By TYLER PATRICK
Coming down from the roof in the middle of an arena built to look like a three-ring circus, a woman wearing a ringleader jacket with a large ‘B’ on the back, smiles to the crowd as they chant her name. She’s a mere 28-years-old. Now 10 years into her career there is no denying that Britney Spears brought sex appeal to the new millennium and became a legend in the pop industry.
At the ripe age of 16, Spears decided to pursue her dream of becoming famous and moved to New York. There she worked with manager Larry Rudolph who helped get her an audition at Jive Records. It was here Spears began her incredible journey into the music industry; only nobody knew at the time that this 16-year-old girl would forever change pop music and become a musical legend.
Spears’ sex appeal in her first music video for “…Baby One More Time,” had both a positive and negative effect on her career. Parents and other adult figures didn’t approve of her exposed stomach or suggestive dancing. However, this is what got Spears millions of teenage fans who wanted to be exactly like her, hoping to pull off the same look.
Spears was a force unlike anyone else when it came to raising the bar for sexual content. Each time Spears came onto the scene, she shocked everybody with something hotter and riskier than before such as dancing with a snake on her neck. For the release of Spears’ sophomore album, she appeared on the 2000 Video Music Awards, where she performed a mash-up of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and “Oops!… I Did It Again” in a skin toned, sequined outfit, allowing Spears to appear basically nude from a distance. Even though this caused controversy, Spears was only giving the public what they really wanted, a good show. Her inability to please everybody was brought up during the beginning of her career by adult figures who didn’t approve of her overt sexuality, and she learned to ignore the criticism she often received.
In 2001, Spears released Britney in which she matured from her first two albums. In this new album, Spears used minor curse words a few times and sang about more mature things such as how sexy a boy was, being his slave and wanting to take him home with her.
This new edgier, more seductive side of Spears was a big step for her; however, it was a step in the right direction for her career because she started appealing to an older audience, which broadened the horizon of her fan base. It was around this time Spears joined the league of legends in pop music.
Spears’ next album two years later was an adventure into the adult life she was starting to lead, where sexual content was present in her lyrics. However, Spears’s next musical adventure was overshadowed by a series of unfortunate events.
In 2004, Spears married Kevin Federline, a back-up dancer. This may seem like fantastic news for Spears, but everything went downhill from there. After having a son together, Spears was seen driving around with Preston on her lap and almost dropping him during a walk through New York City. Shortly after the birth of her second son, Spears divorced Federline and then began partying and neglecting her responsibilities. She had lost her senses, and the legend title that she once held was slipping away before her eyes.
Eventually, Spears’s family intervened in her bad behaviors and got her thinking clearly. After a year of therapy and spending time with her sons, Spears released her sixth studio album Circus in 2008. With this album Spears, proved once and for all that she is the epitome of pop music. The first single from the album “Womanizer” was Spears’s best selling single since “…Baby One More Time.” It was clear that the infamous Britney Spears everybody knew and loved was back.
Spears was the best selling female of the decade, selling 42 million albums in the U.S. and 75 million worldwide. She was also the first female artist to have all six of her albums reach either number one or two on the Billboard’s new music chart.
Spears had a difficult time throughout her career from the slack of what she wore to what she sang about, but she was a defining part of the new millennium and pop music itself. Spears’s music brought the new club beat sound to this generation as well as the high demand for choreographed routines in pop music. She may seem like the nobody who had it big for a while and lost her touch, but Spears is the one that changed history when she said the words “Oh Baby Baby.”