Glory’ 2016, a fact that clearly left her feeling vulnerable when she recorded her vocals in Los Angeles.

John told The Guardian in Interview Posted Thursday. “We were holding her hand through the whole process, reassuring her that everything would be okay.”

For John, a proudly acknowledged trend-watcher, records “Hold Me Closer” as the latest sign of his pop wits: Not only did he understand how much goodwill was pent-up for Spears in the wake of #FreeBritney; He knew, in a summer defined by the House Music Revival, that the way to frame her comeback was with funky bass and an airy piano atop a groove quartet on the floor.

And the melody, of course, everyone already knows by heart. Remixing himself has always been Elton John’s prerogative: the next month – shortly before he played Dodger Stadium in a repeat of the famous 1975 concerts there – the singer’s 1997 remake of “candle in the wind‘, whose words about Marilyn Monroe rewritten by Bernie Tobin in honor of the late Princess Diana, will be 25 years old.