Birth name: Britney Jean Spears
Birth Date: December 2, 1981
Birth Place: Kentwood, Louisiana, USA
Occupations: Singer, songwriter, dancer, actress, record producer, author, fashion designer, video director
Instruments: Vocals, piano
Years active: 1992–present
Nickname: Brit, Pinkey, The Princess of Pop
Height: 5' 4" (1.63 m)
Britney Jean Spears (also known as Britney Spears) was born on December 2, 1981. Her mother was Lynne Irene (nÊe Bridges) and father was James Parnell Spears.She was the second child of her parents. Her siblings are Bryan James and Jamie Lynn. At age three, Britney Spears started to attend dance lessons in her hometown of Kentwood, Louisiana, and was selected to perform a solo at the annual recital. During her childhood, she also attended gymnastics and voice lessons, and won many state-level competitions and children's talent shows.
Britney Spears made her local stage debut at age five, singing "What Child Is This?" at her kindergarten graduation. At age eight, Britney Spears and her mother Lynne traveled to Atlanta for an audition in the 1990s revival of The Mickey Mouse Club. Casting director Matt Cassella rejected her for being too young to join the series at the time, but later he introduced her to Nancy Carson, a New York City talent agent. Carson was impressed with Britney Spears’s vocals and suggested enrolling her at the Professional Performing Arts School; shortly after, Lynne and her daughters moved to a sublet apartment in New York. Britney Spears was hired for her first professional role as the understudy for the lead role of Tina Denmark in the Off-Broadway musical Ruthless!.
Britney Spears also appeared as a contestant on the popular television show Star Search, as well as being cast in a number of commercials. In December 1992, she was finally cast in The Mickey Mouse Club, but returned to Kentwood after the show was canceled. She enrolled at Parklane Academy in nearby McComb, Mississippi.
Britney Spears is an American recording artist and entertainer.
She signed with Jive Records in 1997 and released her debut album ...Baby One More Time in 1999. She was only 17 when she reached #1 on the U.S. pop music charts with her 1999 debut album '...Baby One More Time.' The video for the title track, in which she was dressed in a stimulating Catholic-schoolgirl outfit, sent her well on the way to becoming an international sex symbol. During her first decade within the music industry, she became a prominent figure in mainstream popular music and popular culture, followed by a much-publicized personal life. It debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200 and was certified two-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America after a month. "...Baby One More Time" later received a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Her first two albums established her as a pop icon and broke sales records, while title tracks "...Baby One More Time" and "Oops!... I Did It Again" became international number-one hits. Britney Spears was credited with influencing the revival of teen pop during the late 1990s.
After the release of two compilation albums, Spears experienced personal struggles and her career went under hiatus. Britney Spears is also the youngest female artist to have a million sellers in the country. "(You Drive Me) Crazy" was released as the third single from the album. It became a top-ten hit worldwide and propelled ...Baby One More Time to sell 26 million copies.
In late 2001, her next album, 'Britney,' was released and debuted at number one in the charts, selling over 740,000 units its first week. But this time around the singles weren't as successful; "I'm a Slave 4 U," "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman," and "Overprotected" all missed the Top Ten.
In 2002, Britney Spears made her film debut with the commercial disappointment Crossroads. Her performance was poorly received by critics, and she netted herself a Razzie Award for worst performance of the year. She retreated from performing and recording for several months before returning to the studio in 2003.
Her fourth album, 'In The Zone,' marked an indisputable return to commercial form with a new adult sound. A duet with her idol Madonna, coupled with the show-stopping kiss between the two, at the 2003 MTV Music awards, confirmed that Spears was again the Pop Princess of her generation. The single "Toxic" returned her to the singles top 10 and the Madonna collaboration "Me Against the Music" electrified dance clubs. The success of the album peaked with a 2005 Grammy Award for "Toxic" as Best Dance Recording.
Her fifth studio album, Blackout, was released in 2007 and despite receiving little promotion; it spawned hits "Gimme More" and "Piece of Me". In 2008, her erratic behavior and hospitalizations caused her to be placed in a conservatorship. The same year, her sixth studio album Circus was released, with the global chart-topping lead single "Womanizer". She embarked on her highest-grossing global concert tour, The Circus Starring Britney Spears, in 2009. Her seventh studio album Femme Fatale, released in 2011, has become the first of her albums to yield three top ten singles in the United States.
Britney Spears has sold over 100 million records worldwide. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), she is the eighth top-selling female artist in the United States, with 33 million certified albums. Britney Spears is also recognized as the best-selling female artist of the first decade of the 21st century, as well as the fifth overall. Britney Spears was ranked the 8th Artist of the 2000s by Billboard. In June 2010, Spears was ranked sixth on Forbes list of the 100 Most Powerful and Influential celebrities in the world; she is also the third most mentioned musician on the internet, according to Forbes.
While she may have been on a break from her career, she was by no means breaking from the media, who followed her relentlessly, even keener to track her down and find out what she was up to. Britney was increasingly letting her pop princess crown slip, admitting she had lost her sacred virginity to Timberlake, outside of marriage. Britney could also be seen smoking and drinking to excess on wild nights out and famously breaking down in tears while being interviewed by Diane Sawyer about her parents (who were recently divorced) and her bitter split from Timberlake. Britney was linked to men such as Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit and openly kissed Colin Farrell at a movie premiere. In a blitz of publicity which included the infamous "Like a Virgin" performance and Madonna kiss at the MTV Video Music Awards in August that year.
Britney was in a lot more control over her career, yet her personal life still seemed to be slipping. In January 2004, Britney got "married" to childhood friend Jason Allen Alexander in a Las Vegas ceremony. The incident shocked the world, especially when the marriage was annulled 55 hours later and was described as "a joke taken too far" by her management.
Britney married with Kevin in September 2004 in a secret ceremony, soon after the birth of Kevin's second child. That same month, Britney released a single off her upcoming "Greatest Hits" album (released in November 2004) a cover of Bobby Brown's 1988 hit "My Prerogative".
2007 started as a difficult year for Britney Spears, with her irregular behavior including the surprise shaving of her hair in February and a number of admissions to drug rehab facilities as she fought a custody battle for her children. In September, an LA judge ordered Spears to undergo random drug and alcohol tests twice a week as part of the situation of her child custody case.
For more than a decade, BRITNEY SPEARS has become an outstanding figure in mainstream popular music and popular culture, followed by a much-publicized personal life.
Britney Spears Pop-Albums
...Baby One More Time (1999)
Oops!... I Did It Again (2000)
Britney (2001)
In the Zone (2003)
Blackout (2007)
Circus (2008)
Femme Fatale (2011)
Recently Spears performing at the Femme Fatale Tour in July 2011
Britney Spears Tours
...Baby One More Time Tour (1999-2000)
Oops!... I Did It Again World Tour (2000)
Dream Within a Dream Tour (2001-02)
The Onyx Hotel Tour (2004)
The M+M's Tour (2007)
The Circus Starring Britney Spears (2009)
Femme Fatale Tour (2011)
