Britney Spears: The Complete Video Guide

Nowadays a "Britney Spears video" means shaky paparazzi footage on a celebrity Web site — but there was a time when Spears ruled the small screen. Here's a guide to all 24 of her official clips.

" ... Baby One More Time" (1998, from ... Baby One More Time)

Best Known For: Being the most iconic clip ever set in a high school.

Plot: Liberated by the school bell, a Catholic-schoolgirl-clad Spears has an elaborate daydream that involves grooving in the hallway, doing back-flips outside of school and rocking out on the basketball court. Even the grumpy teacher feels the beat (sorta) by the end.

Exposed Midriff?: Thanks to creative tying of her school uniform, a short pink tank top and a yellow crop top, Spears' mid-section doesn't lose a single second of screen time.

Prescient Lyric: "My loneliness is killing me"

"Sometimes" (1999, from ... Baby One More Time)

Best Known For: Purifying the sexy persona Spears introduced in the "... Baby One More Time" video.

Plot: A virginal Britney in a long, flowing white dress (and other demure outfits) gazes at a clean-cut boy on the beach, then does some chaste choreography that features her dancers forming a heart while she sings that she only wants to "hold you tight, treat you right." She leaves alone.

Exposed Midriff? Yes, even this relatively unsexual clip features some belly-button-baring during the dance sequences.

Prescient Lyric: "I wanna believe in everything that you say because it sounds so good"

"(You Drive Me) Crazy" (1999, from ... Baby One More Time)

Best Known For: Featuring Melissa Joan Hart and a pre-Entourage Adrian Grenier, the stars of the movie of the same name.

Plot: In a sparkly green tank top, Spears leads a crew of kids in a group dance at a wacky Sixties-style diner (Spears also plays a waitress). Hart and Grenier, who don't appear to dance so well, chill at the bar.

Exposed Midriff? Britney's taut belly comes out for all the dancing scenes

Prescient Lyric: "Crazy!"

"Born to Make You Happy" (1999, from ... Baby One More Time)

Best Known For: Being the first Spears video with a totally inscrutable plot that demonstrates the tricky line between making the singer sexy and safe.

Plot: Britney first appears curled up in bed in butterfly pajamas. She appears to have a dream in which she has an edgier haircut and is transported to an icey, sterile room, but then she breaks into choreography on the top of a wooden structure. An open-shirted hunk strides into her bedroom and the two playfully pillow-fight.

Exposed Midriff? Nope.

Prescient Lyric: "I don't how to live without your love / I was born to make you happy."

"From the Bottom of My Broken Heart" (2000, from ... Baby One More Time)

Best Known For: Again portraying Spears as being trapped somewhere between childhood and adulthood.

Plot: A bitter breakup leads Spears to pack up her doll and other essentials, say farewell to her mom and little sister and catch a bus out of her small, rural town. There are shots of Spears on a swing, making out with her boyfriend on a water tower and singing on her porch wearing a Blossom hat.

Exposed Midriff? It appears to be too chilly for Brit's stomach to make its usual appearance.

Prescient Lyric: "Loneliness up ahead, emptiness behind / Where do I go?"

"Oops! ... I Did It Again" (2000, from Oops! ... I Did It Again)

Best Known For: Introducing choreography that almost anyone could — and did — do.

Plot: An astronaut finds a dusty artifact that somehow beckons Spears in a red vinyl jumpsuit. As the lyrics indicate, Spears plays with his heart while the crew on Earth watches in amusement. At one point, the smitten spaceman offers Spears the jewel from the end of Titanic.

Exposed Midriff? Spears trades in the shiny onesie for a white midriff-exposing outfit.

Prescient Lyric: "I'm not that innocent"

"Lucky" (2000, from Oops! ... I Did It Again)

Best Known For: Being the first Spears video to focus on what would become a recurring theme: her conflicted relationship to fame.

Plot: Irony alert! This is the story of an adored Hollywood girl named Lucky who hates her life. Spears plays the pampered star who has flowing tresses and jewels, not to mention hair and makeup people at her disposal. She wins awards and greets her fans ... though she yearns for something more.

Exposed Midriff? A midriff-baring Britney appears as Lucky's conscience.

Prescient Lyric: "If there's nothing missing in my life then why do these tears come at night?"

"Stronger" (2000, from Oops! ... I Did It Again)

Best Known For: Being Spears' first proclamation of fierce independence (the clip also shows off her questionable driving skills).

Plot: Spears is rejected by a guy in a club and takes her revenge by dancing alone elsewhere with a magical chair. She also drives a car angrily in the rain, dances with a cane and strides confidently across a bridge.

Exposed Midriff? Brit's fierce abdominals never leave the screen.

Prescient Lyric: "I don't need nobody / better off alone."

"Don't Let Me Be the Last to Know" (2001, from Oops! ... I Did It Again)

Best Known For: Explicit sexual conduct.

Plot: In this steamy Herb Ritts-directed clip, Spears shocked audiences by seductively stroking her boyfriend next to a beach bonfire and singing dramatically in a bikini (at least she's still wearing a dainty crucifix!).

Exposed Midriff? Exposed everything.

Prescient Lyric: "I need to hear you say you love me all the way"

"I'm a Slave 4 U" (2001, from Britney)

Best Known For: Breaking down whatever sexual boundaries were left for Britney to hurtle after the "Don't Let Me Be the Last to Know" clip.

Plot: In this sultry sweatfest, Spears writhes and slithers in a sauna of a warehouse, doing some of her most difficult and alluring choreography to date. DJ Skribble has a cameo.

Exposed Midriff? One pertually moist, nude midriff.

Prescient Lyric: "All you people look at me like I'm a little girl / did you ever think it'd be okay for me to step into this world"

"Overprotected" - International Version (2001, from Britney)

Best Known For: Bearing witness to how Spears bristled at being under the thumb of her handlers.

Plot: A sunglass-clad Spears presses past paparazzi into a waiting convertible and speeds to an alley; inside a warehouse she pontificates on wanting her freedom and not wanting "to be so damn protected." A crew of friends busts in and Spears cuts loose in an angry, defiant dance. Walking down a dizzying hallway papered with her own photos and headlines, the walls start closing in on her, and Britney pushes back and shakes her ass.

Exposed Midriff? Her perpetually underprotected midriff is in full effect.

Prescient Lyric: Where to start? Since there are two videos for this song, let's start here — "You're gonna have to see through my perspective / I need to make mistakes just to learn who I am"

"Overprotected" - Darkchild Remix (2002, from Britney limited edition)

Best Known For: Being Britney's "ripped from the headlines" clip.

Plot: This version opens with a newscast criticizing Spears' VMAs performance where she came out wearing a flashy python ... and not much else. Turning off the TV, Britney sneaks out of her hotel room with her girlfriends, jumps into an SUV and goes partying and dancing in the rain. The clip ends with a flurry of paparazzi flashbulbs.

Exposed Midriff? Britney's abs remain unprotected.

Prescient Lyric: "I don't need nobody telling me just what I wanna / What I want what

"I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman" (2001, from Britney)

Best Known For: Backpedaling from the saucy image she cultivated in recent clips.

Plot: On a pictoresque mountaintop, a pensive Britney muses on her tricky ascent into sexual maturity. The clip is cut with scenes from Crossroads, Spears' coming-of-age road-trip movie that starred Justin Long, Taryn Manning and Kim Cattrall.

Exposed Midriff? Despite the altitude (or green-screen altitude), Spears' naval is everpresent.

Prescient Lyric: "I'm not a girl, don't tell me what to believe / I'm just trying to find the woman in me."

"I Love Rock 'n Roll" (2002, from Britney)

Best Known For: Making a mockery of rock & roll.

Plot: A leather-clad Britney grips a microphone stand and whines the classic tune while tossing her hair a lot and writhing around on a motorcycle.

Exposed Midriff? Somewhere beneath her biker look lays ... a bare belly.

Prescient Lyric: Spears and her production team didn't have a hand in writing this track, so we'll spare this one.

"Boys" - The Co-Ed Remix (2002, from Britney and the Austin Powers in Goldmember soundtrack)

Best Known For: Mike Myers' "Beautiful Stranger"-esque cameo

Plot: After DJ Qualls tries to get into a Britney party and is denied, the camera flies through the air to a Medieval castle where Britney is dancing and hanging out near a pool. Pharrell appears to flirt and sing the song's hook, then a woefully out of place Austin Powers arrives and winds up taking Spears home.

Exposed Midriff? Yeah, baby!

Prescient Lyric: "Boys, sometimes a girl just needs one"

"Me Against the Music" (2003, from In the Zone)

Best Known For: Flirting with the idea that Spears and guest-star Madonna will kiss (as they did at that year's VMAs).

Plot: Spears pulls up to a club and leads a crew of dancers in tight choreography while Madonna watches from a nearby room, her image projected above the crowd on screens. Brit dances in a day-glo graffiti room while Madonna rolls around in some leaves, then they dance-duel in a room that's bare, save for a metal bedframe. The two nearly kiss at the end, but Madonna vanishes before they make contact.

Exposed Midriff? Britney's mid-section is covered (barely) by a tie.

Prescient Lyric: "Hey Britney, you say you want to lose control"

"Toxic" (2004, from In the Zone)

Best Known For: Looking like a cheap Charlie's Angels rip-off

Plot: Spears plays a flight attendant-slash-secret agent who seduces a seemingly nerdy passenger in an airplane bathroom, then rips off his face to reveal a hot guy. Next, she's in a pinkish wig, riding with Tyson Beckford on a motorcyle through a futuristic city. Suddenly things are blowing up, Brit's in a lab, there are lasers and cheap sci-fi effects.

Exposed Midriff? The midriff makes a late appearance as Britney seduces, then poisons a suitor and leaps off a balcony, returning to her stewardess job.

Prescient Lyric: "I'm addicted to you, but you know that you're toxic"

"Everytime" (2004, from In the Zone)

Best Known For: Being horribly prophetic and depressing.

Plot: Stephen Dorff guests in this David LaChappelle-directed clip that eerily foreshadows Britney's future troubles with fame and mental instability. Grotesque paparazzi swarm her limo as Britney fights her way past them, only to face a rack of tabloids. Britney strips down for a bath, and as she lays back her hands bleed like stigmata and she sinks below the water. An out-of-body Britney looks on at the frantic scene at the hospital as doctors struggle to revive her; Dorff discovers her body and leaps into the tub to save her; she's taken away strapped to a gurney and paparazzi chase her lifeless body into the back of the ambulance. But it was all evidently a dream — she later emerges from the tub gasping for air and smiling.

Exposed Midriff? Britney is exposed in this video in every possible way.

Prescient Lyric: "Every time I try to leap I fall"

"Outrageous" (2004, from In the Zone)

Best Known For: Not being completed.

Plot: Spears injured her knee mid-way through filming this clip, so all we have is forty-five seconds of footage of Snoop Dogg playing basketball and a baggy-shorts-wearing Spears dribbling a ball, then leaping into Snoop's embrace and licking his face. If only we knew how it ends!

Exposed Midriff? We have to imagine there would have been midriff had this video been finished.

Prescient Lyric: "Outrageous"

"My Prerogative" (2004, from Greatest Hits: My Prerogative

Best Known For: Being Britney's defiant retort to anyone who thought her quickie romance with Kevin Federline was a bad idea.

Plot: Spears drives a car that's careening out of control, lands in a swimming pool, hops out and writhes on its hood. She then rolls around on a bed "Like a Virgin" style. She's actually at a mansion hosting a wedding reception; she arrives with K-Fed, makes out with him and the tape flickers to an end.

Exposed Midriff? Check.

Prescient Lyric: This one's Bobby Brown's, but it still applies — "They say I'm crazy, I really don't care"

"Do Somethin' " (2005, from Greatest Hits: My Prerogative)

Best Known For: Being the subject of a lawsuit by Louis Vuitton, who didn't love the fact that Spears used their patented pattern in the car featured in this video.

Plot: Spears co-directed this clip that begins with herself and a small posse riding a pink Hummer in the sky in a very literal interpretation of the song's opening lyrics. The crew enters a club and everyone freezes as they put on a little show as security cameras laser in on them. Finally Britney's girls become a band (she's the lead singer) and the club springs to life.

Exposed Midriff? Midriff in full effect.

Prescient Lyric: "I see you looking at me, like I'm some kind of freak"

"Someday (I Will Understand)" (2005, from the TV show Britney & Kevin: Chaotic

Best Known For: The first video apperance of a visibly pregnant Spears.

Plot: Spears sings to her unborn first child in a serene clip, where not much happens aside from Britney getting out of bed and gazing at the Roman sculptures in her garden.

Exposed Midriff? Nope, but she rocks a prominant belly bump

Prescient Lyric: "Nothing seems to be the way that it used to /Everything seems shallow"

"Gimme More" (2006, from Blackout)

Best Known For: Marking Britney's long-awaited return to video-making after her publicized series of breakdowns.

Plot: Back in the club as though she never left, a blonde- (and then curiously black)-wigged Spears in torn fishnets twirls around stripper poles with little energy while other clubgoers watch.

Exposed Midriff? It's all out there

Prescient Lyric: "I just can't control myself"

"Piece of Me" (2007, from Blackout)

Best Known For: Its difficult shoot; Spears showed up twelve hours late.

Plot: Brit preps for a night out of facing the paparazzi, dragging one pap into the bathroom only to discover a camera taped to his chest. Celebrity magazine covers fly by as Spears tears them down, and she later does a little low-impact group choreography (her first since 2005's "Do Something' ") in the bathroom.

Exposed Midriff? According to rumors, a digitally minimized one

Prescient Lyric: All of them.

Source