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This Day In Pop: 'Pretty Girls' music video premieres in 2015 (May 13)


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On May 13, 2015, Britney Spears and Iggy Azalea released the Pretty Girls music video. It was inspired in the 80's movie Earth Girls Are Easy, starred by Geena Davis, so the video portrays the fashion style of that decade, as well as the technology of the time. It starts with an alien Iggy Azalea crashing into Britney's pool, followed by Britney doing her a makeover. They go driving in a jeep to a car wash, where a dance number between Britney and her dancers ensues. They eventually meet Britney's friends and decide to go to a club, where a final dance break happens, until what seems to be a spaceship crashes the place, abducting Iggy back and taking Britney along with her. Before the credits roll out, we see once more Britney and Iggy dancing in the jeep to the beats of the track.

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Throughout the video, we see the demonstration of Iggy's powers several times, like turning the water pink, fixing a broken phone or making an ATM spill thousands of bills. We also see Britney's hair suddenly change from long and curly, to straight and long, to short and curly, then back to straight and long, though it's not confirmed if this is the result of Iggy's alien abilities too.

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It was directed by Cameron Duddy and Iggy herself, however Britney already had an idea in mind since before the collaboration happened. As she explained in several interviews "I love her work and I had an idea to do like a really girl power, fun Valley girl video".

 

In another interview, Britney also revealed it was the  first video she had done in a long time where she came up with the concept, saying "there’s a lot of dancing. I got new choreographers to come in and kind of do hip-hop dancing, which I haven’t done in a really long time, so the feel of the video is really different and hi-energy."

 

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The video was filmed in Studio City, Los Angeles on April 09 and 10, after Britney came back from a trip to Hawaii. Britney shared some pictures from the set through her social media, and there were also some clips recorded by bystanders showing some of the dance scenes, and revealing bits of the song, which was yet to be released at the time.

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About the video, Iggy Azalea said "[Working with Spears was] awesome. We collaborated so many months ago now, it's been a longtime in the making, figuring out whose album it's going to be on. It's going to be on hers and I'm super excited for it. It makes me super nervous! I just want to do her justice".

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'Pretty Girls' kind of already existed but we changed it a little bit more to fit in with Britney. I just did a verse on it. Then I didn't hear anything back. So I was calling 'are we not doing the song?' And they said she does want the song but we don't know when her album will come out. Then I said "I'll take the song and put it on my album and she can feature on it". Then I got another call that said "no wait, she is ready to put the song out. She is ready with an album! So it's gonna be her first single" ( :jl_jamie_lynn_awkward_cringe_eek: ).

I had re-written it a little by then and made it more of a duet so it kind of worked out that it went through all this. It worked out because now it's a true duet. It's not just me rapping one verse. It's really us together on the song. We both sing the hook together it's super cool and fun. I love that it's worked out this way because it's going to make for a cooler video.

 

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In an interview for USA Today, Britney and Iggy also talked about the creative process of Pretty Girls and its video. Britney commented:

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"I had called my manager (Larry Rudolph) and had some ideas about doing a Valley girl-type video," Spears says. "It was really kind of funny, because I had just watched Clueless on TV, and was like, 'It would be so fun to do something like that.' Then I saw Iggy's video, and I thought, 'Oh my God, to work with her would be heaven sent.' "

They began ping-ponging variations of the song, produced by The Invisible Men, between camps — at times featuring more of one artist than the other, before landing on a back-and-forth that played to each other's strengths. Although the collaboration was finished last fall, Azalea didn't meet the pop star in person until January, when she invited Spears to her house for lunch.

"We just talked about a bunch of girl stuff. She's a very down-to-earth girl and very, very sweet," Spears says. "She introduced me to her dog, we had wonderful salad and it was just fun girl time."

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Iggy weighed in on Britney's idea for  the video:

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"What Britney made clear to me is that she really wanted to do a video where she got to dress up and play a character," Azalea says. "That was really important to her. She just wanted to let loose and not necessarily feel like she's playing Britney Spears."

They decided on a send-up of 1988 sci-fi comedy Earth Girls Are Easy,starring Geena Davis, who Azalea considers the "ultimate '80s pin-up, hot, cool type of girl."

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"I do a makeover for her and we go to a club," Spears says. "The best part about it was just us coming together with the clothes and doing the '80s haircuts. We were all about being characters, so it was kind of funny for us. We weren't taking ourselves so seriously."

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Finally, Iggy revealed Britney wanted her to dance as well, but she refused: "I didn't dance! She wanted me to,. It would be kind of obnoxious for me to direct a video and give myself a dance break. Like, 'Here's the video! And I gave myself a dance scene!' "

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The video started to leak a day before the premiere on YouTube. It went on to become Britney's fastest video to reach 100M views, however it would also be the most disliked one (though it has more than 1.2M likes too). It won the fan-voted competition of music videos of 2015 by Fuse. 

 

MTV got a slightly different version of the video, which has less flashing scenes at the beginning of the video, most likely for those that suffer photosensitive epilepsy. In 2019, a short clip of outtakes of the video leaked, where we see Britney by the pool, but with a different outfit and an apple.

 

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  • 11 months later...
4 hours ago, Look But Don't Touch said:

Idk why people hate on this song & mv sm, haven't they realized yet that it was supposed to be a parody of ''pretty'' b tches 

Unless stated explicitly, those kind of messages are either hit or miss, in my opinion. It was also a super cheesy song that doesn't really suit Britney/Iggy.

Alyson Stoner's Pretty Girls received a similar backlash in terms of lyrics/message. People thought she was being literal with the song when it fact she was mocking the "pretty chicks." She also released a movie at the time that explored that theme.

I think the concept works better for Stoner if I'm to compare the two "Pretty Girls" songs and their concept. Simply because Stoner's song is supported by heavy dark beats and also feels more mature than Britney and Iggy's song. 

Anyways, Pretty Girls was a questionable moment in Britney's career.

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