Britney Spears

About

Also known as: B. Spears, Bretney Spears, Briteny Spears, Britney Jean Spears, Brittany Spears, Brittney Spears, ブリトニー・スピアーズ, 브리트니 스피어스

Few pop careers have burned as bright or as turbulently as Britney Spears's. Growing up in McComb, Mississippi, she auditioned for The Mickey Mouse Club as a child, made her Off Broadway debut in the musical Ruthless, and then signed with Jive Records as a teenager. Her debut single blew up immediately, selling half a million copies on its first day, and her debut album went on to become the bestselling album by a teenage artist of all time. Spears shaped the sound of late nineties and early 2000s pop, starting out in teen pop and dance pop before pushing into more experimental territory. Her fifth album Blackout, released in 2007, is considered a turning point and is often cited by critics as her finest work. Through it all she dealt with intense personal scrutiny, including a conservatorship run by her father that controlled both her finances and personal life from 2008 until 2021, eventually sparking the global FreeBritney movement. As a recording artist she has stayed restless and prolific. Her eighth studio album Britney Jean, which she described as the most personal record in her catalog, leaned heavily into EDM and featured collaborations with Sia, will.i.am, and her sister Jamie Lynn. The lead single Work Bitch became one of her signature songs, and around the same time she launched a Las Vegas residency that ran for four years.