Britney Spears
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes. Fisher-Price unveiled a Little People Collector Set celebrating the princess of pop herself: Britney Spears. The Britney Spears Collectibles Set ($24.99) […]
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Source: Mike Coppola / Getty / Megan Thee Stallion
Megan Thee Stallion turns into a snake in one of her videos, but that didn’t matter to a real snake that didn’t see eye-to-eye with her during the VMAs.
The Houston artist who has dropped records named “HISS,” “Cobra,” and “BOA” had a hilarious moment with an actual snake while hosting the VMAs on Wednesday night.
Paying tribute to Britney Spears’ iconic 2001 VMAs performance of her song “Im A Slave 4 U,” Thee Stallion rocked a similar look, including an albino Burmese python wrapped around her, just like Spears, who danced with the reptile briefly before handing it off.
Spears admitted she was “scared” during the performance. Fast-forward to this year’s VMAs, Megan Thee Stallion can also relate to Spears’ feelings.
In her attempt to relive that moment, Thee Stallion quickly realized she and the snake would not get along.
“OK. OK. Stop the music, stop the music. I’m just playin’. Come get this snake,” Megan Thee Stallion shouted as handlers came and relieved her of the snake.
“I don’t know this snake. This snake don’t know me. Oh my god. I tried to hold it down for Britney.”
That was the only hiccup in what was a great night for Megan Thee Stallion, who hosted this year’s VMAs, performed, and won two awards: “Trending Video” for the latest smash hit, “Mamushi,” featuring Yuki Chiba, and “Art Direction” for “BOA.”
She also gave the hotties what they wanted with a medley performance of “BOA,” “HISS,” “B.A.S,” “Mamushi,” and more.
Megan Thee Stallion also closed out the night urging people to vote. Unlike many others in her profession, she has been very vocal in supporting Vice President Kamala Harris, performing at a rally in Atlanta and calling out people who will sit out this presidential election in a recent Billboard cover story.
Roughly 30 years ago, Boyz II Men seduced and cajoled their way to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 with “I’ll Make Love to You.” They enjoyed the view from No. 1 for 14 weeks — tying a record at the time — before dethroning themselves with another soaring, imploring ballad, “On Bended Knee.” In 1994, it wasn’t unusual for a vocal quartet like Boyz II Men to top the Hot 100, or get close to it; roughly a third of all top 10 hits that year were the work of R&B groups, rock bands, or ensembles in other configurations.
“When I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a constant barrage of groups,” says Michael Paran, a manager whose clients include Jodeci, a quartet that vied with Boyz II Men on the charts. R&B-influenced pop groups like the Spice Girls and the Backstreet Boys dominated the late 1990s. But the barrage started to let up in the 2000s, according to an analysis of top 10 hits between 1991 and 2023. Solo artists like Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake — who got his start in a group before striking out on his own — set a new standard for pop stardom, while rappers like Eminem and Nelly helped hip-hop reach commercial peaks that suddenly seemed out of reach for most rock bands.
And on today’s Hot 100, groups are an endangered species: Since 2018, groups account for less than 8% of all top 10 singles. The last ensemble to summit the chart was Glass Animals with “Heat Waves” in March 2022. No group scored a top 10 hit as a lead artist in the first half of 2024, and there is not a single group anywhere on the latest Hot 100.
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There are many reasons for the demise of groups. The decline of rock, a historically group-focused genre, as a commercial force on the Hot 100 has certainly played a big part. But perhaps more important, advances in music technology have given artists in all genres the ability to conjure the sound of any instrument they desire without the need for collaborators. And social media, a key aspect of modern promotion, tends to reward individual efforts rather than collective enterprise. “Social media is about your voice,” says Ray Daniels, a manager and former major-label A&R. “Not y’all’s voice.”
% of Top 10 Billboard Hot 100 Hits by Groups
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In addition, aspiring artists have a better understanding of the financial realities of groups, which are costly to develop and then split any profits multiple ways. And labels aren’t matchmaking groups the way they did decades ago.
“I’ve been in bands, put the bands together, got the record deals, done the whole thing,” says Jonathan Daniel, co-founder of Crush Music, a management company with a roster that includes both major groups (Weezer) and star soloists (Miley Cyrus). “Trust me, if I was a kid now, I would never be in a group — I would be solo all the way. I wouldn’t need these other guys.”
Groups always used to have a practical purpose: Making a tuneful racket was considerably easier with the help of collaborators playing other instruments or belting harmonies. “Historically you often needed a group to make money — it was almost harder to be a solo artist,” Daniels explains. “You had to have people get together and play the music.”
This has not been the case for some time now. GarageBand hit Mac computers in 2004. Online sites like BeatStars allow vocalists to rent fully formed instrumentals. Artists can make beats and record vocals on their phone. “One guy can go in there and make himself sound like a group if he needs to,” Paran notes.
This can make artists’ lives considerably breezier, because they don’t have to spend time persuading — or arguing with, or massaging the egos of — group members who probably have their own views on songwriting and production. “It’s just much easier to have your own say than to have group members opining on what they want,” says Bill Diggins, longtime manager of TLC.
At the same time that technology has largely nixed the need for musical collaborators, executives believe that the prominence of X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, TikTok and other similar platforms further elevates individuals over groups. “How often are groups doing content together on TikTok?” asks Joey Arbagey, another former A&R who worked with Fifth Harmony, among others.
Even bandmates or singers who are in a group probably work to stoke their own social media presence — which represents a safety net if the group falls apart. “Every artist is focused on building their own numbers,” Arbagey continues. “That kind of destroyed that feeling of creating together.”
And those artists that still want to create with others are often aware of the financial implications of this decision: If they hit it big together, they don’t make nearly as much as if they hit it big alone. “When we were kids, we saw The Rolling Stones and thought, ‘They’re rich, they have a plane,” says Daniel from Crush. “We didn’t go, ‘Well, they have to split all the money five ways, but Elton John doesn’t.’” Today, however, thanks to the internet, “artists are much more cognizant of all facets of the music industry,” Diggins says.
On the flip side of that, when labels get involved, groups are also more expensive for them to support. “It’s cheaper to be in the business of a solo artist than it is to be in the business of moving multiple people around and styling and marketing multiple people,” says Tab Nkhereanye, a songwriter and senior vp of A&R at BMG.
The heyday of groups also coincided with a time when labels had much more sway over what music was popular — largely because anyone with aspirations to be heard outside their region needed the labels’ deep pockets and close relationships with radio and television. Record companies scouted for talent, helped put groups together, found songs for them to cut, and then pushed them out through dominant mainstream channels. “It was kind of a machine,” Paran says.
Today, however, U.S. labels aren’t typically involved with artists in the early stages of their careers when they might once have been shunted into a group. Instead, the record company often shows up after acts have already proven their ability to attract a devoted audience, typically through a combination of social media — which, again, caters to individual personalities — and streaming. And on top of that, the influence of traditional outlets like radio and television, which served as the launching pad for so many groups in the past, has nosedived.
Chris Anokute, a longtime A&R turned manager, points out that “most of the breakout boy bands and girl groups of the last 10 years came from TV shows like The X Factor — One Direction, Fifth Harmony.” “I don’t know if you can break acts like that if mainstream platforms like TV or radio don’t really move the needle in the same way,” he continues. “Everybody was watching when those groups went on TV 10 or 15 years ago,” Arbagey agrees. “Now nobody has cable.”
There is at least one country where music-based TV shows still drive listening behavior: South Korea continues to pump out groups at a steady clip, and BTS has made nine appearances in the top 10 on the Hot 100 since 2018. (Still, it’s notable that HYBE — the company behind BTS — and Geffen Records are attempting to develop a new girl group in the U.S. via a Netflix series, rather than network television.) In addition, the recent eruption of the catch-all genre Regional Mexican has propelled new ensembles onto the Hot 100, including Eslabon Armado and Grupo Frontera.
And while groups aren’t peppering the Hot 100 with major singles the way they used to, they maintain a prominent presence in another corner of the industry. “The one place that groups still hold a hell of a lot of water is the live experience,” Daniel notes. In the U.S. in the first half of 2024, U2 had the top tour by a wide margin, according to Billboard Boxscore, and Depeche Mode and the Eagles appeared in the top 10 as well.
While those are all veterans, more recent groups like The 1975 and Fall Out Boy also made it into the top 50. The presence of ensembles on this chart makes sense: On tour, even most solo acts bring backup bands or other musicians to help them bring their songs to life. Musical wunderkinds are few and far between, and crowds aren’t always interested in watching a lone performer sing or rap over a backing track for two hours, so group performance is still common.
But on the upper reaches of Hot 100, the closest thing to a group is usually a collaboration between two or three high-flying solo acts. “When you don’t see it, then you don’t want to be it,” Nkhereanye says of groups. “These days, it’s sexier to be a solo artist.”
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Source: Prince Williams / Getty
Timbaland is offering up an apology for a comment he made about Britney Spears in reference to artist and collaborate Justin Timberlake recently.
The hit producer Timbaland was sitting down for an interview with fellow beatmaker 9th Wonder at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. on October 29. An audience member asked Timbaland about Britney Spears’ mentioning of former boyfriend Justin Timberlake in her recently released memoir, The Woman In Me. “She’s going crazy, right?”, Timbaland began with a laugh, before saying: “I wanted to call and say, ‘JT, man, you gotta put a muzzle on that girl.’”
The audience’s reaction was filled with laughter and some murmurs as Timbaland continued, stating that Spears’ intent in writing the memoir detailing her life under conservatorship and the numerous moments of the trauma she endured was to “go viral”. “We live in an age of social media and […] everybody wanna go viral,” he said. “I get it ’cause that’s the way you make money, go viral – I gotta do something that gets people’s attention.”
The comments would soon become viral, with many chastising Timbaland for being crass. It prompted the producer to apologize during his regular TikTok live sessions on Tuesday (November 7). “I apologize to the Britney fans and her,” he said as he read a comment discussing the remarks. “Yes, ‘you know about respecting women?’ Hell yeah.”
In The Woman In Me, Spears wrote extensively about her three-year relationship with Timberlake, revealing that she had an abortion: “If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it. And yet Justin was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father.” The pop star also spoke about the “Cry Me A River” music video, which she felt made her look like a “harlot who’d broken the heart of America’s golden boy,” after their 2002 breakup, even noting how the woman in the video bore a resemblance to her.
Britney Spears could easily have a second career as an actor, says casting director Matthew Barry.
Earlier this week, Barry released Spears’ 2002 audition tape for the critically acclaimed film The Notebook, in which Spears is seen expertly delivering her lines and crying on que. Barry tells Billboard that Spears was “incredible” in her audition and, as Spears details in her memoir The Woman in Me, the decision came down to her and Rachel McAdams, who ultimately landed the role of Allie Hamilton opposite Ryan Gosling.
According to Barry, Spears took the audition very seriously and asked if she could work with him and his partner Nancy Green-Keyes prior to meeting with the director.
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“She wanted to get it right,” says Barry. “We really worked with her to guide her since we’ve worked with [director] Nick Cassavetes. I’d worked with him for 15 years and knew everything he was looking for.”
She was the only actress to request additional time with Barry and his partner, who also saw Jessica Biel, Mandy Moore, Claire Danes, Scarlett Johansson, Kate Bosworth and Jamie King for the role.
Spears work ethic following her feature film debut in the Shonda Rhimes-penned Crossroads was “phenomenal,” says Barry. “She was so determined. The thing I was most impressed with is that she came with no entourage, not even a driver. She just came in on her own, sat in our office and went over the scenes.”
According to Barry and Spears’s memoir, which was released Tuesday (Oct. 24), she very much wanted the role despite her reservations about acting again. “I think Britney felt she was not as trained as an actress,” says Barry, who explains that he decided to release the video now – after more than 20 years – to give her a “little more positive reinforcement” and to “show her fans that she was really fantastic.”
When Spears got the opportunity to audition with Gosling, Barry says the two hit it out of the park. They ran their scenes together, and it wasn’t until afterwards when the casting directors and Cassavetes were informed they were on The Mickey Mouse Club together years earlier. “It was a great reunion,” says Barry. “Ryan was part of the [casting] process and he was OK with either Rachel or Britney.”
Spears wrote in her memoir that her music career is on an indefinite hiatus: “Pushing forward in my music career is not my focus at the moment. Right now it’s time for me to try to get my spiritual life in order, to pay attention to little things, to slow down.”
With a break from music, Barry says Spears could easily make a creative comeback through acting. Given her Instagram videos of dancing, Barry believes “she still wants to perform. She’s trying desperately to express herself.”
As a casting director, he says it’s his job to turn over every rock and reach out to pop stars like Spears in 2002 (or Taylor Swift who he reached out to earlier this year to star in another Cassavetes film – he says her team turned her down with the international tour approaching).
“I honestly believe [Spears] can [make it in acting],” says Barry. “Come work with me, I’ll whip her into [acting] shape in a month.”
Britney Spears speaks out on social media following the news of her divorce from Sam Asghari. Travis Scott stays on top of the Billboard 200 with his latest album ‘Utopia’ for the third week in a row, while Oliver Anthony Music’s viral song “Rich Men of Richmond” goes to No. 1. Everything you missed this […]
Britney Spears and Sam Asghari’s marriage is headed for divorce, Ed Sheeran explains why he doesn’t see himself doing the Super Bowl halftime show anytime soon, Armani White talks about performing with Billie Eilish, Becky G drops a new song and Gonza clothing line perfect for summer, we take a look back at the songs […]
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Source: Variety / Getty / Britney Spears
San Antonio Spurs rookie big man Victor Wembanyama should be worried about getting ready for the upcoming NBA season. Instead, he’s got the legendary pop star Britney Spears is still upset following an encounter in Las Vegas.
Spotted on TMZ Sports, the Instagram dancing pop star is still BIG MAD following an “altercation” with NBA rookie phenom Victor Wembanyama’s security detail in Las Vegas.
According to the celebrity gossip site, after hearing a radio personality say she deserved to be hit in the face after running up behind an unsuspecting Wembanyama and trying to touch him only to be stopped by his security details, Spears is demanding a public apology from the rookie.
In a post shared on her IG account, Spears said:
“I’ve been with the most famous people in the world — *NSYNC at one time,” she said. “Girls would like literally throw themselves at them. On my way into the place, actually, I was knocked down by like three 12-year-olds trying to get my picture. My security not one time touched them or even came near them.”
“Point being,” she continued, “I didn’t appreciate the people saying that I deserved to be hit, because no woman ever deserves to be hit.”
Somebody Is Lying
Spears also revisited the incident and claimed she got hit so hard that she fell on the floor, and her friend picked her up. In footage obtained by TMZ Sports, we see a completely different story, so somebody is lying, and it’s not Wembanyama.
In the footage shared by TMZ Sports, Spears never hit the floor, but her glasses did. She also adds Wembanyama’s security later apologized to her while she dined at Catch Restaurant, but she has yet to get an apology from the Spurs or their future superstar.
Following a lengthy note she shared on Instagram where she claimed she only ran up to “congratulate him on his success,” this latest news is her second time speaking on the “altercation.”
We will see if Britney Spears gets that apology she wants, but we feel she really doesn’t deserve it because Wembanyama or the Spurs did nothing to her.
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Photo: Variety / Getty
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Fox Entertainment revealed on Monday (May 8) that it’s delving into Britney Spears‘ life since the end of her 13-year-long conservatorship in an upcoming special.
TMZ Investigates: Britney Spears: The Price of Freedom promises “details about her deeply troubled marriage, family estrangement, alarming behavior, failed intervention and how she continues to be an enduring force in the music industry,” according to a press release.
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The pop superstar has been open about how much she dislikes documentaries made about her life and conservatorship in the past. Most recently, in November, she took to Twitter to share a lengthy, since-deleted post about how she’s been portrayed, calling the documentaries “humiliating,” adding, “I am a person … I’m not a robot or a science experiment like they analyzed me in that place !!! I’m a valued soul … so for the documentaries that were done on me, they were trash and nothing more than trash … period !!!”
She also called out those who made “the trashiest docs I’ve ever seen in my life,” and noting that she felt as though there was “deception in claiming it was to help me !!!”
While she didn’t name any documentaries specifically, FX and Hulu’s Controlling Britney Spears, New York Times’ Framing Britney Spears and Netflix’s Britney vs Spears were three of the most popular documentaries released amid the Free Britney movement, which swept the country before the “Piece of Me” star’s conservatorship ended in November 2021.
TMZ Investigates: Britney Spears: The Price of Freedom airs on Monday (May 15) at 9 p.m. ET on Fox.
Britney Spears was having some fun on Instagram on Tuesday (Feb. 21), showing off a sparkly new dress she received and being her overall goofy self.
“So last week, guys, I made a dress. I was really proud, diamond panel with a slip in the back. A girlfriend helped me sew it,” Spears explained in the clip, speaking in an accent. “They sent me a dress I didn’t have to make myself!”
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The pop superstar then pulled out her new dress, a glimmering pink mini-dress with a plunging neckline. “Thank you, company, for sending me this dress,” she said as she danced around holding the new outfit. She also showed the camera another white strapless dress with fringe details.
“So, guys, I just want you to know, if I ever shut down my Instagram, do not call the cops,” Spears added, referring to an incident in January in which authorities were reportedly called to her house to perform a wellness check on her after she deleted her Instagram account.
“Don’t ever be a rollercoaster,” she concluded her video, before running across the frame holding the dress and shouting, “Never be a rollercoaster!”
“Stay humble out there, y’all [unicorn emoji] !!! Hi mommy and daddy, I am a star now have you heard ??? Carry on peeps …” Spears captioned her post. See it below.