Britney Spears may be refraining from performing live, in protest of her father’s role as her financial conservator, but that hasn’t stopped the flow of new music from the pop star.
Released Thursday night, the new single “Matches” pairs the “Toxic” singer with fellow late-’90s pop idols the Backstreet Boys.
“What a GLORIOUS day it is... we’ve been asked about the possibility of a collab like this for the past 20 years and today is the day!!,” the Backstreet Boys wrote on Twitter. "#BritneyXBackstreet is finally here! #Matches is out now on @britneyspears’ Glory Deluxe.”
“Glory Deluxe,” which dropped Friday, is the second 2020 rerelease of Spears’ 2016 album, her ninth studio effort. In addition to the extra track “Matches,” it includes “Swimming in the Stars,” another single the pop artist recorded years ago and released Dec. 2.
The song “Mood Ring (by Demand)” was an additional track on the standard version of the reissue and is also included on the deluxe reissue. When the single came out this past May, it was the first “new” music in years in the U.S. from the “Oops! ... I Did It Again” singer. Recorded during the “Glory” sessions in 2015-16, it had previously been available only in Japan.
It’s been a rough year for Spears, whose battle to remove her father as the conservator of her estate — a job he’s held since her 2008 meltdown — has been heightened by the fan-fueled #FreeBritney movement on social media.
Jamie Spears stepped down as conservator of his daughter’s person in September 2019, citing his own health problems. He was replaced by temporary conservator Jodi Montgomery, who helps run a fiduciary company with her husband and was already Britney’s care manager
“My client has informed me that she is afraid of her father. She will not perform as long as her father is in charge of her career,” the singer’s attorney, Samuel D. Ingham III, said in November during a hearing conducted via phone and video conference.
Jamie Spears argued that he had turned his daughter’s estate, once debt-ridden and facing millions of dollars in lawsuits, into one worth more than $60 million.
Britney Spears had asked that the Bessemer Trust Co. be appointed to manage her estate in place of her father. Instead, the judge made Bessemer a co-conservator, while keeping the right to remove Jamie Spears at a future date.
