Britney Spears’ 2011 Single ‘Selfish’ Hits Charts After Ex Justin Timberlake Releases Song With the Same Title

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Britney Spears stans have been streaming a 13-year-old song from her Femme Fatale album in response to her ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake releasing his new single “Selfish.” The song that Britney fans have been playing is also called “Selfish,” and was released as a bonus track on the deluxe edition of her 2011 record. The group effort has pushed the song into the charts.

After Justin dropped the lead single from his upcoming album Everything I Thought It Was on January 25, Britney’s fans have been pushing stans to stream and purchase the 2011 track, which has centered the Top  40 of the iTunes Charts in the United States, according to Entertainment Tonight. The effort was seemingly coordinated by a fan account with the handle @britneyxytube. Some fans have even jokingly created album artwork and acted like she was releasing the new song on the same day as Justin’s single.

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Justin’s “Selfish” is the first track released from his upcoming album, which will be released on March 14. Justin has also announced that he will be going on an arena tour to promote the record between April and July of 2024. It is his first album since 2018’s Man of the Woods. 

Justin and Britney dated from 1999 until 2002. While the breakup was over 20 years ago, the “Toxic” singer shared many new details about their past romance in her 2023 memoir The Woman In Me, which led to a lot of drama. One of the “Hold Me Closer” singer’s claims in the book was that she got an abortion after getting pregnant with JT, and him not wanting to start a family so young. She also claimed that they both cheated on each other.

Shortly after the book was released, Justin disabled his comments on Instagram, after he got flooded with messages from Britney fans. While he never directly addressed Britney’s comments, it was reported that he wasn’t happy about what she chose to include. “Justin thought Britney might talk about their ups and downs in more general terms — not air out their very personal, dirty laundry,” a source told Us Weekly at the time.

While he hasn’t explicitly said anything about the book, Justin did appear to refer to the memoir during a surprise performance in Las Vegas, before he performed his song “Cry Me a River,” which his ex included as a moment that hurt her in the memoir. He said, “No disrespect,” before singing, “Ain’t we all just entertainers? I feel stupid and contagious. Yeah, we all just entertainers,” from his Jay-Z collab “Holy Grail.”