MusicBuzz: Britney Spears

More than any other single artist, Britney Spears was the driving force behind the return of teen pop in the late ’90s.

When Spears’ debut album of the same title was released in early 1999, it entered the charts at number one and stayed there for six weeks.

Spears is ranked as the eighth best-selling female recording artist in the United States according to the Recording Industry Association of America with 31 million certified albums and one of the world’s best-selling music artists having sold an estimated 83 million worldwide.

She performed in local dance revues and sang in her local Baptist church choir.

She began a U.S. concert tour sponsored by American teen magazines, and eventually became an opening act for ‘N Sync and the Backstreet Boys.

This pledge has been questioned due to her apparently sexual relationship with fellow pop singer Justin Timberlake.

Spears spent the next three years studying at the Professional Performing Arts School, and also appeared in several television commercials and off-Broadway plays.

The blockbuster success of the Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys certainly paved the way for her own commercial breakthrough, but Spears didn’t just become a star she was a bona fide pop phenomenon.

Allmusic once again gave it 4 out of 5 stars, saying that the album “has the same combination of sweetly sentimental ballads and endearingly gaudy dance-pop that made “…Baby One More Time.”

Released in late 2001, Britney tried to present the singer as a more mature young woman, and was accompanied by mild hints that her personal life wasn’t always completely puritanical.

Born in McComb, Mississippi and raised in Kentwood, Louisiana, Spears first appeared on national television as a contestant on the Star Search program in 1992 and went on to star on the television series The New Mickey Mouse Club from 1993–1994.

Starbucks and cigarettes were Britney’s constant accessories in the endless paparazzi photos, and the revelation of her relationship with former backup dancer Kevin Federline made the tabloids even more ravenous.

Britney Jean Spears is an American recording artist and entertainer.

After a brief membership with the pop musical group Innosense, Spears signed a recording contract with Jive Records, releasing her debut album…Baby One More Time in 1999.

Spears entered New York City’s Professional Performing Arts School when she was eight.

Spears’s personal life began to gain substantial media attention after her marriage to Kevin Federline in 2004.

The music video for “…Baby One More Time ” and Spears’s appearance on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine also established her as an international sex symbol, garnering controversy over the influence of her public image on teenage girls.

But apart from her ability to tiptoe the line between virginal coquette and brazen tart, Spears had a secret weapon in Swedish pop mastermind Max Martin, who had a hand in the vast majority of her hits as a writer and/or producer.

Britney Jean Spears was born December 2, 1981, in the small town of Kentwood, LA, and began performing as a singer and dancer at a young age.

The video for her debut single, “…Baby One More Time,” outfitted her in full Catholic-school regalia and sent her well on the way to becoming an international sex symbol.

A month later, she took home the Favorite Pop/Rock New Artist award at the American Music Awards.