Britney Jean Spears (born December 2, 1981) is an American pop music singer, songwriter and dancer. Her career encompasses chart-topping records, high-profile advertising, and forays into acting and reality television. She remains very popular throughout the world despite some controversy surrounding the perceived sexual nature of her music and image.
Biography
Childhood and discovery
Born to Jamie Spears and Lynne Bridges in McComb, Mississippi, USA and raised in Kentwood, Louisiana, Spears performed in local dance revues and church choirs as a young girl, and was auditioning for the Disney Channel's New Mickey Mouse Club by the age of eight years old. Although she was too young to join the series at that time, a producer on the show introduced her to a New York agent; she subsequently spent three summers at the Professional Performing Arts School Center and also appeared in a number of off-Broadway productions, including 1991's Ruthless!.
Spears then returned to the Disney Channel for a spot on the New Mickey Mouse Club and was accepted. She was featured for two years between the ages of eleven and thirteen during the 1993 and '94 seasons. Her castmates on the
show included Justin Timberlake and Joshua Chasez (who later became members of the pop group *NSYNC), Keri Russell (star of the TV show Felicity), Christina Aguilera, also a pop singer, and actor Ryan Gosling.
Before long, Spears had recorded a demo tape, which eventually landed in the hands of a Jive Records executive. She was quickly signed to their label and began touring American venues for a series of concerts sponsored by U.S. teen magazines before joining *NSYNC and becoming their opening act. It was at this time that Spears became romantically involved with Justin Timberlake.
1998-2001: Early commercial success
By late 1998, Spears' debut single "...Baby One More Time" was beginning to impact radio stations and MTV. Led by a music video that featured her in a schoolgirl outfit, the song became an international success, earning Platinum sales and going to number one in the U.S., as well as the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, among many other countries.
Her debut album of the same name, ...Baby One More Time, topped the LP charts in Canada and the U.S. for six non-consecutive weeks. Within a year of the record's release, the album had become the best-selling LP by a teenager in history, spawned two U.S. top ten hits (in "...Baby" and "(You Drive Me) Crazy") and shipped over ten million copies in the U.S. alone; it would go on to ship another four million copies on top of this. In April of 1999, she was featured on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. The suggestive photo spread began a whirlwind of rumors that the still-seventeen-year-old had gotten breast implants. These claims were denied by Spears' camp, and seemed to have little impact on the young starlet's rising popularity.
That summer, she kicked off her first headlining tour, titled the ...Baby One More Time Tour. By late 1999, Britney Spears had become one of the year's biggest stars, a claim backed-up in the amount of award nominations she received that season. In December, she took home four Billboard Music Awards, including Female Artist of the Year. The next month, at the American Music Awards, she was nominated for three trophies, of which she won one: Favorite Pop/Rock New Artist.
At the Grammys held in February 2000, Spears received two nominations, including one for Best New Artist. She performed her signature song
best-selling LP by a teenager in history, spawned two U.S. top ten hits (in "...Baby" and "(You Drive Me) Crazy") and shipped over ten million copies in the U.S. alone; it would go on to ship another four million copies on top of this. In April of 1999, she was featured on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. The suggestive photo spread began a whirlwind of rumors that the still-seventeen-year-old had gotten breast implants. These claims were denied by Spears' camp, and seemed to have little impact on the young starlet's rising popularity.
That summer, she kicked off her first headlining tour, titled the ...Baby One More Time Tour. By late 1999, Britney Spears had become one of the year's biggest stars, a claim backed-up in the amount of award nominations she received that season. In December, she took home four Billboard Music Awards, including Female Artist of the Year. The next month, at the American Music Awards, she was nominated for three trophies, of which she won one: Favorite Pop/Rock New Artist.
At the Grammys held in February 2000, Spears received two nominations, including one for Best New Artist. She performed her signature song "...Baby One More Time" and her then-current single, the top twenty hit "From the Bottom of My Broken Heart" at the show, but went home empty-handed, losing the aforementioned award to fellow ex-mouseketeer Christina Aguilera.
After the short-lived Crazy 2K Tour and just two months after her debut began to die down in steam, Spears was ready to release the lead single off her sophomore effort. "Oops!... I Did It Again" broke a record for most radio station adds in a single day [1] and quickly became a U.S. top ten hit and number one single in other countries, including the U.K. and Australia.
Released in May 2000, Oops!... I Did It Again also debuted at number one in the U.S. and Canada, and was a similarly huge hit like her debut. It sold over 1.3 million units during its first week in the U.S., making it the fastest-selling album by a female artist in history. Within a year of release, it had shipped over nine million copies in the U.S. alone (and would go on to ship another million on top of that.) The record was also a critical success, with Rolling Stone giving the album 3.5 stars out of 5, saying "Britney's demand for satisfaction is complex, fierce and downright scary, making her a true child of rock & roll tradition," [2] and also refers to her "song-factory" and "fantastic pop cheese," while NME reported (with a score of eight out of ten) that "She's modern-day pop perfection realised in a nearly human form." [3]
That summer was another busy one for Spears, as she kicked off her first world tour (titled the Oops!... I Did It Again World Tour) and also became an author after she co-wrote the novel Britney Spears' Heart-to-Heart with her mother Lynne. At the annual MTV Video Music Awards, she gave a lip-synched performance of "Oops!... I Did It Again" and The Rolling Stones' classic hit, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." During her performance, she ripped off a black suit to reveal a crystal-adorned, flesh-colored stage costume that caused quite a bit of controversy, seeing as the singer was still only eighteen-years-old at the time.
Through the year, the top thirty "Lucky" and top twenty "Stronger" kept Britney on the charts. However, the album's last single "Don't Let Me Be the Last to Know"
