Britney Spears

Britney Jean Spears (born December 2, 1981) is an American recording artist and entertainer. Born in Mississippi, she performed acting roles in stage productions and television shows as a child before signing with Jive Records in 1997. Spears’s first and second studio albums became international successes, Title tracks “…Baby One More Time” and “Oops!… I Did It Again” broke international sales records. In 2001, Spears released her third album, Britney, and played the starring role in the film Crossroads. She assumed creative control of her fourth album, In the Zone (2003), which yielded the worldwide success “Toxic”.

Spears was established as a pop icon and credited with influencing the revival of teen pop during the late 1990s. She became the ‘best-selling teenaged artist of all time’ before she turned 20, and garnered honorific titles including the “Princess of Pop”.

Her work has earned her numerous awards and accolades, including a Grammy Award, six MTV Video Music Awards including the Lifetime Achievement Award, nine Billboard Music Awards, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2009, Billboard ranked her as the 8th overall Artist of the Decade, and also recognized her as the best-selling female artist of the first decade of the 21st century, as well as the fifth overall. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) named Spears as the eighth top-selling female artist in the United States, with 34 million certified albums. Nielsen SoundScan ranked her the tenth best-selling digital artist of the country, with more than 28.6 million digital singles as of January 2012. She has sold over 100 million albums worldwide, making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time. 

Rolling Stone recognized her instant success as one of the Top 25 Teen Idol Breakout Moments of all time, while VH1 ranked her eleventh on their “100 Greatest Women in Music” list in 2012,and Billboard named her the sexiest woman in music. Forbes reported that Spears was the highest paid female musician of 2012, with earnings of $58 million, having last topped the list in 2002.