While Mercedes-Benz’s revival of the Maybach brand in 2002 wasn’t exactly a huge success in terms of sales, it had a massive cultural impact that is still growing today. Celebrities and other tastemakers flocked to the Maybachs, and they started getting featured in movies, TV shows, and music videos. Not just in the music videos, though — artists, mainly rappers, frequently namedrop the brand in lyrics, to the point where hundreds of songs have bars talking about Maybachs and rapping with them. Hell, there’s even Rick Ross’ label Maybach Music Group, founded in 2008, with its producer tag of Jessica Gomes saying “Maybach music” being one of the most well-known in music. This has only gotten more prominent with the success of Mercedes spinning the nameplate off into the Mercedes-Maybach subbrand.
You might assume that the best use of a Maybach in a music video is the chopped-up 57 in “Otis” by Jay-Z and Kanye West, or maybe in a song by DJ Khaled, noted Maybach enthusiast and 62 Landaulet owner. But in fact, without question the best use of a Maybach in a music video the 57 S that’s in Britney Spears’ 2008 banger “Womanizer.”
Now that’s some skill
Shot by famed director Joseph Kahn, the music video for “Womanizer” opens with Britney cooking breakfast for her boyfriend as he gets ready for work, before cutting to him at his office where Britney is there dressed in a disguise. She dances and flirts with her man, who is receptive to it, and even sits on the photocopier to take photos of her butt — whatever happened to doing that? In the next scene she’s in a new disguise, this time as his waitress when he’s at lunch, eventually seducing him in the restaurant’s kitchen.
The Maybach comes in at the 2:34 mark. Britney is now in her third disguise, subbing in as his driver. We see the Maybach swerving around Lower Grand in Los Angeles, and it cuts to inside the car, where Britney is now in the spacious back seat facing her boyfriend, leg outstretched to steer the car with her high heeled foot. At one point she’s sitting in the back while her boyfriend jumps to the front to take control of the Maybach as we see it zipping through traffic, and there’s even a moment where both of them are in the back and no one is driving the car.
Sadly it’s not the longest scene, and the video soon ends with Britney taking off the disguises to reveal herself to her idiot boyfriend, exposing him as a womanizer. She beats him up a bit before throwing a blanket over him and making the bed. It rules. Who else but Britney Spears could drive a Maybach with their foot from the backseat? I rest my case.