Britney Spears
Real Name: Britney Jeau Spears
Date of Birth: December 2, 1981
Place of birth: Kentwood, Louisiana USA
Profession: Entertainer
With her increasingly raunchy videos, skimpy costumes, and tabloid exploits, it’s sometimes easy to forget that young Britney Spears is a simple, small-town girl at heart. But she was born Britney Jean Spears on Dec. 2, 1981 in the small Southern ‘burb of Kentwood, Louisiana (population: 1,200), and it was in this tiny town that she started performing at a very young age in local stage productions and church choirs. This experience eventually led to appearances in national commercials and off-Broadway plays, and finally, starting at age 11, to a regular role on two seasons of The Mickey Mouse Club TV show, starring alongside future fellow teen-pop stars Christina Aguilera, J.C. Chasez, and Justin Timberlake (the latter of whom would become her much-publicized boyfriend for a couple years, providing plenty of fodder for the gossip pages).
After leaving MMC in 1994, Britney auditioned for an all-girl singing group, but instead wound up with a solo recording deal with Jive Records, home to similarly minded teen-pop sensations the Backstreet Boys. Jive savvily and aggressively marketed Britney to the Backstreet crowd by including her songs on a Backstreet Boys CD sampler and offering free previews of her now-legendary debut video (which featured the baby-diva doing her best Lolita impression in a very short plaid Catholic schoolgirl skirt and skintight baby tee) to anyone who requested the Backstreet Boys’ “I’ll Never Break Your Heart” video on cable music channel the Box. Jive also secured her a slot alongside BSB on the Sabrina The Teenage Witch soundtrack, and landed her generous coverage in teenybopper mags like Superteen, Bop, Teen Machine, and Teen People--all this before her debut album, the somewhat suggestively titled ...Baby One More Time, was even released.
The boy-band connections didn’t end there, either. Rumors of Britney’s romances with Timberlake and BSB’s Nick Carter--the latter of which she continuously denied--probably helped generate interest as well, and she also toured with her beau’s mega-group, *NSYNC*. All this cross-marketing obviously paid off, as ...Baby One More Time’s first single (the title track) went to number one, and the album also debuted in the top spot on the Billboard charts, making Britney the youngest female artist in Billboard history to have her first single and first album go to number one in the same week. But the Britneymania was only getting started.
With cutesy early song titles like “Soda Pop,” “Email My Heart,” and “Born To Make You Happy"--not to mention appearances in McDonald’s commercials and Tommy Hilfiger print ads--Britney was often dismissed as a pretty puppet whose sole purpose in the mega-marketing food chain was to push products of any kind to child consumers, be they record albums, Big Macs, or various pieces of merchandise bearing her perky blonde likeness. Whether or not this was true, Britney nevertheless proved her initial success was no fluke with her second album, Oops!...I Did It Again. Spurred on by the hit title track, the album entered the album chart at number one, setting a new record for single-week sales by a female artist in the process. A string of hit singles followed, including “Lucky,” “Stronger,” and “Don’t Let Me Be The Last To Know,” pushing the album to sales of an incredible 9 million copies. And of course, each single was accompanied by a video even racier and sexier than the last, indicating that Britney--who at one time had famously declared her desire to remain a virgin until her wedding night--was eager to shed her girly, goody-two-shoes image for good.
Along with the steamy videos, Spears’s attempts to outgrow her teen-dream image included confessional songs like “I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman” and sexy ones like the Neptunes-produced “I’m A Slave 4 U,” the latter of which she performed on the MTV Video Music Awards wearing little more than a belly chain and a live snake. Both songs appeared on her third album, Britney, which like its predecessors entered on the Billboard album chart at number one. But it seemed her star was beginning to dim slightly, perhaps because some concerned parents were steering their children away from the now-naughty Britney. While the album’s first single, “I’m A Slave 4 U,” reached number eight, subsequent singles from the album failed to even crack the top 10.
Making matters worse was Brtiney’s big-screen debut, Crossroads, which flopped miserably, although she redeemed herself slightly in an amusing turn as a fembot in Austin Powers: Goldmember. Britney also continued to reveal her not-that-innocent side with a variety of tabloid-baiting antics: For instance, after her very public breakup with Timberlake, she confessed in an infamous W magazine interview that they’d (gasp!) had sex, and later, she impulsively married a childhood friend, Jason Alexander, in a quickie Las Vegas wedding (the marriage was annulled 57 hours later).
But Britney’s biggest scandalous act happened right before the release of her fourth album, In The Zone, when she played tongue-tag with her idol/role model Madonna during an opening tribute to the Material Mom at the 2003 MTV Music Video Awards. Madonna returned the favor by appearing on the recording and in the video of “Me Against The Music,” the first single off In The Zone. Sadly for some dirty-minded viewers, the video featured no Madonna/Britney makeout sessions, but the clip for the next In The Zone single, “Toxic,” featured Brtiney in a see-through, rhinestone-encrusted bodysuit...and “Toxic” became, perhaps not coincidentally, Britney’s biggest single to date.
Britney’s followup single, a ballad called “Everytime,” was accompanied by a rather disturbing (and perhaps loosely autobiographical?) video depicting her in a bathtub with slit wrists. Given the post-Justin turmoil in her life, the video seemed like a cry for help from the troubled starlet. Only time will tell if Britney is best remembered for her music or for her personal problems when all is said and done, but one thing is certain: Whatever she does, millions will be watching her every move.
