Britney Spears
Britney Spears is a renowned American singer, dancer, and actress who rose to fame in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Her debut album, "...Baby One More Time," released in 1999, quickly ascended to the top of the Billboard 200 chart, establishing her as a pop icon. Over the next few years, she released a series of successful albums, including "Oops! I Did It Again" and "Britney," which solidified her status in the music industry and generated numerous hit singles. However, her career faced significant challenges starting in the late 2000s, following highly publicized personal struggles and health issues, including a well-documented breakdown in 2007. Despite these difficulties, Spears continued to release music, tour, and even embark on a Las Vegas residency, which garnered mixed reviews yet showcased her enduring appeal.
In recent years, Spears has been at the center of a legal battle regarding her conservatorship, which began in 2008 and involved her father's control over her finances and personal decisions. This situation sparked widespread public support, notably through the #FreeBritney movement, and culminated in the termination of her conservatorship in late 2021. In 2023, she published her memoir, "The Woman in Me," which quickly became a bestseller. Throughout her career, Britney Spears has made a significant cultural impact, navigating the complexities of fame while remaining a central figure in pop music history.
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Britney Spears
Singer
- Born: December 2, 1981
- Place of Birth: McComb, Mississippi
Britney Spears was one of the most successful singers in the world during the 2000s. Her first three albums debuted at number one on the Billboard pop music charts and produced several hit songs. In the late 2000s, her career was temporarily disrupted by personal and health issues. Although she continued making music and performing, her career was overshadowed by her personal struggles.
In early 2000, having had her very first album, . . . Baby One More Time (1999), go straight to the top of the Billboard 200 upon its release the previous year, Britney Spears became one of the most popular entertainers in the world. She marked further professional milestones that year, releasing her second album, Oops! I Did It Again (2000), which sold more than a million copies in the first week following its debut. In 2001, she released her third album, Britney, which also debuted at number one.
In 2001, Spears also began working to change her innocent image. After a racy cover spread in W magazine in 2003 and a provocative kiss with singer Madonna at the MTV Video Music Awards, she gained more media attention. Also in 2003, Spears released her fourth album, In the Zone, which produced the single “Toxic.” The song earned the star her first Grammy Award. She also made her film debut, starring in the teen drama Crossroads in 2002.
Despite Spears's success, she encountered controversy over the next few years. In 2007, she checked into rehab after several incidents of widely reported erratic behavior, which included shaving her head. Although Spears’s performance at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards show was widely criticized, her fifth album, Blackout (2007), was a critical and commercial success. However, in 2008, Spears was hospitalized for another breakdown.
Later in 2008, Spears made a guest appearance on the television show How I Met Your Mother and returned to the MTV Video Music Awards, where she received three awards. At the close of the year, she released the album Circus (2008) and toured to promote the album throughout 2009.
Spears returned to the studio to release the more dance-oriented and increasingly eccentric album Femme Fatale in 2011, which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart and earned her three top-ten hits—for the first time from the same album—with the singles "Hold It Against Me," "Till the World Ends," and "I Wanna Go." Following yet another tour as well as a stint as a judge on the popular talent show The X Factor, in the months leading up to the release of her eighth studio project, she advertised the work as her most personal up to that point. Though the album, titled simply Britney Jean, did land in the top ten of the Billboard 200 upon its release in 2013, it was largely reviewed as a disappointing effort, especially in light of the hype that she had created around the alleged intimacy of the material.
At the same time, Spears was committed to preparing for a series of ambitious shows that she had signed on for as a type of Las Vegas residency. Performing at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, her contract stipulated that she would continue to make these appearances (almost one hundred total) at least through 2015. The show, titled Piece of Me, debuted in late 2013 to mixed reviews, but critics and fans largely agreed that it was an entertaining performance of several of her hit songs filled with the usual pageantry of Las Vegas, including intricate sets as well as creative choreography and costumes. By the time that her residency was coming to an end in 2015, Spears announced that she would be extending the performances, in revamped form, through 2017. To complement this announcement, she made a triumphant return to live television by opening the 2016 Billboard Music Awards with a routine reminiscent of her Las Vegas performances, consisting of some of her biggest and most recent hits.
In 2016, Spears released her ninth studio album, Glory, which peaked at number three on the Billboard 200 chart. In 2018, she announced Britney: Domination, her second Las Vegas residency; however, the show was put on hold in 2019, after her father was hospitalized by a colon rupture. In 2020, Spears made headlines again, this time due to the increased controversy surrounding the conservatorship that had given her father control over her estate beginning around 2008. According to her legal team, Spears did not like the arrangement due to a strained relationship with her father, and by late 2020 a failed attempt had been made in court to remove him from this position; at the same time, some of her father's control had decreased when a second conservator was assigned. In early 2021, following the release of a highly publicized documentary on the singer produced by the New York Times, a petition was filed by her lawyer for her father's resignation and his replacement. The documentary and petition incited a social media campaign using the hashtags #FreeBritney and #BritneySpeaks. Spears made her statement to the court on June 23, 2021, revealing her thoughts on what she called an "abusive" conservatorship. After the hearing, the judge approved Spears's hiring of a lawyer of her choosing. In November 2021, the judge terminated James Spears’s conservatorship over his daughter. The two sides reached a legal settlement in the case in 2024.
In 2023, Spears signed a $15 million book deal and published her memoir, The Woman in Me, which went on to sell more than two million copies worldwide.
Personal Life
Spears was in a heavily publicized relationship with singer Justin Timberlake from 2000 to 2001. She generated national headlines in 2004 with her fifty-five-hour marriage to her friend Jason Alexander, whom she wed in Las Vegas. By the end of 2004, Spears had married again, this time to dancer Kevin Federline. In 2005, Spears gave birth to the couple’s son, Sean Preston. She surprised fans in 2006 when she appeared on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar pregnant with the couple’s second child, Jayden James, who was born a few months later. The following year, Spears and Federline divorced, and he was awarded custody of their children following a long dispute that involved allegations of drug abuse. She regained partial custody after attending rehab. Spears began dating her long-term partner Sam Asghari in 2016. The couple married in 2022, but divorced in 2024.
Impact
During the 2000s, Spears transformed from a teenage pop princess to a successful, if sometimes troubled, musician. During several difficult years, critics predicted that her career was over, and many wondered whether she would survive the challenges of fame and her issues with substance abuse. However, Spears persevered and remained one of the decade’s most popular entertainers.
Bibliography
Betancourt, Bianca. "Why Longtime Britney Spears Fans Are Demanding to #FreeBritney." Harper's Bazaar, 1 Apr. 2021, www.harpersbazaar.com/celebrity/latest/a34113034/why-longtime-britney-spears-fans-are-demanding-to-freebritney/. Accessed 23 May 2024.
Day, Liz, and Lauren Herstik. "Britney Spears and Her Father Settle Legal Dispute Over Conservatorship." The New York Times, 26 Apr. 2024, www.nytimes.com/2024/04/26/arts/music/britney-spears-jamie-spears-legal-fees-conservatorship.html. Accessed 23 May 2024.
Dennis, Steve. Britney: Inside the Dream: The Biography. London: Harper, 2009. Print.
Heard, Christopher. Britney Spears: Little Girl Lost. Montreal: Transit, 2010. Print.
Jacobs, Julia, and Joe Coscarelli. "'I Had Been Exploited:’ Takeaways From Britney Spears’s Memoir." The New York Times, 19 Oct. 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/10/19/arts/music/britney-spears-memoir-takeaways.html. Accessed 23 May 2024.
Kovaleski, Serge F., and Joe Coscarelli. "Is Britney Spears Ready to Stand on Her Own?" New York Times. New York Times, 4 May 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/arts/music/is-britney-spears-ready-to-stand-on-her-own.html. Accessed 23 May 2024.
Wood, Mikael. "Review: Britney Spears Offers Just a 'Piece of Me' in Las Vegas." Rev. of concert by Britney Spears. Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada. Los Angeles Times, www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-review-britney-spears-piece-of-me-las-vegas-20131229-story.html. Accessed 23 May 2024.