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Britney Spears and the curse of the scrapped music video: 6 times it's happened before
​Film it baby one more time.
8 AUGUST 2016

While she might be just about to set the music world ablaze again with her recently announced ninth album, Britney Spears still remains one of the most enigmatic, revered and loved people in the music industry. And, with a career that spans nearly 20 years, there are bound to be certain… mysteries that surround the singer.

Of course there is the rumoured scrapped album, Original Doll, along with fan-favourite myths behind songs like 'Rebellion' and 'Mona Lisa'. However, any Britney aficionado will also know that the singer has her fair share of visual mysteries, too, including scrapped videos, alternative cuts and puzzling editing. So, we've delved into Brit's videography to uncover the secrets stored inside the vaults.

1. 'Everytime' originally had a deadly ending
Directed by David LaChapelle, 'Everytime' is one of those Britney videos that lingers with you well after the four minutes are up. This is, we guess, partly due to the prophetic nature of the video; it scarily predicted the way Ms. Spears would be vehemently hounded by the press and paparazzi just years later, and wheeled out on a stretcher for the world to see. There's even a massive poster for "Britney Spears: Live in Las Vegas". Godney knows…

While the finished product touches on themes of life, death and rebirth, the original concept for the video was also weirdly close to the bone. According to MTV, 'Everytime' was originally meant to see Britney attempt to take her own life in the bathtub. The original treatment for the video was loosely based on the 1995 Nicolas Cage film, Leaving Las Vegas, and would have seen Britney take an overdose, surrounded by pill bottles.

Like in the video that was released, we were meant to see Britney wondering around, but unsure if she was alive or not. "Ambiguity is all that remains," MTV is quoted as saying. "Is Britney alive? Dead? A ghost? Did she kill herself off before the tabloids could? Did she kill herself so that she could be reborn?" Allegedly, the video was to end without any resolution.

We can kind of understand why this wasn't quite the final version, can't you?

2. 'Outrageous' sparked a decade of difficulties
Britney lore would later place a lot of importance on the 'Outrageous' video shoot. It was where Britney injured herself, forcing her to cancel the rest of 'The Onyx Hotel Tour', which, if you believe in speculation and conspiracies, was the beginning of nearly ten years of difficulties for Brit, including accusations that her dancing was never the same again.

So what went down? Well, 'Outrageous' was allegedly meant to be the theme song for the 2004 Catwoman film starring Halle Berry. While shooting the video in Queens, New York City, with Snoop Dogg, who was due to appear on a remix of the song, Britney injured her knee while performing some choreography. Britney was rushed to hospital where they discovered she had floating cartilage in her knee and she underwent surgery.

Ultimately, 'Outrageous' was scrapped as a single, along with the video which was left incomplete. Of course, this being Britney Spears, footage from the shoot leaked online (which you can watch above) and it does look pretty fun.

3. 'Gimme More' was initially supposed to give us more
For many, when you think of 2007 you think of Britney Spears. The star had her most troublesome year, and her private problems were made very, very public by constant hounding by the paparazzi.

Nevertheless, Britney still managed to release one of the best albums of her career that year, the dark, dingy and delectable Blackout, which featured 'Gimme More'. However, much like Britney's personal life, multiple issues marred Blackout and 'Gimme More'. Many of the former's tracks were leaked online weeks before it was released, and Britney gave an oddly distant performance of the latter at the VMAs that year.

The video for 'Gimme More' is also shrouded in the dark cloud of 2007. Unlike 'Outrageous' there definitely is a video, yet the one that was released was very different to the original concept. According to rumours on fan forums, the 'Gimme More' video was meant to feature a funeral, with Britney being kidnapped and maybe even murdered.

The fact that there was meant to be a plot involved rather than random pole dancing has never been confirmed, but in 2014 Mikal Sky, Britney's makeup artist on the video shoot, gave an interview saying that Britney purposefully sabotaged the original concept of the video. "She had just shaved her head and was getting nothing but bad press. She sabotaged the director by refusing to perform and follow the script," Sky said. "So, what we got was her dancing on a stripper pole with her friends."

Footage that leaked in 2011 seemed to confirm that there was, indeed, some kind of plot involved, as Britney can be seen wearing sexy funeral garb and strutting down a Los Angeles street. There's even a scene with Britney sitting in fishnets on a zebra print patterned bedspread with a cat. None of it, however, hints towards a kidnapping or murder plot.

As Ms. Spears says in her cover of 'My Prerogative', "People can take everything away from you, but they can never take away your truth. But the question is… can you handle mine?"

We're not gonna lie, Brit, we're ready for the tea on this one.

4. 'Piece of Me'/'Break The Ice'/'Hot As Ice'
Both 'Piece of Me' and 'Break the Ice' have music videos respectively, but it's Britney Spears and there are always stories to tell.

According to reports by US Weekly, Britney was more than 12 hours late for the video shoot of 'Piece of Me'. This didn't seem to faze director Wayne Isham, however, who said that Brit "kicked ass". "People made a big thing about it; how could she not be late, when you have 50, 65, 75 people running down the street chasing her car?" he recalled to MTV News. "That was a long day for the crew. It was literally a 20-hour day for the crew. She was there for the last six hours of it. She got there late, showed up and just kicked ass."

In fact, Britney choreographed the final dance routine during the bathroom scene of the video herself. "You know, it's about the storyline, it's about her dance, it's about her appearance. I just love that she's one of the few that are still left that step up to what music videos are about."

The story about 'Break The Ice' is less scandalous, and may even be completely made up. According to rapper Fabolous, he was meant to feature on a remix of the song - which obviously later made its way online - and there was meant to be a video, too.

Similarly, an interview with Robert Baker, owner of Millennium Dance Studios, revealed that Britney was rehearsing in 2008 for a video shoot of Blackout's 'Hot As Ice'. Again, this has never been 100% confirmed.

5. 'Perfume' was supposed to be more Tarantino and less Nicholas Sparks
Released in November 2013, 'Perfume' was the first Britney Spears ballad to be released as a single since 2005's Chaotic EP track, 'Someday (I Will Understand)'. You would have thought, then, that the video for the track should match the greats like 'Everytime'. And originally, that was the plan.

According to a leaked video treatment, the concept of 'Perfume' read like something from a Quentin Tarantino movie. Originally, Britney was meant to play a hitman who is hired to kill the man she loves. Obviously, Brit can't commit the deed, and skips town. As the leak says, "She knows she is not safe around him. Doing this, she knows she will be killed for abandoning her mission to kill this guy. She hides out in a hotel and is taken by other assassins, beaten and tied to a chair." The ending of the video sees Britney lying in a hotel room beaten and bruised; while we see the man she sacrificed her life for find happiness.

Leaked photos that appeared on fan site Breathe Heavy seemed to confirm this narrative, while paparazzi pictures from the video shoot show Britney wielding a gun. Disappointingly, this highly exciting concept was not to be, despite being shot. Instead, the music video for 'Perfume' was neutered beyond recognition, something director Joseph Kahn said that "sucks".

"The released edit is missing half of the story and all of the editorial structure. It took a lot of serious salvaging of footage to get it to an acceptable place after the concept was gutted," he said in an interview with VideoStatic. "It's such a faint reflection of the real narrative with broken execution and far less ambition."

No official explanation has been given as to why the released edit of the video was so heavily altered. Although, if the leaks of 'Outrageous' and 'Gimme More' are anything to go by, we're sure the "director's cut" of 'Perfume' will appear at some point in the not too distant future.

6. 'Make Me…' was too electrifying and sexy
Every Britney Spears era should come with a trigger warning: something along the way will not go to plan. Normally these things would be brushed under the proverbial carpet, but unfortunately for Team Britney certain leaks have meant that this misstep is very public.

Of course we're talking about the video for Britney's latest single, 'Make Me…'. In June, rumours started to circulate that Britney was recording the video for her latest single, a collaboration with G-Eazy. More excitingly than that, however, was the news that David LaChapelle, the director of the 'Everytime' video, was coming out of semi-retirement to direct the clip.

Initially, Britney seemed into it, sharing pictures from the set on her infamous Instagram account, along with a picture with G-Eazy. Then things went fairly quiet. Cut to a couple of weeks later and snippets from the unmastered version of the video had begun to leak on to the internet. The video looked like a seriously sexy affair, with scenes of Britney surrounded by half-naked dancers. Following the leaks, the release of 'Make Me…' was allegedly pulled forward, yet no video materialised.

When the video for 'Make Me…' finally appeared, it wasn't quite what fans were expecting. It seems that somewhere along the way the original LaChapelle concept had been scrapped in favour of a supposedly tamer video directed by Randee St. Nicholas.

Fans were perturbed by this apparent misstep and within minutes of the video's premiere someone leaked a further snippet from the original concept, which sees Britney throw a TV out of a window electrocuting and killing a dancer, a cheetah eating out of a dog bowl and a scene where G-Eazy and Britney have sex.

Similarly, an e-petition was set up requesting that RCA, Britney's label, release the original concept for the video. Fans also noted that in the moments in the new video that feature G-Eazy, the time stamp for the raw footage can also be seen.

According to a statement released to Rolling Stone, RCA said that the LaChapelle video wasn't "a suitable representation of the song". Elsewhere, rumours started to circulate that there had been creative differences between Camp Spears and LaChapelle, leading him to recall all the footage, including the images he took as part of the album artwork.

It's unknown right now whether Britney and her team plan to attempt to release the original concept before the whole thing leaks online. We guess this is just another thing to add to the many mysteries of Britney Spears.