When producer Andrew Watt first met Britney Spears to record his parts for “Hold Me Closer” — a club-ready duet with Elton John and his first new song in six years — he asked her who her favorite artists were. “She’s like, ‘Honestly, Elton John,'” he recalled. “She said, ”Tiny Dancer’ is literally one of my favorite songs, which is why I wanted to do it.
His passion for the song shines through in the three-minute reworking of the hit, which adds a springy disco beat, a hint of cavernous echo and warm synths to the original. On the song, John and Spears sing the verses of John’s 1992 single, “The One,” in separate octaves, as a springy guitar line extends around the vocals and envelops them. It’s a feel-good moment thanks to Spears’ signature adlibs (a “baby” here and there) and melismatic melodies. She looks free, which is exactly what her fans hoped she would look after last year’s announcement that she would be released from the restrictive conservatorship that bound her for years. The song became an instant hit when it was released last week, reaching number one in the UK and becoming ubiquitous in the US.
“It’s so damn cool that I’m singing with one of the most classic men of our time… Elton John!!!” she wrote on Twitter. “I’m a bit overwhelmed. … This is a big problem for me!!!
“I am absolutely thrilled to have had the chance to work with Britney Spears,” John said in a statement. “She’s truly an icon, one of the biggest pop stars of all time and she sounds amazing on this record. I love her so much and I’m thrilled with what we’ve created together.
It was John and his husband David Furnish’s idea to invite Spears to sing on the track, as the pair considered artists John could collaborate with after the success of his blockbuster “Cold Heart.” Lockdown sessions duet with Dua Lipa. John had met Spears at the 2014 Oscars viewing party for her AIDS foundation, and she had tweeted the following year about his love for “Tiny Dancer”.
“It was long because [Britney] had been doing a lot of press about how she was doing with music for a while,” Watt says. “Elton reached out, and she loved the idea and wanted to do it.” The producer – who first met John in 2019 while working on Ozzy Osbourne’s song ‘Ordinary Man’, which featured the two singers together – originally chose ‘Tiny Dancer’ “not only [because it’s] one of my all time favorite songs, yet one of the greatest recordings/songs/ballads of all time. But he especially wanted to listen to the original multitracks. Getting Spears on the song was just icing on the cake for him, as she had the same ardor and attention to detail as him.
Initially, Watt thought reworking the 50-year-old track would be a learning experience. “I was just like, ‘If it sucks, nobody’s ever gonna have to hear it,'” he laughs. He asked his friend, producer Cirkut, to work on it with him, and they eventually discovered a Hendrix-esque guitar line, played on the original by Caleb Quaye, that even Elton John couldn’t remember. “He was like, ‘I love that. Like, did you just record that?’” Watt said. “I was like, ‘Man, no.’” They turned it into a loop of 16 bars, played with the tempo and gave it a four-on-the-floor club rhythm.
“What Elton brilliantly said to me was, ‘Don’t put so much pressure on yourself,'” Watt said. “’It’s not the ‘New Tiny Dancer’; it’s a fun new version that people can listen to when they’re having a drink in Ibiza and dancing to it. It’s not serious.’ I was like, ‘Okay, let me put this fucking hat on: I’m in Ibiza. I have a fucking tequila in my hand. What do I want to listen to, but what else does Elton feel? ‘”
They played along with the strings, even interpolating samples from John’s first platinum duet, “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”, and underlined John’s chorus “Hold me closer, hold me closer” in the ‘out. John liked it so much that he had Watt and Cirkut make it the center of the track, and they reworked it into a more danceable song structure. John added new piano lines, including a bit of Rhodes – dueting with himself, half a century apart – and played along with the verses of “The One” with a new melody. They felt good but knew it would become something else when Spears added her roles.
“She had her own ideas,” Watt says. “She wanted to speed up the record a bit, and we did that. She’s such a dance music pro and she understands that stuff and what works for her.
She was so prepared that all it took was a day in Watt’s studio to get it right. “She knew exactly what she wanted to do,” he says. “She had spent tons of time with the record; she knew all the words; it was, like, her thing. And it was really awesome to witness and see her be so powerful and crush him. She sounds amazing on the record and she was involved right through to the final mix.
Although this was Spears’ first recording in six years, Watt says she showed no apprehension; she arrived at the studio with her manager and husband and was ready to go. The only thing that confused her was how spacious Watt’s studio is since she was used to singing in dimly lit isolated vocal booths. “She was like, ‘OK, where am I going to record?'” he said. “I was like, ‘The mic is right in front of you.’ She’s like, ‘Am I singing here?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, but I’m here and this way we can communicate.’ She did and she really enjoyed being there. We were all there and that made it more fun. We were just talking back and forth, and I was getting so excited when she put her vocals on the record It just brought it to life and it was really positive.
Spears spent a lot of time refining her vocals, requesting additional takes to meet her own standards. “She did it so many times she didn’t need to be told,” he says. “She knows when she has the right vocal take.” For the outro, they played the music several times so she could vibrate, that’s when she closed her eyes and played with the melodies. “She was so free and getting better,” he says. “That’s where all the adlibs come from; she was playing drop and this melody. These moments are so “her” and so much of her personality.
Watt and Cirkut then worked on a mix of his various vocal takes, which Watt calls a “treasure”, and mixed them with John’s vocals. She collaborated with them throughout the process giving notes so they could do it just for her.
In the end, Watt was thrilled to hear her falsetto on the song, which he likens to her singing on “Toxic”, and how her voice meshes with John’s. “That falsetto is so Britney,” he says. “It couldn’t have been on the song without her. I love that they sing together, that their voices work so well together. Once she sang that chorus, I threw my headphones in. air. I was like, ‘Oh, my God. It’s like the voice of Britney Spears singing “Tiny Dancer”. It’s just iconic and amazing.