Britney Spears

Britney Spears (born December 2, 1981, McComb, Mississippi, U.S.) is an American singer who helped spark the teen-pop phenomenon in the late 1990s and later endured intense public scrutiny for her tumultuous personal life.

Early life

Spears, who grew up in Kentwood, Louisiana, began singing and dancing at age two and was soon competing in talent shows. At age eight she auditioned for Disney’s television show The All New Mickey Mouse Club but was deemed too young for the program. The impressed producers did, however, encourage her to get an agent in New York City, and she began spending her summers there, attending the Professional Performing Arts School. During this period she started making television commercials and in 1991 appeared in Ruthless, an Off-Broadway play. Two years later Spears finally became a cast member of The All New Mickey Mouse Club, joining an ensemble of Mouseketeers that included future pop stars Justin Timberlake (with whom she was later romantically linked) and Christina Aguilera.

“Princess of Pop”: …Baby One More Time, Oops!…I Did It Again, and In the Zone

After the show’s cancellation in 1995, Spears returned home, but she was soon eager to resume her career. At age 15 she made a demo tape that earned her a development deal with Jive Records. In 1998 she released her first single, “…Baby One More Time.” The song soon became the subject of controversy, both for its lyrics (“Hit me baby one more time”) as well as for its Lolita-like video, in which Spears appeared as a provocative schoolgirl. The attention, however, only helped the song, and when the album (…Baby One More Time) was released in 1999, it quickly went to number one on the charts and eventually sold more than 10 million copies in the United States. In 2000 she released her second album, Oops!…I Did It Again. It sold 1.3 million copies in its first week of release, setting a record for first-week sales by a solo artist. Although Spears drew criticism for her revealing attire—often imitated by her female fans—she was able to convey a wholesomeness that proved highly profitable. In 2001 she signed a multimillion-dollar deal to be a spokesperson for Pepsi and released her third album, Britney, which sold more than four million copies domestically. Its follow-up, In the Zone (2003), sold nearly three million, partly on the strength of the hit single “Toxic.”

Britannica Quiz

2000s Music Quiz

Spears’s subsequent studio albums suffered diminished sales but remained major events in the pop music world. The electronic-infused Blackout (2007) found her in a self-reflective mood; Circus (2008) featured her first Billboard number-one single (“Womanizer”) since her debut; and Femme Fatale (2011) was her most up-tempo dance-oriented offering to date. Britney Jean (2013) was characterized by Spears as being highly personal, but it was criticized for obscuring her voice with synthesized effects. However, Glory (2016), her ninth studio album, was considered a return to form for the singer.

Other activities: acting and residencies

Spears also dabbled in acting, making her big-screen debut in 2002 with the lead role in the coming-of-age film Crossroads. In 2012 she appeared as a judge in the televised talent competition The X Factor. The following year she began a residency show titled Britney: Piece of Me at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas. That residency ended in late 2017, and she embarked on a world tour the following summer. In 2019 Spears announced that she was taking an “indefinite work hiatus.”

Scandal and conservatorship

Spears often found herself in the spotlight less for her music than for events in her personal life, most notably her tumultuous marriage (2004–07) to dancer Kevin Federline. Her erratic behaviour during this time—at one point she shaved her head and was briefly hospitalized—resulted in her being placed under a court-ordered conservatorship (also known as guardianship) in 2008; her father was named as a conservator. Concerns about this legal arrangement later caused fans to start the online campaign #FreeBritney. The conservatorship was also the subject of the TV documentaries Framing Britney Spears and Controlling Britney Spears, both of which aired in 2021.

That year Spears petitioned for an end to the conservatorship, claiming that the arrangement was “abusive” and unnecessary, especially given that she was performing and recording. In September 2021 a judge ruled that the “current situation is not tenable,” and Spears’s father was suspended as conservator. Two months later the conservatorship was terminated. In 2023 Spears published the much-anticipated memoir The Woman in Me, in which she candidly wrote about her career and personal life. She notably alleged being exploited by her family, especially her father, and shared details about her romantic relationship with pop star Justin Timberlake. The work received positive reviews from both critics and fans.

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For many, Spears epitomized the endemic growth in the public’s fascination with celebrities, catered to by paparazzi and tabloid journalism and fueled by gossip and scandal.