PROFILE: BRITNEY SPEARS:Britney Spears, now 27, has been written off many times since she came to global fame as a 17-year-old in a school uniform, but two sell-out shows in Dublin in June are proof she can still pack them in
MADONNA. Elvis. There aren’t many people in this world whose first name brings instant recognition. Yet a 27-year-old from small-town America now ranks among them, and has given the Queen of Pop a run for her money. And she’s on her way to Dublin, with tickets for two upcoming shows in the O2 on June 19th and 20th snapped up within hours of going on sale on Wednesday.
Britney Spears is back, trailing controversy as she goes. This week alone she made headlines when her father slapped a restraining order on her former manager, Sam Lufti, barring both him and lawyer Jon Eardley from coming within 90m of Spears or her sons until April 2012.
And though the heady days of 2004, when she beat Paris Hilton to become the name most entered in Google searches, may be behind her, the good news for Spears is she’s still in Ireland’s top 10 when it comes to Twitter followers. Oh, and selling out stadiums for her first concert tour in five years. Not bad for a divorced mother-of-two from small-town Louisiana.
Then again, Spears was always going to be big. Born Britney Jean Spears, on December 2nd, 1981, the middle child of Jamie and Lynne Spears, she grew up in the small town of Kentwood – population 2,205 at the last count – where her singing talents got their first public airing at the local Baptist church. By eight, Spears was ready to find a new audience, and auditioned for the Disney Channel's All New Mickey Mouse Clubas one of its cast of performers, but wasn't accepted as a Mouseketeer because eight years old was too young, even for the Disney channel.
Not to be dissuaded, Spears hightailed it to New York's Professional Performing Arts School for a few years, and in 1991 landed a part as an understudy for an off-Broadway show called Ruthless, a role she relinquished to another young upcomer, Natalie Portman, when other opportunities started knocking. After a spot on a TV talent show she was finally accepted as a Mouseketeer at 11, alongside the likes of Keri Russell (from Felicity), Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake.
More of Timberlake anon, but in the meantime, Spears’s moment of Mickey Mouse glory ended when the show finished, and it was back to Louisiana to figure out the next move. She was 13.
Yet Spears never took her eye off the glitterball, briefly joining an all-female pop band before ditching them to go solo and make a deal with Jive Records.
And then came . . . Baby One More Time, a catchy pop tune with a video in which Spears played a sexed-up schoolgirl, all plaits, short skirts and bubblegum. The single was an instant hit and the album that followed not only topped the US charts but reached No 1 in 14 other countries, including Ireland. The all-American teen had the world in the palm of her hand.
Barely 17 and living the pop dream was bound to cause problems. A cover of Rolling Stonemagazine that featured Spears in her underwear with a Teletubbies toy in one hand and a phone in the other sparked outrage and accusations of "child pornography". Never one to shy from publicity, she reassured one and all – including, presumably, her then boyfriend Justin Timberlake – that she was pure as the driven show, and set to remain a virgin until marriage.
And before you could say "liar, liar, pants on fire", the difficult second album was out. Oops! . . . I Did It Againtopped the charts, as did her third album, Britney, which was the first to feature songs co-written by Spears.
This latter move marked Spears's attempted transition from teen idol to vamp, and it shook her fan base. The debut single, I'm a Slave 4 Upeaked at 27 in the US charts, and her acting in the movie Crossroadswas panned. It seemed the fortunes of the US's golden girl were turning.
Then came the very public break-up. Rumours abounded that Spears's infidelity had led to the split with Timberlake, and the video of his song Cry Me a River, which featured a Spears lookalike cheating on her man, seemed to support the theory, even if the singer himself denied it. Timberlake also put paid to the myth of Spears's virginity, revealing to reporters that he knew it to be untrue, a fact the star herself eventually admitted.
Spears rebounded with dalliances with Limp Bizkit singer Fred Durst, and our own bad boy Colin Farrell, whom she reportedly met at a Damien Rice concert after the Timberlake split. Controversy continued to dog her. Her MTV Video Music Awards appearances didn’t help. First there was the nude-coloured bodysuit, then the caged animals on stage had PETA up in arms, and finally she locked lips with Madonna in a performance that had the nation virtually apoplectic.
The next album, In the Zone, arrived amid rumours that Spears was going off the rails. These were exacerbated when, just two months after its release, she wed childhood friend Jason Allen Alexander at the Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas. In her jeans and a baseball cap. The marriage lasted 55 hours.
Within a year she was married again, this time to singer and actor Kevin Federline after a three-month courtship. Her first child, Sean Preston, arrived almost a year later, and was closely followed by Jayden James, amid rumours of her marriage – and mind – unravelling.
Three months after the birth of Jayden James, Spears filed for divorce, and a highly publicised custody battle ensued. Her behaviour became increasingly erratic, and in early 2007, after 24 hours in a drug rehabilitation facility, she shaved her head with an electric razor at a hair salon. It was manna to the media, whose members followed Spears in and out of treatment facilities, and in and out of court.
She lost primary custody of her children to Federline after she was charged with a hit-and-run misdemeanour, later dropped, and the biting reaction to her lacklustre appearance at the MTV Video Music Awards at the end of that year revealed how far the pop star had fallen in the eyes of her fans.
With characteristic chutzpah, Spears released Piece of Me, in defiance at her commodification as a pop product. "I'm Miss American Dream since I was 17. Don't matter if I step on the scene . . . They still going to put pictures of my derrièrein the magazine." Those gossip hounds after a piece of Spears got plenty to chew on when, in January last year, she refused to give up custody of her children to representatives of Federline and police were called. She was brought to hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, her visitation rights to her sons were suspended, and her father Jamie was given control of her assets. Many called time on the pop career of the one-time teen princess.
EXCEPT SPEARS WASN'T done. In private, she negotiated with Federline and regained visiting rights to her sons. In public, she hit the small screen with a guest-star appearance on CBS television show How I Met Your Mother, playing a ditzy receptionist and garnering positive reviews.
Her new single, Womanizer, stormed the charts and suddenly Spears was back with Circus, a comeback album for the kid who never really went away.
So what’s the secret of her success? “She’s a very pretty blonde girl, with the girl-next-door quality,” says 2FM presenter and blogger Rick O’Shea, who was also the official crowd warmer at one of Spears’s previous Dublin shows in 2004. “Girls think they could potentially be her, and guys think they’d have a chance if they were standing next to a bar with her.”
But will the songs – which O'Shea describes as "cheap bubble-gummy, poppy stuff" – stand the test of time? "We would still play. . . Baby One More Time, and maybe Toxic," he says. "But aside from that, a lot of the stuff falls by the wayside. It's a part-time product. It's of the moment."
She may be of the moment, but Spears clearly knows how to live in it, and with two sell-out O2 shows and another hit album on her hands, who’s to say how long this one will last?
CV Britney Spears
Who is she?Britney Jean Spears, pop singer, actor, dancer and mother of two.
Why is she in the news?She's just sold out two shows in the O2 as part of her first tour in five years.
Most appealing characteristic: Resilience. Forget the voice and the moves, this girl can bounce back like nobody else.
Least appealing characteristic: Airbrushed nudity – we know you're hot, Britney, but with that voice and those moves, there's no need to bare all in every single video, especially with a fan base of body-conscious teenage girls.
Most likely to say: "My loneliness is killing me."
Least likely to say: "After you, Madonna."