♪ Baby, can't you see ♪
Rewind to 2003.
Britney Spears hasn't had a big hit in almost four years,
and critics say her career is slumping.
This all would change when she dropped her song "Toxic."
♪ It's dangerous ♪
♪ I'm falling ♪
["Tere Mere Beech Mein"]
The real story behind "Toxic"
begins in 1981 in India
with a blockbuster Bollywood musical.
Those high-pitched strings in the score?
You've heard them before,
at the opening of Toxic,
then repeated throughout the song.
It's this musical number,
"Tere Mere Beech Mein,"
that's the source of "Toxic"'s unmistakable hook and riff
and a lot of the song's intensity.
Manasi Prasad: "Tere Mere Beech Mein," it's from
a classic film called "Ek Duuje Ke Liye."
Narrator: This is Manasi Prasad,
a classical Carnatic vocalist
with an encyclopedic knowledge of Indian music.
Prasad: This song is actually based
on an Indian classical rāga, or melody.
It's
♪ La la la ♪
♪ La la la la la la ♪
♪ La la ♪
So you'll find a lot of other Indian songs
which are in this rāga.
It's used to convey feelings
of very intense emotions.
I think one of the reasons
why, you know, Bollywood songs work so well
is the range or the pitch of the songs
tends to be really high,
and it brings an intensity and a brightness.
Narrator: Britney's team of songwriters,
led by hit maker Cathy Dennis,
took two tiny sections of the musical number
and expertly merged those two sections together.
["Tere Mere Beech Mein"]
["Toxic"]
Adam Ragusea: There's a string hook that's got
the low, fast part, which is the
♪ Bum bum ba da da da dum ba da da dum ♪
and then there's a very high keening part that goes
♪ Da da ba ♪
Narrator: This is Adam Ragusea,
a writer and YouTuber
who's also a classically trained composer.
That second part of the hook that Adam just sang?
It starts on a superhigh F sharp,
a note that lies far outside the song's key of C minor,
making the whole thing sound disorienting.
Ragusea: That screaming F-sharp note
makes the whole thing sound cinematic
and scary in a fun way,
like an action film.
Narrator: There's definitely something
that sounds dangerous in that string sample.
This has a lot to do with the film it was lifted from,
a tale of forbidden romance.
Prasad: It was a story
about these star-crossed lovers.
They fell in love, and it was opposed
by their families,
so both of them ended up dying
at the end of the movie.
So it's kind of a really tragic,
intense love story.
Narrator: In the movie, love is danger,
and that's reflected in the music,
especially in the glissandos,
these sliding figures in the strings,
which are pretty much the signature
of "Toxic"'s sampled hook.
They sound slippery and precarious,
which fits since Britney's singing
about slipping under and falling.
♪ It's dangerous ♪
♪ I'm falling ♪
Narrator: Somehow, these notes sound even more treacherous
when the sample's played backwards
halfway through the track.
Beyond the screechy orchestral parts
borrowed from Bollywood,
the other big source of danger in "Toxic"
comes from the buzzing, ominous-sounding guitar.
♪ I'm addicted to you ♪
♪ Don't you know that you're toxic ♪
♪ And I love what you do ♪
♪ Don't you know that you're toxic ♪
Narrator: If that guitar bit sounds
kind of old-school to you,
that's because it's surf,
a rock subgenre that was biggest
in the late '50s and early '60s,
when there was a boom of interest
in West Coast wave culture.
Clip: Surfing!
[surf guitar]
Narrator: Surf guitar is played in a way
that conjures up the sounds and feel of surfing
with a hard and fast picking style
and loud, wet-sounding reverb.
♪ Never been ♪
Narrator: If surf's supposed to capture
the carefree California ethos,
you might be wondering why the guitar in "Toxic"
has very much the opposite feel.
That deep, low guitar tone sounds suspenseful
in a way that matches the adrenaline rush
of the Bollywood strings.
That's probably because you identify that twangy guitar
with something else entirely,
one of the most recognizable movie themes in the world.
["James Bond Theme"]
The first-ever Bond film, "Dr. No,"
came out in 1962,
right in surf rock's heyday.
So it's not surprising that its title song,
which would set the template for all later Bond themes,
was fueled by surf.
The 007 theme had an outsized influence
on the music of all the Cold War spy films
and TV series that followed it.
["Secret Agent Man"]
♪ There's a man who leads a life of danger ♪
By now, the tone of guitar that you hear in "Toxic"
has big spy connotations,
and the song's Bond-inspired music video
seems to be a nod to this connection.
OK, so we've got the aggressive twang
of the surf guitar
evoking the reckless daring of a special agent
and frantically sliding Bollywood strings
capturing the rush of a risky love affair.
How is it that these two disparate sounds
from opposite sides of the globe
seem to have such an affinity for each other?
Turns out, they share some of the same musical DNA.
Monty Norman, the film composer who penned the 007 theme,
lifted its melody from a previous piece he'd written
for a play adaptation of "A House for Mr. Biswas,"
VS Naipaul's novel about Indian immigrants.
Basically, the sound that has come to define spy music
was in fact born of Indian music.
Ragusea: And so, when we hear those two aesthetics
put together in "Toxic,"
it feels really natural to us.
Narrator: "Toxic" distills some of the most
thrilling sounds of global cinema
into a three-minute pop masterpiece.
What other club banger combines Bond
and Bollywood so perfectly
and remains a DJ staple 15 years on?
That is why "Toxic" is not only the greatest triumph
of Britney's career,
but one of the most impressive pop hits of our time.
♪ With the taste of your lips ♪
♪ I'm on a ride ♪
♪ You're toxic ♪
♪ I'm slipping under ♪
♪ With the taste of a poison paradise ♪