BRITNEY Spears has denied her onstage kiss with Madonna at the MTV Music Awards was a publicity stunt.

"We just did what felt right," Spears said yesterday in an exclusive interview with the Herald Sun.

"I'm surprised by the fuss it's made, but then it's Madonna.

"I'm not used to kissing girls, so it was a little weird. I was a little shy in rehearsals, but when we got on stage it was cool."

Spears, who will release an album in November, revealed she had ditched songs written by rumoured beau Fred Durst, of Limp Bizkit. He claimed he and Spears became sexually intimate when the pair collaborated on songs this year.

By Cameron Adams
IT'S ironic that Britney Spears once sang about feeling over-protected.

Interviewing her is like a military operation. She is promoting an album she is hailing as her most personal statement, but talks about it only with journalists who sign a contract detailing what she can and can't be asked, with record-company staffers shadowing her just in case.

The fact that the same staffers have just handed out a press kit containing a photocopy of the W magazine article in which Spears talks of losing her virginity to Justin Timberlake and her liaison with Fred Durst, then make journalists sign an agreement that those topics cannot be broached with Spears, speaks volumes.

Spears is a woman of contradictions: she continually talks about "inspiring" her fans, yet rudely shuns them at her British movie launch.

She's the woman happy to pose topless for Rolling Stone (only her arms stop it becoming a Playboy shoot) and to pull down her panties to show the work of her personal waxer, but is foolish enough to complain she wore several outfits but the "half nude" shots were the ones the magazine used.

Frustratingly, at this September interview in New York we are told she wants to talk only about her music. However, we hear only seven songs from her fourth album In the Zone - the rest aren't ready, despite Spears talking about the "luxury" of having months to work on the record.

Spears seems strangely passionless when talking about her music. She sits on the edge of her chair from the start, as if waiting for the interview to finish. Highly defensive, she is uncomfortable and on guard.

We start by talking about how her self-enforced six-month break meant she finally could lose herself in the music, not just rush out a factory-line pop record as before.

"Well, on the third album (Britney) I did what I wanted to do," she corrects, "but I always felt I was in a hurry. On this record, I really got to indulge in it, really do the kind of record I wanted to do.

"It was really cool being in the studio, picking the track I liked the best and being able to freakin' write over it myself."

So how does making music work in Britneyworld?

"The record label gets a bunch of stuff in. The first part of me doing the record was weird because everyone had an opinion about the songs to use," she says.

"Once I started doing things on my own it started getting a direction. It just flowed and the record label knew which ones I wasn't going to do. They didn't even let me hear most of the songs that'd been sent in."

It'S an important record for Spears and her record company. Her first two albums (Baby One More Time, Oops . . . I Did it Again) make up the bulk of her 50 million album sales and have spawned a string of hits.

By her third album, Britney, she'd broken the formula - and the run of hits. The Neptunes-penned first single, I'm a Slave 4U, sexed up her image (in interviews, Spears claimed it was about being a "slave to the music" -- right) and split her audience. The album saw her shed millions of sales.

Her first movie, Crossroads, was a critical disaster ("Not even eye candy, more like eye-smack," one reviewer said) and didn't exactly set the box office alight.

This year, the pop climate has changed. Spears' original producer, Max Martin, hasn't had a hit in years and, perhaps because of the genre she helped to create, credibility is now the most important thing in pop.

Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake have reinvented themselves to get it. Britney desperately wants it.

Kids are now listening to Avril Lavigne (whose production team, The Matrix, Spears uses on In the Zone) or Hilary Duff. So where does Britney fit in these days?

It's hard to say. In the Zone certainly takes more risks than before.

Despite an A list at her disposal, Spears has worked with many lesser-known writers and producers.

"People ask, 'Why didn't you work with the Neptunes?' " Spears says. "It's because I've worked with them before . . . been there, done that. They're great producers, they're amazing, but I wanted to do something on my own with people who are hungry and had no egos."

For all the "indulging" Spears talks about in the studio, isn't there major pressure being Britney?

"I really rebelled on this record," Spears claims. "I really kinda did. There was this structure everyone thinks you should go by, this'll sell . . . at the end of the day if I believe in it and like it, hopefully my fans will be inspired by that.

"If you work with someone different and you believe in it, that puts a new light on you and people see that."

Spears is struggling to explain herself, but what if this record doesn't match her previous sales?

"I'm not at the point now where I want to sell 50 million records. That's not my goal here. I really just want to do something I believe in artistically." And if it fails?

"Then I'll learn from it. You just throw it out there, see what it does, learn from it and keep going."

Of course, she's financially at the point where it doesn't matter.

"A little, yeah," she says.

So we talk about certain producers. Are lesser-known producers daunted by working with Britney Spears?

"Daunted? What does that mean?" Spears asks.

You know, in awe.

"Oh, no, I'm very open. I want to make sure they're comfortable."

Her favourite song on the album is Breathe on Me. I ask her to tell me about it, who wrote it.

"A guy in London." Turns out to be Steve Anderson, Kylie Minogue's musical director.

After talking about her freedom, Spears says Outrageous is "not one of my favourites on the album", yet it's still on there.

We talk about RedZone, the R & B team who wrote and produced Me Against the Music, the album's all-important first single.

When we hear it before the interview, it is a Spears song. Weeks later it's become duet with Madonna.

Did she ask for advice from Madonna, as was reported?

"I didn't ask her advice, she's just a cool lady and she told me, 'Don't let things get to you, stand your ground, believe in yourself'."

The album borrows from Madonna's sexed-up Erotica period.

One song, Touch of My Hand, is clearly about masturbation: "Draw the blinds and I'll teach myself to fly . . . another day without a lover, the more I come to understand the touch of my hand." Spears co-wrote the lyrics but says they're merely "what you make it".

On Showdown, Spears purrs, 'I don't really want to be a tease, would you undo my zipper please,' and 'I see your body rise, rise . . . '

But while she will pose for sexy photos, she doesn't like to talk about the sex in her lyrics -- let alone her life. Nor does she say she is trying to break out of her clean image -- despite being photographed smoking and with a string of bad boys.

"I don't think this record is me coming out and saying I have an unclean image now. I'm the same person, I just think my music has changed a little bit.

"I think the songs are a little more sensual and sexy but they're not . . . well, Breathe on Me is a sexy song but not actually about sexual contact."

Are there lines she won't cross?

"You want to definitely do stuff that suits you. I have boundaries. Everybody has boundaries."

Interestingly, some time after I speak to Spears I interview Moby, who co-wrote a track from Spears' album we didn't hear: Early Mornin'.

MOBY says Spears wanted a "sexy and atmospheric" record.

He wrote the music, Spears and Penelope Magnet, her lyrical "helper", penned the words.

"They're really dirty," Moby says. "It's a pretty specific litany of one-night stands she's had. I think the old virginal good-girl Britney is going to be put to rest with this record."

We never heard this track, so couldn't ask Britney at the time, but her spin on the lyrics, according to MTV, is they refer to "going out and feeling bad the next day".

Swinging the conversation around to her off-limits personal life earns a look from Spears that could wipe out a small nation.

There were rumours she was going to write her response to ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake's Cry Me a River.

"Not true. I wouldn't do that."

Photo courtesy Esquire

She must realise people are going to look for Justin references in her lyrics.

"That's not my style. It's not like 'I'm singing about this person'."

Are her songs with Fred Durst on the record?

"No."

(Long pause, dirty look).

"That was an experiment. We tried to work together. It didn't work out."

OK, well, you've been through a lot of public pain in the past year. Did that motivate you musically?

"I had three or four weeks when I got off tour a year ago when I was really down and depressed. It motivated me with this album; that's why this album means so much to me because I was really inside myself doing what I wanted to do.

"I think everything happens for a reason. You have those periods of being low and down so you can appreciate the highs."

Ask more about her personal life, how she surely must understand the interest and how that interest has served her well, and she says, "I now let work be about work and not my personal life. I've learned my lesson."

Soon it's over, and Spears bolts out the door, quite literally. But play back the tape and there's an interesting quote.

"I don't want everybody to love me," she says. "That's boring. I don't want everyone to hate me either. I like the inbetween thing. That makes it interesting."