Don't You Know That You're Toxic? The True Story of Britney Spears' 'Toxic'

By early 2004, Britney Spears had FIRMLY established herself at the pinnacle of pop Music. 

Britney had already claimed the title of being the best selling teenage artist of all time thanks to the successes of her albums Baby One More Time and …Oops I Did it Again, and she had just become the youngest artist to be inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame at age 21. 

Britney had also already gone a whopping 26x times platinum for her first three mega hit records released in 1999, 2000, and 2001, and she would quickly add another 2 million records to that tally for her 2003 Effort In the Zone, essentially as soon as it was released.

The debut single from In The Zone; a Madonna collab called 'Me Against The Music' peaked at a very un-Britney-like #35 on the Billboard Hot 100, but it wouldn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, 

because like the album title implied - Britney Spears was In The Zone, and as 2003 turned to 2004 - we were all about to go on a ride.

Just in time for it's 20th Anniversary; this is the story of Britney Spears' 'Toxic' with newly unearthed audio from Britney Spears herself.

Note: a previous version of this episode identified Joseph Kahn as Joseph Hahn. We regret the error.