Britney Jean Spears (born December 2,
1981) is an American recording artist and entertainer.
Born in McComb, Mississippi, and raised in Kentwood, Louisiana, she performed acting roles
in stage productions and television shows as a child before signing with Jive Records
in 1997.
During her first decade in the music industry,
she became a prominent figure in mainstream popular music and popular culture,
followed by a much-publicized personal life. Spears's first and second studio
albums ...Baby One More Time (1999) and Oops!... I Did It Again
(2000) became international successes, with the former becoming the
best-selling album by a teenage solo artist. Title tracks "...Baby One More Time" and "Oops!... I Did It Again" broke
international sales records. In 2001, Spears released her third album Britney
and played the starring role in the film Crossroads. She assumed creative
control of her fourth album In the Zone
(2003), which yielded the worldwide success "Toxic".
After the release of two compilation albums,
Spears's personal struggles sent her career into hiatus. Her fifth album Blackout (2007)
spawned hits "Gimme More" and "Piece of Me".
Spears's erratic behavior and hospitalizations caused her to be placed under a conservatorship
in 2008. Her sixth album Circus was released later that year,
which included global chart-topping lead single "Womanizer". Its supporting tour The Circus Starring Britney Spears
was the highest-grossing global concert tour in 2009. Later that October,
"3"
became Spears's third single to reach number one on the Billboard Hot
100. Her seventh album Femme Fatale (2011)
became her first to yield three top ten singles in the United States: "Hold It Against Me", "Till the World Ends" and "I Wanna Go".
In 2012, Spears was featured on will.i.am's single "Scream &
Shout", which topped charts in over 24 countries. She also
served as a judge during the second season of the American version of The X Factor.
Spears was established as a pop icon
and credited with influencing the revival of teen pop
during the late 1990s. She became the 'best-selling teenaged artist of all
time' before she turned 20, garnering her honorific titles such as "Princess of Pop". Her work has earned her numerous
awards and accolades, including a Grammy Award,
six MTV Video Music Awards including the Lifetime Achievement Award, nine Billboard Music Awards, and a star
on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2009, Billboard
ranked her as the 8th overall Artist of the Decade, and also recognized her as
the best-selling female artist of the first decade of the 21st century, as well
as the fifth overall. The Recording Industry Association of America
(RIAA) named Spears as the eighth top-selling
female artist in the United States, with 34 million certified albums. Nielsen
SoundScan ranked her the tenth best-selling digital artist of the
country, with more than 28.6 million digital singles as of January 2012. She
has sold over 100 million albums worldwide, making her one of the best-selling music artists
of all time. Rolling Stone recognized her instant
success as one of the Top 25 Teen Idol Breakout Moments of all time, while VH1 ranked her eleventh on
their "100 Greatest Women in Music" list in 2012, and Billboard
named her the sexiest woman in music. Forbes
reported that Spears was the highest paid female musician of 2012, with
earnings of $58 million, having last topped the list in 2002.
Musical style
Following
her debut, Spears was credited with leading the revival of teen pop
in the late 1990s. The Daily Yomiuri reported that
"[m]usic critics have hailed her as the most gifted teenage pop idol for
many years, but Spears has set her sights a little higher-she is aiming for the
level of superstardom that has been achieved by Madonna and Janet Jackson."
Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone wrote: "Britney Spears carries on
the classic archetype of the rock & roll teen queen, the dungaree doll, the
angel baby who just has to make a scene." Rami Yacoub who co-produced
Spears's debut album with lyricist Max Martin, commented, "I know from Denniz Pop
and Max's previous productions, when we do songs, there's kind of a nasal
thing. With N' Sync and the Backstreet Boys, we had to push for that mid-nasal
voice. When Britney did that, she got this kind of raspy, sexy voice."
Following the release of her debut album, Chuck Taylor of Billboard
observed, "Spears has become a consummate performer, with snappy dance
moves, a clearly real-albeit young-and funkdified voice ... "(You Drive Me) Crazy", her third
single ... demonstrates Spears's own development, proving that the
17-year-old is finding her own vocal personality after so many months of
steadfast practice." Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic referred to her
music as a "blend of infectious, rap-inflected dance-pop and smooth
balladry." Spears later commented, "With ...Baby One More Time, I didn't get to
show my voice off. The songs were great, but they weren't very
challenging".
Oops!...I
Did It Again and subsequent albums saw Spears
working with several contemporary R&B producers, leading to "a
combination of bubblegum, urban soul, and raga." Her third
studio album, Britney derived from the teen pop niche,
"[r]hythmically and melodically ... sharper, tougher than what came
before. What used to be unabashedly frothy has some disco grit, underpinned by
Spears' spunky self-determination that helps sell hooks that are already
catchier, by and large, than those that populated her previous two
albums." Guy Blackman of The Age wrote that while few would care to listen to an
entire Spears album, "[t]he thing about Spears, though, is that her
biggest songs, no matter how committee-created or impossibly polished, have
always been convincing because of her delivery, her commitment and her
presence. For her mostly teenage fans, Spears expresses perfectly the
conflicting urges of adolescence, the tension between chastity and sexual
experience, between hedonism and responsibility, between confidence and
vulnerability." Since her self-titled album, Britney, Spears has
explored and heavily incorporated the electropop
genre in her albums, including songs from the albums Blackout and Femme
Fatale.
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