Wheel Of Britney Demos: "Dance Or Die" 💃☠️

Hey yall!

She back with another Wheel of Demos 🎡💿—where I unearth forgotten gems, misfit bangers, and songs that almost made it onto your favorite pop albums.

Today we’re diving into demos from Britney Spears’ Femme Fatale era. 💖 aka The Wheel of Britney Demos!

I wrote a bunch of songs for that album, but for every song that made it, there were a billion that didn’t. So, let’s talk about “Dance Or Die.”

This is a weird one. Let’s go.

The only time I ever met Britney was at the Smurfs 2 premiere on the ‘Blue carpet’ 😅🥴… but will cherish this photo forever!

The Story Behind “Dance Or Die” 🔥

When I saw Lady Gaga’s intro to the Abracadabra video, I was reminded of this oldie but goodie! So, Dance Or Die was in the running for Femme Fatale—which means it was in the running to making the album. I wrote it with my longtime friend and collaborator, Nicole “Coco” Morier, who is a genius and one of my favorite people to write with.

Nicole and I wrote a bunch of Britney tracks together, including “How I Roll”—a real sleeper on the album and one of my personal favorites from Femme Fatale.

But Dance Or Die was pure chaos. 😅

The Weirdest Britney Song That Never Was 🛸🚀

So, first of all—Nicole and I get real wacky when we write together, just how I like it! We just throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. And somehow, this song ended up with words like:

🚀 Astronaut

🔥 Catastrophe

💀 Dance or die (Very dramatíque)

I mean, the stakes couldn’t be higher. You better dance or you’re gonna die.

It giving old timey movie when the villain shoots at the ground and forces you to dance. But make it an electro-pop club anthem.

The production was done by Oligee, who I also worked with on Hot City. He always brings the heat!

Why It Didn’t Make the Cut 🤷🏼‍♀️

Okay, so real talk—this song is kind of non traditional, structurally speaking. It breaks all the rules, but that’s why we love it!

The standard pieces of a pop song structure are usually:

1️⃣Verse

2️⃣Pre-Chorus

3️⃣Chorus

4️⃣(Maybe a Post-Chorus)

5️⃣ Bridge

Nice, clean, and easy to follow.

Dance Or Die had what felt like 9 different sections, all of them super hooky, but all competing for attention. It was like a pop song with ADHD.

And when you’re writing pop music, sometimes you gotta kill your darlings. Even if a part is amazing, if it doesn’t serve the song as a whole, it has to go. And with Dancer Die, we loved everything too much to cut anything.

So, in the end, I get why Britney’s team passed on it. Too much information.

I love that Gaga’s Abracadabra has a “dance or die” element. When I first watched this video it reminded me of writing Dance Or Die for Britney!

Even though Dance or Die never made it onto Femme Fatale, I still have a soft spot for it. It was weird, experimental, and actually on theme with the rest of the cutting edge album.

Nicole Morier and I did some incredible stuff together, and if you’re a Britney fan, you should definitely check out her work. She’s a queen! 👑

So yeah, this one didn’t make the cut, but it we sure had fun.

XO,
Bonnie 💖

Listen to the full “Dance or Die” demo below!