Oops — he did it again.
Elton John on Thursday night released his new single, “Hold Me Closer,” a splashy duet with Britney Spears that mashes up John’s early-1970s classic “Tiny Dancer” with the title track from his 1992 album “The One.”
As shameless as it is delectable, the new song is a clear bid to replicate the success of “Cold Heart,” John’s 2021 collaboration with Dua Lipa, which blended several of his old tunes — most prominently “Rocket Man” and “Sacrifice” — into a sleek bit of radio bait that carried John into the top 10 of Billboard’s Hot 100 for the first time in more than two decades.
And the gambit is likely to work: Produced by Andrew Watt, who paired Ozzy Osbourne with Post Malone a few years ago for the many-times-streamed “Take What You Want,” “Hold Me Closer” is a bop, a banger, a vibe: three and a half minutes of shimmering L.A.-lady electro-pop sung by the world’s most fabulous 75-year-old and the ’90s’ preeminent blue-jean baby. That you can’t really tell their voices apart thanks to the buckets of Auto-Tune only makes their pairing that much sweeter.
For Spears, 40, “Hold Me Closer” — which according to the song’s credits also interpolates “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,” John’s chart-topping 1976 duet with Kiki Dee — serves as a kind of coming-out party following the recent legal victory that freed her from the onerous conservatorship that ruled her life and work for nearly 14 years. The song is her first new music since her 2016 album “Glory,” a fact that evidently left her feeling vulnerable as she recorded her vocals in Los Angeles.
“She’s been away so long — there’s a lot of fear there because she’s been betrayed so many times and she hasn’t really been in the public eye officially for so long,” John told The Guardian in an interview published Thursday. “We’ve been holding her hand through the whole process, reassuring her that everything’s gonna be alright.”
For John, a proudly admitted trend-watcher, “Hold Me Closer” registers as the latest sign of his pop savvy: Not only did he understand how much pent-up goodwill existed for Spears in the wake of #FreeBritney; he knew, in a summer defined by a house-music revival, that the way to frame her return was with funky bass and airy piano laid over a thumping four-on-the-floor groove.
And a melody, of course, that everyone already knows by heart. Remixing himself has long been an Elton John specialty: Next month — not long before he’s due to play Dodger Stadium in a reprise of his iconic 1975 gigs there — the singer’s 1997 remake of “Candle in the Wind,” whose lyrics about Marilyn Monroe he had Bernie Taupin rewrite to honor the late Princess Diana, will turn 25.