Why Britney Spears fans think Everytime is about her abortion with Justin Timberlake

Britney Spears’ long-awaited book The Woman In Me is out next week and passages from the memoir are already starting to be drip-fed online. Yesterday, we learned that Britney had an abortion in 2000 while she was 19-year-old and dating Justin Timberlake: “It was a surprise, but for me, it wasn’t a tragedy,” Britney wrote of her pregnancy in an excerpt obtained by People. “I loved Justin so much. I always expected us to have a family together one day. This would just be much earlier than I’d anticipated.

“He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young,” she explained. “I’m sure people will hate me for this, but I agreed not to have the baby. I don’t know if that was the right decision. If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it. And yet Justin was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father,” she said, adding it was “one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life.”

And now – looking back over Britney’s musical output at the time – fans think her song Everytime, which she released in 2003, is about her abortion. Particularly the lyrics “I guess I need you, baby,” and “seeing a face in her dreams”. The song’s music video also includes a scene where Britney watches a baby being born, which everyone thinks is another clue:

Fans have also picked out other clips of Britney performing the song, where she cradles her stomach as she sings: “Britney Spears holding her tummy during the ‘I guess i need you baby’ part  the signs were there all along,” they wrote. “That explains a lot, why the songs sounds like a lullaby and she says ‘My weakness caused you pain, and this song’s my sorry’, ‘I guess I need you baby,'” added another. “The meaning of this song changed completely for me,” said a third. “This is so sad.”

Additionally, a clip has resurfaced of Britney crying in a recording studio while the backing track to Everytime is playing. She asks to record the song “one more time”, seemingly because she became too emotional to carry on singing. “Hits much deeper now,” one Britney fan account wrote in light of the new theory.

Many fans have pointed out, in light of the abortion revelation, that Justin Timberlake’s diss-track about Britney, Cry Me A River, which he released a year before Everytime, seems particularly harsh: “Justin Timberlake releasing ‘Cry me a River’ while Britney was grieving the loss of the baby he forced her to abort is really sick if you think about it,” claimed one fan. “And then putting her lookalike in the video?” 

Justin Timberlake is yet to comment on the contents of Britney’s memoir. But sources say he’s worried about what the book will contain. “He’s very curious what she’ll reveal from their relationship,” one source explained to Page Six. “It’s eating at him.” And recently, another source told US Weekly that Justin has said he won’t “be happy” about the memoir’s release because “it goes after him hard.”

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