Britney Spears
Britney Spears (born Britney Jean Spears, December 2, 1981) is an American singer, dancer and actress. 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. 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 self-titled third studio album, "Britney", and played the starring role in the film "Crossroads" (2002). She assumed creative control of her fourth studio album, "In the Zone" (2003), which yielded the worldwide success of the "Toxic" single.
In 2007, Spears's much-publicized personal issues sent her career into hiatus. Her fifth studio album, "Blackout," was released later that year, and spawned singles such as "Gimme More" and "Piece of Me". Her erratic behavior and hospitalizations continued through the following year, at which point she was placed under a still ongoing conservatorship. Spears's sixth studio album, "Circus" (2008), included the international chart-topping single "Womanizer". Her seventh studio album, "Femme Fatale" (2011), became her first to yield three top-ten singles in the United States. She released her eighth studio album "Britney Jean" in 2013. Later that year, Spears began the four-year residency show, "Britney: Piece of Me," at The AXIS at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas.
Spears is regarded as a pop icon and credited with influencing the revival of teen pop during the late 1990s. She became the 'best-selling teenage artist of all time' and garnered honorific titles including the "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, ten Billboard Music Awards including the Billboard Millennium Award 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 2000s, as well as the fifth overall. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) lists Spears as the eighth top-selling female artist in the United States, with 34 million certified albums. She has sold 100 million albums worldwide and over 100 million singles. making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time. According to Billboard Spears has sold about 22.38 million singles in digital downloads in US and is the fourth best-selling female artist since Nielsen SoundScan began.
"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.
Abbreviated history
At age eight, Spears and her mother Lynne traveled to Atlanta, Georgia for an audition in the 1990s revival of "The Mickey Mouse Club". Casting director Matt Casella rejected her for being too young to join the series at the time, but introduced her to Nancy Carson, a New York City talent agent. Carson was impressed with 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. Spears was hired for her first professional role as the understudy for the lead role of Tina Denmark in the Off-Broadway musical "Ruthless!." She also appeared as a contestant on the popular television show Star Search and was cast in a number of commercials. In December 1992, she was finally cast in "The Mickey Mouse Club" alongside Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, Ryan Gosling, and Keri Russell, but returned to Kentwood after the show was canceled in 1995. She enrolled at Parklane Academy in McComb, Mississippi. Although she made friends with most of her classmates, she compared the school to "the opening scene in "Clueless" with all the cliques. [...] I was so bored. I was the point guard on the basketball team. I had my boyfriend, and I went to homecoming and Christmas formal. But I wanted more."
- More information is available at [ Wikipedia:Britney_Spears ]
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