Twenty-five years after her VMA performance, Spears\u2019 Neptunes-produced song has become a hit with Gen Z<\/p>\n
\n\tIt\u2019s been 25 years since Britney Spears<\/a> stormed the VMAs stage<\/a> with a snake on her shoulder to perform \u201cI\u2019m a Slave 4 U,\u201d but new Spotify data shows a majority of the track\u2019s listeners weren\u2019t even born when the song came out.<\/p>\n \n\tWhile millennials grew up with Spears, Spotify says the majority of recent streams for \u201cSlave 4 U\u201d were from Gen Z listeners \u2014 e.g. those born between 1997 to 2012. More than 55 percent of global streams in the past month came from the cohort. Perhaps more surprisingly, Spotify tells Rolling Stone that 27 percent of streams for the track were from listeners who were born in the years after Spears debuted the song on MTV.<\/p>\n \n\tWhat\u2019s more, Spotify says there have been over 40 million \u201cdiscoveries\u201d of Spears\u2019 catalog on the streaming platform this year, denoting people who are streaming her songs for the first time or \u201cre-streaming\u201d for the first time in six months or more. Sixty percent of these \u201cdiscoveries\u201d have come from Gen Z listeners.<\/p>\n \t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n \n\tThe data shows the continued staying power of \u201cI\u2019m a Slave 4 U,\u201d which was produced by the Neptunes <\/a>and marked a departure from Spears\u2019 heavily-produced teen pop sounds on previous releases. Spotify says streams of the single spike each year around this time to celebrate the song\u2019s anniversary, and they are likely to spike again ahead of the 2026 MTV Video Music Awards<\/a> this weekend.<\/p>\n