Artist Research – Britney Spears

Britney Spears was born in 1981, and released her first single and album in 1999. She is signed to Jive Records which are owned by Sony Music Entertainment, one of the four largest record labels. Her first single ‘Hit me baby one more time’ was a massive hit as it sold over 25million copies worldwide. In this video she is represented as an innocent school girl, as she was exactly that in 1999, this video turned out to be a perfect male fantasy. She was perceived as innocent, yet sexy which all male viewers loved. She was and still is an idol for young teenage girls. Automatically in her first video her image was created, a young successful girl, conventionally attractive, everything that all males wanted. ‘Hit me baby one more time’ topped the chart for 2 weeks in the U.S billboard hot 100 in 1999. It also came in at number one in the UK singles chart; it was the top selling single in 1999 and was the 25^th most successful song in British charts history, a record for a female act at the time. She was a positive representation of women in the 1990’s as well.

Britney Spears released a single called ‘oops I did it again’ in 2000; this established her as a pop icon. She influenced teenagers massively. "Oops I Did It Again" had sold 20 million copies worldwide since 2002 including club sales. Her songs were memorable which made her such a massive success; she was just 16 when she began as an artist. She is a multi talented famous pop star, she had a major role in the 2002 film ‘crossroads’ as well. She gave the viewers what they wanted, keeping to her target audience of young teenage girls looking up to her, as an idol, she influenced them massively, as well as being idolized by the male population as well through her videos and image.

Britney’s image has been compared to her pop rival Christina Aguilera by her vocal ability as well as her image. She has an increasingly revealing choice of outfits, her first single ‘hit me baby one more time’ being memorable for not only the song, but for her choice of a school girl outfit as well. It has been recognized that the difference between the two is that Christina Aguilera is a good girl pretending to be bad, where as Britney spears is seen as the bad rebellious girl acting good and innocent, through her music.

Britney Spears began in 1999 and has continually been a success in the music business; she has the typical blonde hair, conventionally beautiful, meets her target audience every time and continues to surprise her audiences. She is multi talented, a singer, dancer, actress and songwriter. She has similarities in many different artists like Madonna, Christina Aguilera, which shows where her inspiration comes from.

Although the media have shown her in a negative ways in the past, this proves that nobody is perfect. She has managed to pull through and release more albums that have also been a huge success. She released a song called ‘piece of me’ defending herself about recent media articles about her. she continuously repeats ‘you want a piece of me’, ‘ I’m Mrs. she’s too big now she’s too thin’, this line shows how the media portrays her to be negative with the idea that women should be a certain size, no more or no less, she is defending that, representing women of today.

In Britney Spears’ recent single ‘if you seek Amy’ her lyrics say ‘love me hate me, say what you want about me’ show her rebellious side is coming out, she’s defending herself through her music from recent articles from the media and things that she has done. Britney’s Fans still love her music and she still is so famous today, still releasing music even 10years on from her first single.

She also starred in the disney channel programme the new mickey mouse club with Justin Timberlake, which is the artist we are doing our music video on.