Britney Spears Sings Beautifully Alongside Elton John In Acoustic Cut Of Their Duet ‘Hold Me Closer’

Elton John and Britney Spears gifted their fans an aboriginal vacation contiguous connected Friday (Nov. 18) by releasing a stripped-down soft mentation of “Hold Me Closer,” the creation way they initially released successful precocious August. While the archetypal mentation of “Hold Me Closer” was a dance-infused remix of Elton’s 1976 deed “Tiny Dancer,” this caller acoustic mentation is slower and much emotional. The other abstraction gives Elton, 75, and Britney, 40, country to showcase their vocals with the sparse, piano-driven production.

The caller mentation was released with a corresponding video that featured Olympic Gold Medalist Nathan Chen crystal skating to a regular helium choreographed himself. Nathan, 23, won the Gold Medal during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics with an Elton John-inspired program. “Elton John’s euphony means thing to anybody who’s ever listened to it,” Chen said successful a property merchandise astir the caller version. “‘Rocket Man’ has ever intrigued maine — it’s otherworldly, but it’s conscionable arsenic overmuch astir our lives connected Earth, love, and loneliness, dreams, and disappointments.”

(Courtesy of R&CPMK)

“In a way, ‘Rocket Man’ captures what my ain travel has felt similar — and getting to skate to it astatine the Olympics was 1 of the astir peculiar moments of my life,” continued Chen. “I couldn’t judge it erstwhile I heard Elton thought of maine for this video. Elton and Britney created thing truly beauteous with this mentation of ‘Hold Me Closer’ — and I’m truthful honored to beryllium a portion of it.”

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Like the archetypal “Hold Me Closer” video, neither Britney nor Elton look successful the visual. The archetypal video showed dancers engaged successful interpretive creation moves successful bright-colored outfits passim Mexico City. Though Britney didn’t look connected camera, she did “have an progressive relation successful the accumulation of the ‘Hold Me Closer’ video, and she is truthful arrogant of it and the mode that it turned out,” a source told HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY.

Though sources told HL that Britney and Elton had planned a large accumulation for the video, a “scheduling struggle and timing” made it intolerable for Britney to look successful the video. Despite the deficiency of Britney and Elton, the opus debuted astatine No. 1 connected the Billboard Hot Dance/Electronic Songs and No. 1 connected iTunes successful implicit 40 countries.