"Everytime" is a song written by American singer-songwriter Britney Spears and her back-up singer Annette Stamatelatos, and is included on Spears' fourth album In the Zone (2003). Produced by Guy Sigsworth, it was released as the album's third single during the second quarter of 2004 (see 2004 in music).
This song has been covered by Glen Hansard and Colm Mac Con Iomaire, members of the band "The Frames." It was recorded for the "Today FM" CD titled Even Better than the Real Thing Vol. 2 (out of Ireland) which also included a cover of Britney Spears' "Toxic." The melody of Pachebels' "Canon in D" is played at the end of the cover. The Taiwanese trio S.H.E. covered the song in Mandarin for their album Encore (Bie Shuo Dui Bu Qi / Don't Have to Apologize).
The video begins with Spears and her boyfriend (Stephen Dorff) in a limo. They arrive at a building where the paparazzi are awaiting. Spears is hit in the head with a camera, but keeps walking. When in the lobby, Spear's boyfriend begins throwing some magazines around and pushing photographers. Spears and her beau are escorted out of the room and are taken into hallways which lead them to her room. They have a fight in which her boyfriend throws a vase at the wall. He leaves and Spears begins filling her bathtub and removing her clothes. When she's in the tub, she realizes she's bleeding from the head, suffering a concussion from when she was hit in the head with a paparazzo's cameras. She loses conciousness in the tub. Later, her beau finds her unconscious in her tub and calls rescue. Unconscious, Spears follows her body to the hospital, not before being shown running towards the camera away from a bright light—a scene often associated with the transition into afterlife. Spears then sings directly to the camera; behind her, her body can be seen with doctors fighting to revive her, and then the camera pans around to show the birth of a baby, symbolizing reincarnation. The video then shows Spears running away from the camera and towards the bright light seen before—implying her liberation from life and her acceptance/longing for death. The video was at number one on MTV's Total Request Live countdown for six days, and it also reached number three on both VH1's Top 20 Countdown and MuchMusic's Countdown.
In an extended cut of the video, following these scenes, Spears is shown rising from underwater in the bathtub and resting her head and smiling. This implies that she was imagining the entire scenario and never became unconscious to begin with. This was added to perhaps lessen the severity and controversy of the explicit content of the video.
The video was #2 on MuchMusic's 50 most controversial videos for the blood, partial nudity, and graphic scenes.
It was premiered in the U.K. on the MTV show trl.
In the bath scene, Spears is seen wearing the red string worn by members of the Kabbalah Centre. This comes months after Spears was introduced to Kabbalah by Madonna. The red string was often mistaken for bloody wrists in a suicide attempt.
Following the major worldwide successes of both "Me Against the Music" and "Toxic", "Everytime" followed the trend of making top five placement in nearly every country it charted in. In Australia "Everytime" became Spears' third consecutive number-one single, and also received an ARIA gold certification for shipments of over 35,000 units, but only stayed in the charts for 4 weeks (1, 2, 18, 29) due to the limited number of pressings for the single. It also reached number one in the UK, where it stayed in the top forty for eleven weeks, sold 196,000 copies and ranked eighteenth on the 2004 year-end charts.
In Canada, "Everytime" became Spears' longest-charting single with forty-six weeks in the top fifty and peaked at number one a week following its debut. The CRIA awarded the track a platinum single certification for shipments of over 10,000 units. It was placed at number sixteen on 2004's year-end list of the best-selling singles.
In Latin America, the song charted inside the top five in most countries, not achieving the same amount of success as its predecessor, "Toxic", but still, the song reached number nine on the Latin American Top 40 Singles Chart spending four non-consecutive weeks inside the top ten and sixteen weeks overall.
In Italy, "Everytime" was released as the second single from her "Greatest Hits: My Prerogative" album due to the long chart-running of "Toxic" in the country. The single was only released as a video one: no CD single or radio airplay was available, so the song could only chart on video charts. The single accumulated 4,118,000 points on the United World Chart in 2004 alone, where it peaked at number one for one week and became the 12th best-selling single of that year.
| Country | Certification | Sales |
|---|---|---|
| Australia | Platinum | 70,000+ |
| Canada | Platinum | 100,000+ |
| France | Platinum | 90,000+ |
| Norway | Platinum | 10,000+ |
| Sweden | Platinum | 20,000+ |
| United Kingdom | Silver | 196,000+ |
| United States | Gold | 500,000+ |
| Chart (2004) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Argentina Top 40 | 1 |
| Australian ARIA Singles Chart | 1 |
| Irish Singles Chart | 1 |
| 'Tokyo Hot 100' | 1 |
| UK Singles Chart | 1 |
| Canadian Singles Chart | 2 |
| European Billboard Hot 100 Singles | 2 |
| French Singles Chart | 2 |
| German Singles Chart | 2 |
| Swiss Singles Chart | 2 |
| Chart (2004) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Dutch Singles Chart | 3 |
| Norwegian Singles Chart | 3 |
| Swedish Singles Chart | 3 |
| U.S. Billboard Hot Dance Club Play | 3 |
| Austrian Singles Chart | 4 |
| Belgian Singles Chart | 4 |
| U.S. Billboard Top 40 Mainstream | 4 |
| Danish Singles Chart | 5 |
| Finnish Singles Chart | 13 |
| U.S. Billboard Hot 100 | 15 |
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UK CD Single (82876 626202)
UK DVD Single (82876 626209)
UK 12" Vinyl (82876 626201)
Europe CD 1 (82876 615572)
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Europe Limited Edition CD 2 (82876 647342)
Japan CD Single (BVCQ-29603)
U.S. Promo CD (JDJ-605202)
U.S. 12" Vinyl (JDAB-624871)
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