Earworm #17: Britney Spears — Toxic

The day Britney helped me through a brutal tooth extraction

Goodbye Molar, My Old Friend

My first adult tooth extraction occurred the fall of 2007.

My bottom right-quadrant molar had been screaming at me non-stop, jumping three octaves to soprano whenever I tried to eat anything cold or hot, or at a consistency other than mushy. My dentist, after an unsuccessful attempt to treat the pain via root canal, said that the tooth needed to come out.

I decided to have the procedure done at a dental surgery center in downtown Oakland. A place that I’d never heard of before and which only had a 3 star rating on Yelp. I’d already used up my dental insurance coverage allotment for the year so the cost would be 100% on me (don’t get me started on the rapacious insurance industry).

The cut-rate surgery center (whose name I cannot remember, as it no longer exists and I could find no trace of it online) was much cheaper (like 500 dollars cheaper) than the more reputable Berkeley Oral Surgery Center, which garnered 5 glowing red stars.

But, I figured, pulling out a tooth is pulling out a tooth, right? It’s not brain surgery (though it is dangerously close to the brain). As long as the pain in my mouth fades before the pain from the diminishing balance in my bank account, then it’s all good, right?

I was the only one in the waiting room when I arrived at 9am.

That didn’t seem like a good sign. Maybe it was too early for most dental patients. Maybe they had a few cancellations. Maybe the office enforced a strict one-client-at-a time policy. None of these rationales eased my concern.

A fish tank sat on a wobbly stand between two pairs of folding chairs. The whole place screamed makeshift. Like it had been used for an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting the night before. Like it was a front for a money laundering scheme. Like if I came back after lunch, it would have a “for lease” sign on the door.

The fish tanked burbled and belched loudly like a car with a broken muffler. The water was cloudy and it was difficult to determine how many fish were in there.

A smiley woman at the front desk handed me a stack of forms to complete and sign, which I took back to my folding chair. As I entered my personal information, I would occasionally pause and look up. Each time, the smiling clerical assistant would be staring back at me, unblinking. I hadn’t slept well last night or the night before or the night before that, so I figured my brain was exaggerating and fabricating things. I’d been on an oatmeal and tepid soup diet for days. I would have signed anything at that point.

Before completing the paperwork, a pleasantly warm (but not as smiley as the front desk person) dental assistant in fish-patterned blue scrubs appeared and called my name. I stood up and followed her down a dimly lit hallway lined with unlabeled cardboard boxes and into a large, hexagon-shaped room with a reclined maroon dental chair in the center. The chair faced a parenthesis of trays festooned with familiar and unfamiliar looking dental instruments. A lamp on a reticulating arm hovered above.

The place seemed about three times as large as necessary and there was a closed door across from where I entered, beside a bank of darkened windows. I imagined more complicated and borderline unethical forms of surgery taking place in here, a team of unseen watchers and “investors” lurking behind the windows.

The assistant reached to grab the clipboard and paperwork I was holding.

“I haven’t finished it all yet,” I said, clutching it to my chest like a family heirloom being demanded by the gestapo.

“Oh, that’s alright,” she said, then snatched the pages from my hands. “I’m sure it’s good enough.”

Just then, the door beside the darkened windows opened and a tall man dressed in navy blue scrubs and a white lab coat entered the room. He looked to be no older than 35 and could have been mistaken for a model. He had no facial hair or even a hint of a 5 o’clock shadow. His cheekbones were high and taut and his chin was dimpled and square. He had an androgynous, multi-cultural quality, like he could be from one of a hundred different countries, or all of them.

“Hi, I’m Dr. Chadwick,” he said and extended his hand. His voice exuded not a hint of an accent or regional American dialect. He smiled and his perfectly aligned, naturally sparkling white teeth immediately put me at ease. I shook his hand and relaxed a bit.

Dr. Chadwick explained each step of the procedure, assuring me that with the anesthetic and nitrous oxide, I should feel no pain, just a bit of pressure.

“The sound of the drill is the most unpleasant part,” he added. “So you can wear noise-cancelling headphones and choose from a variety of music channels to help drown out the racket.”

Just then, his assistant slipped a set of over-the-ear headphones on me and handed me a palm-sized remote control. She explained that there were a dozen curated music channels I could choose from.

“I’m just going to numb the area first,” the doctor interjected, once I seemed occupied with the remote. “It will take a few minutes to take effect. Plenty of time to pick your soundtrack.”

After the novocaine injection, the doctor began to leave, then stopped and turned to face me. “Would you like me to start the nitrous now, or right before we start?”

“Now please,” I answered, a little too enthusiastically.

It’s Britney B*#ch

Most of the music choices — jazz, classical, soul/R&B — seemed far too quiet and downtempo to drown out the inevitable cacophony of drill, suction and diseased molar-cracking that I expected to fill the aural landscape. The heavy metal channel was mostly awful NüMetal bands like Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park. I’d rather have my tooth yanked with no pain meds than have to listen to any of those bands.

The only option that seemed lively enough to distract me from the future sounds of torture, and pleasant enough to maintain my usual cheery disposition was the Britney Spears channel.

I’d never felt strongly pro or con about Britney Spears. She always seemed to me to be Madonna-lite by way of Mickey Mouse Club. Which is kinda what she was, for a while. There were several songs in her oeuvre (I think she would appreciate that term) that I liked a fair bit. “Oops I Did it Again” and “Hit Me Baby One More Time” are truly excellent, catchy pop songs.

If the great Richard Thompson believed “Oops…” deserved inclusion on his 1000 Years of Popular Music album and tour, then it must be a song for the ages.

It wasn’t until Britney’s 2003 hit “Toxic” from her fourth album In The Zone that I became a true fan. “Toxic” is categorically a sonic masterpiece. Far be it for me to question Sir Richard Thompson, but I think his ‘Oops’ was in not choosing “Toxic” for his 1000 years of popular music tour.

“Toxic” was written and produced by hit makers Bloodshy and Avant, and wasn’t even supposed to be recorded by Ms. Spears. It was initially offered to Australian pop-dance star Kylie Minogue, but she turned it down. So B&A (I can see why they don’t like that acronym) brought the song to Britney.

Sure, Britney didn’t write the song and had nothing to do with the timeless, throwback 1950s spy-movie production. But the fact of the matter is that she owns it. I’m convinced that without Britney’s sexy, growly, girl-now-a-woman vocal delivery, the song wouldn’t work nearly as perfectly as it does.

Why “Toxic” is So Intoxicating

In terms of the catchiness of “Toxic,” it starts at the beginning.

The first 6 seconds are made up of an earworm-worthy horn-and-strings-sample call and response with some sort of clearly looped drum machine beat beneath. No singing yet. This musical theme repeats about a hundred times (actually four) before Spears’ breathy vocals enter the fray.

“Baby can’t you see…I’m calling,” she coos. Then, teasingly: “A guy like you should… wear a warning.” Very flirty, Britney! It doesn’t really rhyme, but with your iffy pronunciation it works.

But those aren’t the lyrics that made me bop my head to and fro under a nitrous spell, causing the doctor to mumble something I assume was along the lines of “keep your head still!” I guess a guy like him does wear a warning.

No, it was the song’s chorus that I couldn’t stop singing to myself — and maybe out loud in the form of a nitrous-and-blood-tinged groan.

With a taste of your lips I’m on a ride / You’re toxic, I’m slipping under

With a taste of a poison paradise / I’m addicted to you, don’t you know that you’re toxic

The rest of the chorus is more amorphous. Sometimes it joins in, more often it doesn’t. That’s how earworms can be sometimes. They might come in the form of a 6 second musical loop, a couple of vocal lines, or the entire first verse plus chorus.

This particular earworm is less invasive than most, and that could be for a couple of reasons. One, I was already 36 when it came out, well past the stickiness period of my formative years. A song from the ’70s and ’80s will always crush anything from the 21st century (for me). I could walk into CVS and Chicago’s 1983 hit “You’re The Inspiration” can be playing in the background and suddenly, Britney’s toxic song loop is nowhere to be found.

Fucking Peter Cetera.

This is Only a Drill

Britney Spears’ music was literally drilled into me that day in the dental surgery center. It wasn’t only “Toxic” I’d heard through those special tooth extraction headphones, but a well-chosen selection of hits from her first four albums. I was high on the gas, so I can’t be certain which ones, but I distinctly recall hearing “Toxic” at least three times, so either the extraction took several hours, or there were at most four songs in the mix. I would guess the aforementioned “Hit Me Baby…” and “Oops…” and perhaps “I Got That Boom Boom.”

I do remember opening my eyes at one point and seeing the “dental surgeon” hovering over me, his face a twist of sweaty exertion, his biceps bulging through his scrubs. And then, one last enamel-blasting crunch and my molar was gone.

I left the surgery center almost 90 minutes after I’d arrived and stumbled woozily to my car, my mouth packed with gauze, my face looking like I’d lost a fight.

As the nitrous haze began to clear, I found myself absent-mindedly humming a little garbled bit o’ tune: “I’m addicted to you, but I know that you’re toxic.” Was I singing it to my worst addiction, sugar — the likely culprit for my tooth decay and death? Or was I saying goodbye and thank you to my molar, a body part that provided me with more than 40 years of chomping, chewing and conviviality?

Perhaps, when the time comes (hopefully years from now) that I need to have another tooth extracted from my face, I’ll be proactive and load my phone with an hour-long Britney mix, just in case I’m not offered any headphones and a music selection.

Or maybe I’ll just leave the ever-addictive “Toxic” playing on repeat.

Thanks for reading!

What crazy dental stories do you have? And what are your thoughts on Britney? Both her music and her media-obsessed personal life definitely lead to strong opinions. Feel free to share yours in the comments!

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