25 years later, Britney Spears’ 2001 VMAs performance still mesmerizes

EDITOR’S NOTE: Delving into the archives of pop culture history, “ Remember When? ” is a CNN Style series offering a nostalgic look at the celebrity outfits that defined their eras.

Britney Spears was ready to drop a new single. But how? It was 2001, and Spears was the biggest pop star in the world, with her 10-time-platinum sophomore album, “Oops! I Did It Again” behind her. The public would be expecting something suitably huge.

They got something even bigger than that. Spears decided to deliver the new song, “I’m a Slave 4 U,” live on stage at New York City’s Metropolitan Opera house, during the annual MTV Video Music Awards.

There would be no concert previews or early radio release or teaser clips to prepare the way. The world had to sit down, tune in, and see what might unfold.

What came next set a standard that was genuinely, historically impossible to follow — a risk-taking spectacle that could only have happened at the turn of this century, in those last years before mass media fragmented into millions of personal screens fed by millions of personal cameras, before constant performing and constant exposure took their painful, visible toll on Spears herself.

A 19-year-old Spears stepped casually out of a gilded metal cage, where a white tiger sat behind her. She wore a moss green bra-like top, aquamarine disco shorts, and bedazzled nude-hued boots. Around her was a sea of dancers in animalistic garb — zebra-striped body paint, dual-toned neon wigs — as a pulsating beat produced by The Neptunes blared through the venue and television screens nationwide.

And there was the snake — a 7-foot long, 20-pound albino Burmese python named “Banana” that the star seductively draped across her shoulders for the last portion of the performance.

That image of Spears in jaw-dropping form, wielding a magnetic stare, and commanding not just the stage but the entire world watching at home defined the singer’s peak as a performer. It also stands in stark contrast with the life Spears now lives today. Since being released from a years-long conservatorship where her personal and professional life was controlled by her now estranged father Jamie Spears, the singer has expressed countless times — via social media and her published memoir — that she has no desire to perform ever again.

“The reason this performance has such a legacy is because there’s never been an artist as famous as Britney since Britney,” said Amber Horsburgh, a writer and culture critic. “The technology at the time, the appointment viewing aspect, the importance of MTV, and the Britney Spears MTV collision of it all — it had such a chokehold on the culture at the time.”

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The jungle-goddess costume was the work of designers Kurt Swanson and Bart Mueller.

“Because we had already done so much together, there was a huge level of trust and how specific looks came together was kind of kinetic,” Mueller wrote in an email. “The lyrics inspired the choreography, which fueled the concepts, and then there was Britney’s performance and energy. It all shaped our design directions. Everything was custom right down to the nude mesh, lucite wedge heel boots that we had hand-sewn crystal anklets to, including a shining sequined serpent wrapping around one leg to punch up the Eve reference.”

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Showing skin was a key part of the overall look, but there were also a number of blink-and-you’d-miss it details that brought the ensemble together together. Every piece — the pleated wrap top, the shorts adorned with trailing shards of silk chiffon — was hand-dyed or painted and then covered in Swarovski crystals. “We were crystal- obsessed back then,” said Swanson. “We even had Swarovski tattoo body jewelry applied to her skin.”

Anna Maria Tinghino/Geisler-Foto/dpa/AP

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What the designers hadn’t considered in putting the outfit together was that a live tiger would be joining the singer on stage.

The rehearsals in the leadup to the show had been human-only, Swanson said. “The day of the VMAs at the tech rehearsal was the first time any of us had been with the wild animals,” he recalled. The tiger’s trainer — Bhagavan “Doc” Antle, long before his appearance in “Tiger King” made him famous — instructed them on the protocol for sharing the stage with a huge, inherently wild animal.

“It kind of boiled down to staying out of the animal’s sight lines and that there couldn’t be anything to distract it,” Swanson said. . “Nothing that dangled or moved in a way that might attract the tiger’s attention.”

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“Well,” Mueller said, “Britney’s entire look, with the dancing trailing fabric and feathers, her hair….Britney was basically a shiny life-sized cat toy for one giant cat!”

Spears’s head choreographer, the 18-year-old Wade Robson, slightly reworked the staging with Antle to keep Spears out of the siteline.

Swanson and Mueller were eager to be a part of shaping a new sartorial era for the singer. They also designed her look in the “I’m a Slave 4 U” music video that premiered weeks later, incorporating similar motifs — like bold jewel hues and flowing chiffon detailing — so the two projects could feel connected.

“We loved the colors of the jungle, iridescent beetle green, electric colors of exotic birds, insects, flowers,” Swanson said. “Fuschia, emerald, turquoise, acid yellow all became the palette for this performance. We loved the iconic curvy silhouettes of jungle warrior princesses in the art of Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo. We were obsessed with traditional belly dancing and the way fabric moved and jewelry and ornamentation would jingle and accentuate the shape of the choreography.”

“The way that Britney moves was always what pushed our design,” Mueller said. “The way she performed ‘Slave’ specifically, shaped the look.”

Spears’ MTV performance was also one of the first set-designing jobs led by Ray Winkler, the CEO and design director of STUFISH Entertainment Architects. Winkler recalled having only three weeks to work with MTV and Spears’s creative team to produce the stage design, at a time when digital collaboration was in its early infancy. There were no pre-production Zoom meetings, but rather the juggle of scheduling international calls and waiting for another part of the world to wake up in order to receive vital feedback.

STUFISH Entertainment Architects

“Those days meant hard core sketching, sketching again, scanning, and believe it or not, we had to fax things,” Winkler said. “LA, New York, London. How do you align? You didn’t have the internet to tell you what time it was exactly where, you know, or people couldn’t just respond, say, “Oh, I can’t do this..”

What Winkler landed on with Robson, was the concept of elevated welded cages that the singer and her crew of dancers would dance around on.

“I was very worried about the welds of the cage being strong enough to contain the tiger,” said Winkler. Ahead of the televised performance, he said, the animal handlers fed the feline “a lot of raw steaks” to ensure it wouldn’t be hungry on stage. “I don’t know if you would get away with that in this day and age.” “I call that time sort of within an envelope of innocence because social media didn’t exist,” Winkler said. “We — the team, producers, artists, production — had pretty much exclusive access to how this would be portrayed to the wider audiences because nobody in the live audience had a mobile phone that they could record it. The director’s cut was the only cut that was made available.”

That level of control helped give the performance its enduring power. “It was very, very tailor-made to her,” Winkler said. “ It was made for what I would still call the analog MTV consumer. And I often wonder whether this had been done in this day and age now if it would have the same impact, just because it has to vie with so many other flashpoints of interest, and the attention span, which was already terrible in the early noughties, is completely evaporated now. She was an icon at the time, and still is, to be clear. But at the time that this happened, it cemented her status as somebody who was willing to take risks, and it was a big risk. But she pulled it off.”

Brian Friedman, one of Spears’ longtime choreographers and dancers, knew even before they hit the stage at the VMAs that year that “I’m a Slave 4 U” would strike a chord with listeners. The sultry dance moves seen on stage and in the music video was also one of the first major credited choreographing gigs Friedman had received at that point in his career. Alongside Robson, the pair went on to create some of Spears’ most recognizable dance breaks, still recreated and performed by fans to this day.

“I was completely obsessed with the song the second that I heard it and the choreographic process with Wade and I — it just flowed,” Friedman said. “When we first played around with the choreography at her house, it was just undeniable that it was going to be a smash. Never did I think that it was going to be what ‘Thriller’ and ‘Rhythm Nation’ were to me as a kid growing up. It truly has stood the test of time and become one of those landmark pop dance moments.”

Friedman was clued into every creative update as it came, including the inclusion of the live snake and tiger.

“We’re both maximalists when it comes to visuals,” he said. “She had done so many performances that it gets to the point where you’re thinking, well, what haven’t we done? What can we do to stand out and make a memorable performance?” Friedman is also acutely aware that now there’s a new lens to look through when people revisit a Britney Spears performance. In her 2023 memoir “The Woman In Me,” Spears described the conservatorship and her then grueling performance schedule as the “death to my creativity as an artist.” Friedman remembers a period of time however — pre-conservatorship — when Spears was in control of her career, and witnessed her thrive.

“A lot of people feel that she was some sort of manufactured pop star or a puppet in some sort of way, and that couldn’t have been further from the truth. Especially in that era, she was such a hard worker,” he shared. “Her schedule was being pushed on her, but the work ethic wasn’t. She truly loved what she was doing. She loved being on stage, and she loved to sweat and be in the dance studio in rehearsals with the dancers.”

Could there be another Britney Spears? Should there be one? Latter-day stars politely shrug off the comparisons; fans are chastened by having witnessed how fame — and a craving for control — undid their favorite performer.

“She has made it very clear that she doesn’t want to be performing right now, so I honor that in her and respect her wishes,” Friedman said. Still, he said, the sight of Spears’s idol Madonna flourishing at the age of 68 leaves him hoping Britney might someday get back onstage again.

Horsburgh, the writer and culture critic, said that Spears’s past triumphs stand on their own.

“Of course you miss Britney Spears, and of course you want another album, and you want another tour — but I actually hope that she never goes back to the stage ever again if she doesn’t want to, and her fanbase and the general public can understand and respect that,” said Horbough. “Clearly, she doesn’t communicate often, but when she does, she’s been very clear — ‘I’m not performing ever again. I’m finished.’ We as fans have to ask less right now, not ask more of her. She’s got such a huge legacy and such a catalog of incredible music, incredible visuals, incredible albums — that legacy should be preserved.”

编者按：深入挖掘流行文化历史档案，“忆往昔？”是 CNN Style 的一个系列节目，以怀旧的视角回顾了定义各个时代的明星服装。

布兰妮·斯皮尔斯准备发行新单曲。但该如何发行呢？当时是2001年，斯皮尔斯是全球最炙手可热的流行巨星，她的第二张专辑《Oops! I Did It Again》销量已达十白金。公众期待的是一首同样惊艳的作品。

他们甚至还得到了比这更棒的东西。布兰妮·斯皮尔斯决定在纽约大都会歌剧院举行的年度MTV音乐录影带大奖颁奖典礼上，现场演唱她的新歌《I'm a Slave 4 U》。

不会有任何演唱会预热，也不会提前在电台播放或发布预告片。全世界只能静下心来，收听节目，看看会发生什么。

接下来发生的事情树立了一个真正意义上、历史上不可能被超越的标准——一场冒险的奇观，只能发生在本世纪初，在大众媒体分裂成数百万个由数百万个个人摄像头驱动的个人屏幕之前的最后几年，在不断的表演和不断的曝光对斯皮尔斯本人造成痛苦、显而易见的伤害之前的那些年。

19岁的布兰妮·斯皮尔斯从一个镀金的金属笼子里悠然走出来，笼子里一只白虎就蹲在她身后。她身穿一件苔绿色的胸罩式上衣、一条水蓝色的迪斯科短裤和一双镶满亮片的裸色靴子。在她周围，一群身着动物装束的舞者——斑马纹的身体彩绘、双色霓虹假发——伴随着The Neptunes制作的强劲节拍，场馆和全国的电视屏幕上都播放着这段音乐。

还有那条蛇——一条7英尺长、20磅重的白化缅甸蟒蛇，名叫“香蕉”，这位明星在表演的最后部分性感地将它披在肩上。

那张布兰妮·斯皮尔斯惊艳全场、眼神摄人心魄、不仅掌控着舞台，更征服了全世界观众的画面，定义了她作为表演者的巅峰时期。而这与她如今的生活形成了鲜明的对比。自从摆脱了长达数年的监护——她的个人生活和职业生涯都由如今已疏远的父亲杰米·斯皮尔斯掌控——之后，这位歌手通过社交媒体和已出版的回忆录无数次表达了她再也不想登台表演的愿望。

“这场表演之所以能成为经典，是因为自布兰妮之后，再也没有哪个艺人能像她一样家喻户晓，”作家兼文化评论家安珀·霍斯伯格说道。“当时的科技水平、观众的准时收看习惯、MTV的重要性，以及布兰妮·斯皮尔斯与MTV的碰撞——这一切对当时的文化产生了巨大的影响。”

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丛林女神的服装由设计师库尔特·斯旺森和巴特·穆勒设计。

“因为我们之前已经合作过很多次，彼此之间建立了高度的信任，所以具体的造型设计也自然而然地成型，”穆勒在邮件中写道。“歌词启发了编舞，编舞又激发了概念的构思，再加上布兰妮的表演和活力，所有这些都塑造了我们的设计方向。从裸色网纱到透明亚克力坡跟靴，所有细节都是定制的，我们还手工缝制了水晶脚链，其中一条闪亮的亮片蛇形脚链缠绕在一条腿上，强化了夏娃的意象。”

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露肤是整体造型的关键，但还有许多稍纵即逝的细节，让整套服装浑然一体。每一件单品——褶裥裹身式上衣、饰有飘逸丝绸雪纺碎片的短裤——都是手工染色或绘制，然后缀满施华洛世奇水晶。“我们当时对水晶简直着迷，”斯旺森说道，“我们甚至把施华洛世奇水晶纹身贴在了她的皮肤上。”

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设计师们在设计这套服装时没有考虑到的是，会有一只活老虎和这位歌手一起登台演出。

斯旺森说，颁奖典礼前的彩排都是由人进行的。“MTV音乐录影带大奖颁奖典礼当天的技术彩排，是我们所有人第一次和野生动物待在一起，”他回忆道。老虎的驯兽师——巴格万·“道克”·安特尔（早在因出演《虎王》而声名鹊起之前）——指导他们如何与体型庞大、天性野性的动物同台演出。

斯旺森说：“关键在于要避开老虎的视线，不能有任何东西分散它的注意力。不能有任何会晃动或以任何方式吸引老虎注意的东西。”

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“嗯，”穆勒说，“布兰妮的整个造型，飘逸的布料和羽毛，还有她的头发……布兰妮简直就像一只闪闪发光的真人大小的猫玩具，是给一只巨型猫玩的！”

斯皮尔斯的首席编舞，18 岁的韦德·罗布森，与安特尔一起对舞台布景稍作修改，以使斯皮尔斯不会出现在观众的视线范围内。

斯旺森和穆勒渴望参与塑造这位歌手的全新着装风格。她们还为几周后首播的歌曲《I'm a Slave 4 U》的音乐录影带设计了她的造型，融入了类似的元素——例如大胆的宝石色调和飘逸的雪纺细节——使这两个项目之间能够产生联系。

“我们热爱丛林的色彩，闪烁着虹彩光泽的甲虫绿，异域鸟类、昆虫和花朵的绚丽色彩，”斯旺森说道。“紫红色、祖母绿、绿松石色、亮黄色，这些都成为了这场表演的调色板。我们钟爱弗兰克·弗雷泽塔和鲍里斯·瓦列霍画作中丛林女战士公主们标志性的曲线轮廓。我们痴迷于传统的肚皮舞，以及舞裙飘动的姿态，还有珠宝和饰品叮当作响，衬托出舞蹈动作的优美线条。”

“布兰妮的舞姿一直是我们设计的灵感来源，”穆勒说。“尤其是她表演《Slave》的方式，塑造了我们的造型。”

布兰妮·斯皮尔斯在MTV音乐录影带大奖上的表演，也是STUFISH娱乐建筑事务所首席执行官兼设计总监雷·温克勒(Ray Winkler)主导的首批舞台设计项目之一。温克勒回忆说，当时他只有三周时间与MTV和斯皮尔斯的创意团队合作完成舞台设计，而那时数字协作还处于起步阶段。没有前期制作的Zoom会议，取而代之的是安排国际通话，并等待世界另一端的人醒来才能收到至关重要的反馈。

STUFISH娱乐建筑师

“那时候意味着要不停地画草图，一遍又一遍地画，扫描，信不信由你，我们还得用传真发送东西，”温克勒说。“洛杉矶、纽约、伦敦。你怎么协调时间？那时候没有互联网告诉你确切的时间，你知道，人们也不能直接回复说，‘哦，我做不了……’”

温克勒和罗布森最终敲定的方案是，建造高架焊接笼，让歌手和她的舞者团队在上面跳舞。

“我当时非常担心笼子的焊接处是否足够牢固，能困住老虎，”温克勒说道。他表示，在电视直播演出前，动物饲养员喂了这只老虎“很多生牛排”，以确保它在舞台上不会挨饿。“我不知道在如今这个时代，这种做法是否还能被接受。”温克勒说，“我把那段时期称为一种天真无邪的时光，因为那时还没有社交媒体。”“我们——团队、制片人、艺术家、制作人员——几乎完全掌控着这场演出将如何呈现给更广泛的观众，因为现场观众中没有人会用手机录像。导演剪辑版是唯一对外发布的版本。”

这种掌控力赋予了这场表演持久的魅力。“这场表演完全是为她量身打造的，”温克勒说道，“它是为我至今仍称之为‘模拟时代MTV观众’的群体而创作的。我常常在想，如果这场表演放在今天，是否还能产生同样的效果，因为它必须与众多其他热点话题竞争，而人们的注意力持续时间——在21世纪初就已经很短了——如今更是彻底消失了。她当时是偶像，现在依然是，这一点毋庸置疑。但这场表演巩固了她敢于冒险的地位，而这的确是一次巨大的冒险。但她成功了。”

布莱恩·弗里德曼是布兰妮·斯皮尔斯的长期编舞和舞伴之一，早在当年MTV音乐录影带大奖颁奖典礼上，他们登上舞台之前，弗里德曼就预感到《I'm a Slave 4 U》这首歌会引起听众的共鸣。这首歌在舞台上和MV中展现的性感舞步，也是弗里德曼职业生涯中最早获得正式署名的编舞工作之一。他和罗布森一起，为斯皮尔斯创作了一些最经典的舞蹈片段，至今仍被歌迷们模仿和演绎。

“我一听到这首歌就彻底着迷了，我和韦德一起编舞的过程也十分顺利，”弗里德曼说道。“我们第一次在她家尝试编舞的时候，就确信这首歌一定会大火。我从未想过它会像《Thriller》和《Rhythm Nation》那样，成为我童年时代的经典。它经受住了时间的考验，成为了流行舞曲史上的里程碑之作。”

弗里德曼对每一个创意更新都了如指掌，包括加入活蛇和老虎。

“在视觉效果方面，我们俩都是极致主义者，”他说。“她表演过那么多场，你会忍不住想，还有什么我们没做过？我们还能做些什么来脱颖而出，打造一场令人难忘的表演？”弗里德曼也敏锐地意识到，如今人们重温布兰妮·斯皮尔斯的表演时，会用一种全新的视角来看待。在她2023年出版的回忆录《我心中的女人》中，斯皮尔斯将监护权以及当时她令人精疲力竭的演出安排描述为“扼杀我作为艺术家的创造力”。然而，弗里德曼记得，在监护权生效之前，斯皮尔斯曾掌控着自己的事业，并亲眼见证了她的辉煌时期。

“很多人觉得她是个被包装出来的流行歌星，或者某种程度上是个傀儡，但这完全是无稽之谈。尤其是在那个年代，她非常努力，”他说道。“她的日程安排很紧凑，但她的工作态度却始终如一。她真心热爱自己的工作。她热爱舞台，热爱挥汗如雨，热爱和舞者们一起在舞蹈教室排练。”

是否还会出现另一个布兰妮·斯皮尔斯？是否应该出现？如今的明星们礼貌地对这种比较不予理睬；而粉丝们则因亲眼目睹名利——以及对控制的渴望——如何毁掉他们最喜欢的艺人而感到痛心疾首。

弗里德曼说：“她已经非常明确地表示现在不想演出，所以我尊重她的意愿。” 不过，他也表示，看到布兰妮的偶像麦当娜68岁高龄依然风采依旧，让他不禁希望布兰妮有朝一日能够重返舞台。

作家兼文化评论家霍斯伯格表示，斯皮尔斯过去的成就本身就足以令人瞩目。

“当然，大家都会想念布兰妮·斯皮尔斯，当然，大家都会期待她的新专辑和新巡演——但我真心希望，如果她不想，就永远不要再回到舞台上，她的粉丝和公众都能理解并尊重这一点，”霍博说道。“显然，她不常与人交流，但每次她发声，她的立场都非常明确——‘我再也不会表演了。我的演艺生涯结束了。’作为粉丝，我们现在应该减少对她的要求，而不是对她提出更多要求。她拥有如此巨大的成就，留下了如此多的精彩音乐、精彩视觉效果和精彩专辑——这些遗产应该被传承下去。”