"In The Zone" turns 20

In The Zone marked the end of the "good times" eras of Britney. It was the last album released before the stalkerazzi really went off the deep end, before the K-Fed mistake, and still years before the conservatorship.

This era had another massive marketing blitz. It began way back at the NFL kickoff concert, where Britney debuted Me Against The Music (then still Madonna-free). Then there was the instantly iconic VMA performance with the Madonna kiss. She appeared on SNL. She had that fabulous ABC special. She did all the talk show rounds. And there was that now infamous Diane Sawyer interview (which makes your skin crawl to watch today).

And then finally came the album. I never found ITZ to be as good as her previous 3 albums. But oh the highs. 

Lead single was Me Against The Music, re-done with a Madonna guest appearance. Honestly, I always thought this was a pretty weak lead single. It's an album filler song, with a high profile guest star. Britney obviously looked amazing in the video, but if I ranked her singles all time this would be bottom tier.

But the next single was Toxic, and that was a different story. I remember when I first heard the album it was obvious that this was the breakaway hit. Nothing else before or since has ever sounded like it. The crazy mix of sounds in it is unmatched. The video is awesome and iconic. It was a smash, still one of Britney's signature songs. And it also won her an elusive 1st Grammy.

The other obvious masterpiece on the album was the next single, Everytime. Her greatest pure ballad, an absolutely beautiful and sad song that we thought at the time (or some did) was her song about the break-up with Justin "Limp Dick" Timberlake. Now, she literally said during album promo that she had written the song a couple years earlier, so it couldn't have been about any break-up. But it sort of just became reality. Now we know years later what this song was truly inspired by, which only makes it sadder and more powerful. It has one of her best videos too.

We only got 3 official singles. Outrageous, a solid hip hop-y track written by (eep!) R. Kelly was to be the next video, but while shooting the video Britney hurt her knee and it hadn't be scrapped. As did the remainder of her Onyx Hotel Tour, including her scheduled stop that July at Target Center. I still have my unused ticket.

The rest of the album tracks are more of a mixed bag than previous albums.

I absolutely love the silly, rap/sung mix of Brave New Girl. Shadow is another beautiful ballad. Breathe On Me is easily the best of her trancey club songs of this era. 

But there's some filler stuff with pretty forgettable songs like Showdown, The Hook Up, and even her then-very controversial masturbation song Touch Of My Hand. And I always hated how they stuck a useless MATM remix at the end right after Everytime. So I always had to quick shut off the CD player.

This was Britney's last album for 4 years, and a world happened in between. I have a whole bunch of stuff from this era on tape (yes tape, I'm old) I went back and watched a lot of it. It's incredible to see how confident and stunning Britney was at this point in time, and so sad to know how close it was to things really falling apart.