Every so often, Britney Spears fans resurface a rumor that the pop star shot her iconic “Oops! … I Did It Again” album cover at Lenny Kravitz’s house.
The “fun fact” once amassed thousands of upvotes in a Reddit thread, and a viral Instagram post about the “fascinating” tidbit left followers “speechless.”
But the long-standing speculation has finally been debunked once and for all on the 25th anniversary of the release.
“I can confirm the album cover was not shot at Lenny’s house,” photographer Mark Seliger’s executive producer, Ruth Levy, tells Page Six exclusively before noting that Seliger and Kravitz are “close friends” nonetheless.
A Spears historian who runs the fan account BritneysVault, meanwhile, informs us that the Princess of Pop actually posed for the artwork at Quixote Studios in West Hollywood, Calif. — nearly 3,000 miles away from Kravitz’s former home in Miami.
While Kravitz didn’t lend Spears his Y2K-inspired abode after all, the rock star did take his daughter, Zoë Kravitz, to meet the “…Baby One More Time” singer on the LA soundstage in 2000.
“My dad surprised me. He was gone a lot on tour and all of that. So he was really sweet about when he would come into town to try and do something fun and surprise me,” the “Batman” star recalled to Variety in 2020.
Zoë, who was 11 at the time, even got to take a picture with Spears, then 18, behind the scenes.
The actress gushed that meeting “the biggest star in the world” was “very, very cool,” adding, “Britney Spears is still a big deal to me.”
For the shoot, production designer Walter Barnett built two sets: one for the “Oops” album cover and another for its eponymous lead single, both of which Seliger photographed.
Barnett told BritneysVault in messages viewed by Page Six that he was inspired by 1960s designs and had to “look through and source images from printed books and magazines,” as Google Images was not introduced until 2001.
He remembered upholstering a semicylindrical backdrop with gold, button-tufted artificial leather for Spears to stand in.
For the finishing touch, Barnett used a fine wire to string together a variety of chandelier crystals to hang from above, allowing them to drape over the teen idol’s shoulders.
The final product — which featured a baby-faced Spears wearing a brown whipstitched crop top and matching lace-up, low-rise pants — would go on to become one of the most renowned album covers of all time.
“Oops” was a commercial smash, too, becoming the first LP by a female artist in US history to sell 1.32 million copies in its first week alone.
Spears held the record for a whopping 15 years until Adele’s “25” moved 3.38 million copies in 2015.
In addition to its title track, “Oops” spawned the hit singles “Lucky,” “Stronger” and “Don’t Let Me Be the Last to Know.”
The Grammy winner, now 43, released a 25th anniversary edition of her sophomore album Friday, including bonus songs and new remixes.