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Britney Spears: The Complete Video Guide

Tracking the star's rise, fall and comeback via a decade of official clips

Posted Feb 21, 2008 5:30 PM

" ... Baby One More Time" | 1998, From ... Baby One More Time

Best Known For: Being the most iconic clip ever set in a high school.

Plot: Liberated by the school bell, a Catholic-schoolgirl-clad Spears has an elaborate daydream that involves grooving in the hallway, doing back-flips outside of school and rocking out on the basketball court. Even the grumpy teacher feels the beat (sorta) by the end.

"Sometimes" | 1999, From ... Baby One More Time

Best Known For: Purifying the sexy persona Spears introduced in the "... Baby One More Time" video.

Plot: A virginal Britney in a long, flowing white dress (and other demure outfits) gazes at a clean-cut boy on the beach, then does some chaste choreography that features her dancers forming a heart while she sings that she only wants to "hold you tight, treat you right." She leaves alone.

"(You Drive Me) Crazy" | 1999, From ... Baby One More Time

Best Known For: Featuring Melissa Joan Hart and a pre-Entourage Adrian Grenier, the stars of the movie of the same name.

Plot: In a sparkly green tank top, Spears leads a crew of kids in a group dance at a wacky Sixties-style diner (Spears also plays a waitress). Hart and Grenier, who don't appear to dance so well, chill at the bar.

"Born to Make You Happy" | 1999, From ... Baby One More Time

Best Known For: Being the first Spears video with a totally inscrutable plot that demonstrates how Spears' handlers walked a tricky line between making the singer sexy and safe.

Plot: Britney first appears curled up in bed in butterfly pajamas. She appears to have a dream in which she has an edgier haircut and is transported to an icey, sterile room, but then she breaks into choreography on top of a wooden structure. An open-shirted hunk strides into her bedroom and the two playfully pillow-fight.

"From the Bottom of My Broken Heart" | 2000, From ... Baby One More Time

Best Known For: Again portraying Spears as being trapped somewhere between childhood and adulthood.

Plot: A bitter breakup leads Spears to pack up her doll and other essentials, say farewell to her mom and little sister and catch a bus out of her small, rural town. There are shots of Spears on a swing, making out with her boyfriend on a water tower and singing on her porch wearing a Blossom hat.

"Oops! ... I Did It Again" | 2000, From Oops! ... I Did It Again

Best Known For: Introducing choreography that almost anyone could — and did — do.

Plot: An astronaut finds a dusty artifact that somehow beckons Spears in a red vinyl jumpsuit. As the lyrics indicate, Spears plays with his heart while the crew on Earth watches in amusement. At one point, the smitten spaceman offers Spears the jewel from the end of Titanic.

"Lucky" | 2000, From Oops! ... I Did It Again

Best Known For: Being the first Spears video to focus on what would become a recurring theme: her conflicted relationship to fame.

Plot: Irony alert! This is the story of an adored Hollywood girl named Lucky who hates her life. Spears plays the pampered star who has flowing tresses and jewels, not to mention hair and makeup people at her disposal. She wins awards and greets her fans ... though she yearns for something more.

"Stronger" | 2000, From Oops! ... I Did It Again

Best Known For: Being Spears' first proclamation of fierce independence (the clip is also for the first to show off her questionable driving skills).

Plot: Spears is rejected by a guy in a club and takes her revenge by dancing alone elsewhere with a magical chair. She also drives a car angrily in the rain, dances with a cane and strides confidently across a bridge.

"Don't Let Me Be the Last to Know" | 2001, From Oops! ... I Did It Again

Best Known For: Explicit sexual content.

Plot: In this steamy Herb Ritts-directed clip, Spears shocked audiences by seductively stroking her boyfriend next to a beach bonfire and singing dramatically in a bikini (at least she's still wearing a dainty crucifix!).

"I'm a Slave 4 U" | 2001, From Britney

Best Known For: Breaking down whatever sexual boundaries were left for Britney to hurtle after the "Don't Let Me Be the Last to Know" clip.

Plot: In this sultry sweatfest, Spears writhes and slithers in a sauna of a warehouse, doing some of her most difficult and alluring choreography to date. DJ Skribble has a cameo.

"Overprotected" - International Version | 2001, From Britney

Best Known For: Bearing witness to how Spears bristled at being under the thumb of her handlers.

Plot: A sunglasses-clad Spears presses past paparazzi into a waiting convertible and speeds to an alley; inside a warehouse she pontificates on wanting her freedom and not wanting "to be so damn protected." A crew of friends busts in and Spears cuts loose in an angry, defiant dance. Walking down a dizzying hallway papered with her own photos and headlines, the walls start closing in on her, and Britney pushes back and shakes her ass.

"Overprotected" - Darkchild Remix | 2002, From Britney limited edition

"I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman" | 2001, From Britney

Best Known For: Backpedaling from the saucy image she cultivated in recent clips.

Plot: On a pictoresque mountaintop, a pensive Britney muses on her tricky ascent into sexual maturity. The clip is cut with scenes from Crossroads, Spears' coming-of-age road-trip movie that starred Justin Long, Taryn Manning and Kim Cattrall.

"I Love Rock 'n Roll" | 2002, From Britney

"Boys" - The Co-Ed Remix | 2002, From Britney and the Austin Powers in Goldmember soundtrack

Best Known For: Mike Myers' "Beautiful Stranger"-esque cameo

Plot: After DJ Qualls tries to get into a Britney party and is denied, the camera flies through the air to a Medieval castle where Britney is dancing and hanging out near a pool. Pharrell appears to flirt and sing the song's hook, then a woefully out of place Austin Powers arrives and winds up taking Spears home.

"Me Against the Music" | 2003, From In the Zone

Best Known For: Flirting with the idea that Spears and guest-star Madonna will kiss (as they did at that year's VMAs).

Plot: Spears pulls up to a club and leads a crew of dancers in tight choreography while Madonna watches from a nearby room, her image projected above the crowd on screens. Brit dances in a day-glo graffiti room while Madonna rolls around in some leaves, then they dance-duel in a room that's bare, save for a metal bedframe. The two nearly kiss at the end, but Madonna vanishes before they make contact.

"Toxic" | 2004, From In the Zone

Best Known For: Looking like a cheap Charlie's Angels rip-off.

Plot: Spears plays a flight attendant-slash-secret agent who seduces a seemingly nerdy passenger in an airplane bathroom, then rips off his face to reveal a hot guy. Next, she's in a pinkish wig, riding with Tyson Beckford on a motorcyle through a futuristic city. Suddenly things are blowing up, Brit's in a lab, there are lasers and cheap sci-fi effects.

"Everytime" | 2004, From In the Zone

Best Known For: Being horribly prophetic and depressing.

Plot: Stephen Dorff guests in this David LaChappelle-directed clip that eerily foreshadows Britney's future troubles with fame and mental instability. Grotesque paparazzi swarm her limo as Britney fights her way past them, only to face a rack of tabloids screaming headlines about her life. Britney strips down for a bath, and as she lays back her hands bleed like stigmata and she sinks below the water. An out-of-body Britney looks on at the frantic scene at the hospital as doctors struggle to revive her; Dorff discovers her body and leaps into the tub to save her; she's taken away strapped to a gurney and paparazzi chase her lifeless body into the back of the ambulance. But it was all evidently a dream — she later emerges from the tub gasping for air and smiling.

"Outrageous" | 2004, From In the Zone

Best Known For: Not being completed.

Plot: Spears injured her knee mid-way through filming this clip, so all that remains is forty-five seconds of footage of Snoop Dogg playing basketball and a baggy-shorts-wearing Spears dribbling a ball, then leaping into Snoop's embrace and licking his face. If only we knew how it ends!

"My Prerogative" | 2004, From Greatest Hits: My Prerogative

Best Known For: Being Britney's defiant retort to anyone who thought her quickie romance with Kevin Federline was a bad idea.

Plot: Spears drives a car that's careening out of control, lands in a swimming pool, hops out and writhes on its hood. She then rolls around on a bed "Like a Virgin" style. She's actually at a mansion hosting a wedding reception; she arrives with K-Fed, makes out with him and the tape flickers to an end.

"Do Somethin' " | 2005, From Greatest Hits: My Prerogative

Best Known For: Being the subject of a lawsuit by Louis Vuitton; the company protested the fact that Spears used their patented pattern in the car featured in this video.

Plot: Spears co-directed this clip that begins with herself and a small posse riding a pink Hummer in the sky in a very literal interpretation of the song's opening lyrics. The crew enters a club and everyone freezes when Spears' pals put on a little show as security cameras laser in on them. Finally Britney's girls become a band (she's the lead singer) and the club springs to life.

"Someday (I Will Understand)" | 2005, From the TV show Britney & Kevin: Chaotic

Best Known For: Being the first video apperance of a visibly pregnant Spears.

Plot: Spears sings to her unborn first child in a serene clip, where not much happens aside from Britney getting out of bed and gazing at the Roman sculptures in her garden.

Exposed Midriff? Nope, but she rocks a prominant belly bump.

Prescient Lyric: "Nothing seems to be the way that it used to / Everything seems shallow"

"Gimme More" | 2006, From Blackout

Best Known For: Marking Britney's long-awaited return to video-making after her publicized series of breakdowns.

Plot: Back in the club as though she never left, a blonde- (and then curiously black)-wigged Spears in torn fishnets twirls around stripper poles with little energy while other clubgoers watch.

"Piece of Me" | 2007, From Blackout

Best Known For: Its difficult shoot; Spears showed up 12 hours late. But MTV loved the results: the clip received three Moonmen (Brit's first-ever) at the Video Music Awards.

Plot: Brit preps for a night out of facing the paparazzi, dragging one pap into the bathroom only to discover a camera taped to his chest. Celebrity magazine covers fly by as Spears tears them down, and she later does a little low-impact group choreography (her first since 2005's "Do Something' ") in the bathroom.

"Break the Ice" | 2008, From Blackout

Best Known For: Not featuring a real-live Britney. Spears was in no shape to be lip-synching and dancing, so her label found a solution — an anime clip featuring a curvy cartoon Spears.

Plot: "Toxic" on steroids — cartoon Britney is a spy with a deadly kiss and a detonator, taking on the bad guys with deception and big guns.

"Womanizer" | 2008, From Circus

Best Known For: Being Britney's triumphant return to music videos. The first clip from Circus is widely hailed as her official comeback.

Plot: "Toxic" meets The Office. Spears snares her two-timing womanizing boyfriend by dressing up as a sexy office worker, sexy waitress and sexy chauffeur. The guy falls for all three, and gets ditched in the end. The video is peppered with shots of a nude Spears lounging in a sauna, just blowing off a little steam.

"Circus" | 2008, From Circus

Best Known For: Being one of the primary scenes of the documentary Britney: For the Record and providing fans with a glimpse of what her Circus world tour might look like.

Plot: One of Spears' most literal videos — she sings and dances in a circus ring, with live elephants and lions beside her.