Britney Spears shot to fame as the quintessential sugar-pop princess but, in 2003, she showed her serious side with the moving hit ‘Everytime’.
And now, the track has acquired a whole new meaning in the light of revelations made in her upcoming memoir ‘The Woman in Me’.
In the autobiography, Spears, 41, claims that she fell pregnant during her three-year relationship with fellow superstar Justin Timberlake.
And while she’d been convinced that she and the NSYNC heartthrob would have children together “one day”, she said he “definitely wasn’t happy” about the news.
The singer wrote in an excerpt published by People on Tuesday: “I loved Justin so much. I always expected us to have a family together one day. This would just be much earlier than I’d anticipated.
“But Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young.”
She went on: “I’m sure people will hate me for this, but I agreed not to have the baby. I don’t know if that was the right decision. If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it.
“And yet Justin was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father.”
Spears then revealed that she had an abortion in late 2000 when she was just 18 or 19 years old, and said the procedure was “one of the most agonizing things” she had ever experienced.
Inevitably, the deeply personal disclosure soon dominated social media, with fans convinced that ‘Everytime’ was, in fact, a tribute to her lost, unborn child.
They swiftly scanned the music video and performances for clues – and the evidence seems pretty convincing.
In the end, the ‘Baby One More Time’ star went on to have two sons — Sean Preston, who is now 18, and Jayden James, who is 17 – with her ex-husband Kevin Federline.
Meanwhile, Timberlake also has two sons – Silas, 8, and Phineas, 3 – with his wife Jessica Biel.
The ‘Cry me a River’ idol had apparently been “concerned” about what Spears was going to write about him in her book, which will be released on 224 October.
“It’s eating at him,” one insider told Page Six.
Maybe now, to quote ‘Everytime’, it will haunt him, too.
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