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“With a taste of your lips, I’m on a ride”! Twenty years ago, Britney Spears released her banger single “Toxic,” and I’ve yet to recover from its accompanying music video. Sampling the Indian Hindi song “Tere Mere Beech Mein” by Lata Mangeshkar and S. P. Balasubrahmanyam, the earworm-y track is a catchy piece of pop genius, and the action-packed music video is just as magical. Directed by Joseph Kahn, “Toxic” reimagines Spears as some sort of spy-slash-assassin who’s on a mission to poison her cheating ex. The concept, dreamed up by Spears, sees her in an array of stylish disguises, ranging from a sexy flight attendant to a leather-clad vixen.
The video has it all. Action! Fashion! A random steamy shower scene! But nothing tops the range of iconic costumes. Let’s start with the princess of pop’s first outfit: Up high in the sky, we meet Spears as a flight attendant. Her azure blue getup—a futuristic, sharp-shoulder minidress with a keyhole cutout—comes complete with a little cap and chandelier earrings. The look, which has since become an iconic Halloween costume, was created custom for Spears by designer Jeremy Scott. Spears then follows it up with her most famous “Toxic” look—which is not an ensemble at all but rather just her bare body covered entirely in glued-on diamonds. (No, it’s not a catsuit, contrary to popular belief.)
Playing up the dressed-to-kill vibe, Spears then emerges in a skintight black catsuit with leather harness accents—to ride on a motorcycle with Tyson Beckford, naturally. It wouldn’t be a 2000s video without a hot man in the mix. Her outfit—complete with a bright red wig and futuristic sunglasses—has been so influential that Taylor Swift channeled it in her 2014 “Bad Blood” video, which shares a similar plot (only there Swift is out for revenge on her backstabbing friend, played by Selena Gomez).
The pièce de résistance, meanwhile, comes at the climactic end of the video, when Spears scales a skyscraper, backflips into the penthouse, and finally confronts her ex in a leather bra, pants, opera gloves, and a dramatic sheer cape. Folks, they quite simply don’t do pop videos like this anymore. And two decades later, I still can’t stop rewatching it. It’s the greatest pop video ever made. To quote the song, “I’m addicted to you—don’t you know that you’re toxic?”
