Artists & Bands

Britney Spears tunes

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The Princess of Pop!

Britney Spears is the best-selling teenage artist of all time, thanks to her first two albums/lead singles: …Baby One More Time (1999) and Oops!… I Did It Again (2000).

But Britney Spears didn’t come out of nowhere; she started participating in talent competitions before she was even a teenager, eventually joining the Mickey Mouse Club in the ‘90s.

Here, she starred alongside singers Justin Timberlake, and Christina Aguilera, and actors Ryan Gosling (The Notebook, La La Land), and Keri Russell (Felicity).

After the show was cancelled, Britney moved back home and started recording demo tapes for record labels. Initially, she was rejected, as the belief at the time was that only boy and girl bands were going to work. However, after submitting I Have Nothing (Whitney Houston) to the record label Jive, she got signed and shipped off to Sweden to work with pop producers Max Martin and Denniz Pop.

This proved to be a masterstroke, as the album they delivered, …Baby One More Time, went straight in at #1 and sold 1 million copies in the first year. Eventually, the album sold 30 million copies worldwide.

The follow-up, Oops!… I Did It Again, sold 1.3 million in the first week, making it the fastest-selling album by a female artist—a record since broken by Adele, who doubled those numbers with her album 25.

Perhaps the most amazing thing here is how the first two albums only really had a big single each—the title tracks.

Of course, on the back of such insane hits, all other singles did reasonably well, but who plays any other tunes from those albums a couple of decades later?

Post breakthrough success

Her third album was hardly a flop, with 10 million copies sold, although I suspect that was mainly due to the success of the previous two that had made Britney a superstar.

Her single Boys had Pharrell Williams on the remix and featured in Austin Powers: Goldmember—basically, everyone wanted to work with Britney!

In 2003, she released her 4th album, In The Zone. This came after a breakup with Justin Timberlake and a short break overall.

The big hit was back with Toxic, which had initially been offered to Kylie Minogue, who turned it down.

The album didn’t get anywhere near previous numbers, but Toxic, as a single, sold 6 million in the U.S. alone.

Following In The Zone, Britney released a Greatest Hits, a remix album, and two more studio albums without hits.

It would take until Circus (2008) before she had another big tune, Womanizer.

Since Womanizer, Britney has released more compilation albums and a few studio albums without any big hits.