About

"Toxic" is a popular song by musical artist Britney Spears. After becoming a hit in the mid-2000s, the song saw use as a meme in the 2010s, particularly in remix videos.

Origin

"Toxic" was recorded for Britney Spears' second album, In the Zone, released November 12th, 2003.^[1] It was released as a single on January 13th, 2004.^[2] The music video for the single was released the same day (shown below). Since being posted to YouTube, the video has gained over 308 million views.

Spread

The song was widely acclaimed and peaked at number one on several international charts. The song also won Spears' her only Grammy award, for "Best Dance Performance." It was also nominated for several MTV Video Music Awards but lost in all categories. The song has enjoyed a long-lasting cultural impact. It has been covered several times. Notable covers include a cover by metal band A Static Lullaby that gained over 8.8 million views on YouTube (shown below, left). A video of duo Alex and Sierra covering the song on The X Factor gained over 60 million views (shown below, right).

The song has also been covered in popular media, seeing performances by the cast of Glee (shown below, left) and Pitch Perfect (shown below, right).

Online, popular parodies of the song have appeared as part of the Keeps Getting Faster meme and the Shittyflute memes (shown below).

"Toxic" With Movie Scenes

On March 5th, 2018, Polygon^[3] wrote a piece documenting a trend of videos adding "Toxic" to movie scenes. One of the earliest they cite is from August 16th, 2017, a video that pairs the song to a scene from Captain America: Winter Soldier (shown below, left). Another edit pairs Loki from the Thor series set to the song (shown below, right).

Search Interest

External References