Britney Spears first came into the spotlight in 1997 at the age of 16 when she was signed to ‘Jive Records’. Previously she was a child actress, acting in stage productions and television shows. Britney released two albums in 1999 and 2000: ‘...Baby One More Time’ and ‘Oops!...I Did It Again’. These became international successes and ‘...Baby One More Time’ became the best-selling album by a teenage solo artist. Britney continued to release her third album ‘Britney’ and in 2002, she starred in the film ‘Crossroads’. In 2003 her fourth album, In the Zone which included the hit single ‘Toxic’. When in 2007, Britney Spears’ personal issues were highly publicised her career went into hiatus. She released her fifth album ‘Blackout’ later that year. Her personal issues continued, and when her erratic behaviour and hospitalisations got too much she was placed under a conservatorship, which is still on-going. In 2008, Britney released her sixth album ‘Circus’ and this album included global chart-topping single ‘Womanizer’. The tour that followed was one of the highest-grossing global concert tours in 2009. In October of 2009, ‘3’ became Britney’s third single to reach number one on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’. Her seventh album, ‘Femme Fatale’ was released in 2011 and it contained three top-ten singles. Britney was a judge on the second season of The X Factor US. She released ‘Britney Jean’ in 2013 making her total number of albums eight, and it spawned the top 15 hit ‘Work Bitch’ but it became the lowest-selling record of her career. Towards the end of 2013, Britney Spears began a four-year residency show ‘Britney: Piece of Me’ at ‘The AXIS at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino’ in Las Vegas.

 

Britney Spears was established as a pop icon and she was credited with influencing the revival of teen pop during the late 1990’s. She garnered honorific titles including the ‘Princess of Pop’ and became the ‘best-selling teenage artist of all time’. She has won numerous awards including a Grammy Award, six MTV Video Music Awards, nine Billboard Music Awards, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Billboard ranked Britney as the 8th overall Artist of the Decade in 2009 and also recognised her as the best-selling female artist of the 2000s. She has sold over 100 million albums worldwide making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time. VH1 ranked Britney eleventh on their ‘100 Greatest Women in Music’ list in 2012 whilst Billboard named her the sexiest woman in music. Forbes reported that Britney was the highest paid female musician of 2012 with earnings of $58 million, having last topped the list in 2002.