|
 Britney
Jean Spears was born Dec. 2, 1981 in the small Southern town of
Kentwood, Louisiana where she has lived most of her life. She started
performing at a very young age, first in local stage productions and
church choirs, later in national commercials and off-Broadway plays, and
finally starting at age 11 in two seasons of The Mickey Mouse Club TV
show alongside future 'N Sync members Joshua "JC" Chasez and Justin
Timberlake. After leaving MMC in '94, she 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, offering free
previews of her video (which features the pop starlet 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, getting
her a slot alongside the Boys on the Sabrina The Teenage Witch
soundtrack, and landing 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, even came
out! (Rumors of Britney's romances with 'N Sync's Timberlake and
Backstreet's Nick Carter--which Britney has denied, though she admits
that Justin gave her her first kiss back in the MMC days--probably
helped generate interest as well.) The boy-band connections didn't end
there, either; Britney toured with 'N Sync, and also enlisted the
management team of Johnny and Donna Wright, the Backstreet Boys' former
managers and the current managers of--you guessed it--'N Sync.
Britney
Spears Links
All this
cross-marketing obviously paid off, as ...Baby One More Time's first
single (the title track) went to No. 1, 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 No. 1 in the same week.
With cutesy 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--it was easy to dismiss Britney Spears as a
pretty puppet whose sole purpose in the mega-marketing food chain was to
push products of any kind, be they record albums, Big Macs, or various
pieces of merchandise bearing her perky blonde likeness.
But Britney proved her initial success was no fluke with Oops!…I Did It
Again. Spurred on by the hit title track, the album entered the album
chart at No. 1, 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.
Adding to
Britney's star appeal was the admission that she was dating fellow
former Mouseketeer and *NSYNC member Justin Timberlake.
With the release of 2001's Britney, Spears attempted to grow out of her
teen-dream image, admitting as much in one of the album's singles, "I'm
Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman." Like her previous two albums, Britney also
entered on top of the chart, but her star was beginning to dim slightly,
as parents of her young fans likely steered their children away from the
now-naughty Britney. While the album's first single, the Janet
Jackson-like "I'm A Slave 4 U" reached No. 8, the subsequent singles
from the album failed to crack the top 10.
Making matters worse was her big-screen debut Crossroads, which flopped
miserably. Britney redeemed herself slightly was an amusing turn as a
fembot in Austin Powers: Goldmember and managed to stay in the gossip
columns with news of her breakup with Timberlake and subsequent dating
and nightclubbing episodes.
Prior to the
release of her fourth album in the fall of 2003, Britney again made
headlines when she played tongue tag with 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 from Spears's In The Zone. |
