Spears experienced a minor tabloid scandal after the release of the music video for the album’s fifth and final single, “From the Bottom of My Broken Heart,” when it was revealed that its director Gregory Dark had previously worked on adult films.
“It’s time to admit that the new teen pop isn’t heavily coded XXX made for and marketed to teenagers,” a write-up in LA Weekly at the time claimed. “In fact, it‘s explicitly made and marketed as such.”
A rep for Spears at the time said, “As far as I’m aware the director just does music videos. This is a video for young teenage girls and not sexy at all.”
And, in a somewhat ironic twist, the director told Entertainment Weekly they actually hired him to tone down her image for the video.
“They wanted to re-image her a bit [from the naughty schoolgirl of “…Baby One More Time”],” Dark, who also worked with Mandy Moore on a music video, said to the magazine. “They wanted a much more story-oriented video without dance, one that was serious and emotional.”
