The racy music video Britney doesn’t want you to see

Source: News Corp Australia Network:

August 8, 2016 at 13:06

BRITNEY Spears had been teasing the racy video for her current single Make Me for months now on social media — but the resulting clip is a lot tamer than fans were expecting.

Spears had shot a sexually-charged flesh-fest with acclaimed photographer David LaChapelle at the helm. Then, for reasons still officially unknown, she and her team scrapped it.

The replacement video debuted last week to an upset reaction from many fans, thousands of whom have signed a Change.org petition demanding Brit’s record company release the original clip.

Britney wears next to no clothing in the original video.Source:Supplied

The replacement video is a relatively basic affair, showing Britney and a group of female friends as they ‘audition’ a succession of shirtless hunks. It’s sexy, sure, but as footage from the original cancelled video slowly leaks online, it’s clear that it’s a lot tamer than Britney’s original video. Around one minute of the canned footage has surfaced so far, showing Britney wearing very little — and at one point, seemingly nude except for red body paint:

TMZ reports that the original video was scrapped because Britney’s team thought it was too sexy, while other reports claim it was because it lacked a storyline.

Mobile phone footage recorded on the set of the original video appeared to show the singer — sitting in a tractor and surrounded by grinding back-up dancers — clashing with LaChapelle, angrily calling him an “asshole”.

Britney throwing a temper tantrum & calling Dave LaChapelle an asshole. Id do the same looking at this cheap ass set https://t.co/oxUI5HnoAL
— hyuna is HERE (@alcohorace) June 4, 2016

The singer and director had previously successfully collaborated on the video for Spears’ 2004 number one single Everytime.

While Spears had been touting the original, LaChapelle-helmed video on social media as far back as nine weeks ago with the Instagram post below, neither she or the director have spoken about what exactly happened to leave a much-hyped video by a costly director languishing on the cutting room floor.

Britney's video shoot: 'Day 1'

Day one: ✔️

A photo posted by Britney Spears (@britneyspears) on Jun 2, 2016 at 10:24pm PDT

With Make Me tumbling out of the top 50 singles charts in the US, UK and Australia just three weeks after its release, perhaps the release of a new (old) video is just what’s needed to reverse the song’s fortunes.