Introducing Endless Mode: A New Games & Anime Site from Paste
We’re going to go right out and call “Toxic” Britney Spears’ best-ever song, as it uses an insanely evil and addictive hook to tell the story of that person you should give up but you know you can’t. Spears released “Toxic” on her fourth studio album, In The Zone, in 2003, even before she met Kevin Federline, making the cut eerily prescient. Still, she sells it well, expertly straddling the line between lovelorn and lambasting, and leaving her teeny-bopper image in the dust.
Spears’ complete conquest of the song is even more obvious today, thanks to a surprising un-Auto-Tuned version of “Toxic” that’s making the rounds. Spears’ sweet and sultry unaided vocals surpass the heavily orchestrated version with their vulnerable sincerity: