FEATURE:
My Prerogative
What Next for Britney Spears?
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I have been listening back to a lot of my…
PHOTO CREDIT: Scott Dudelson/Getty Images
favourite tracks from the 1990s and early part of the following decade, and I have been putting playlists together; songs that put me in a better mood and take me back to the past. Whilst I was not a massive Britney Spears fan back in the day, I have always really liked her music, and I am listening back to her albums now. Right from her debut album, ...Baby One More Time, she announced herself as one of the strongest and most captivating Pop artists of her time. That has continued through her career and her second album, Oops!... I Did It Again, turned twenty back in May. Billboard ranked her as the eighth-biggest artist of the 2000s. One of the world's best-selling music artists, Spears is regarded as a Pop icon and has sold 100 million records worldwide, including over 70 million records in the United States. In the United States, Spears is the fourth-best-selling female album artist of the Nielsen SoundScan era, as well as the best-selling female album artist of the 2000s. Whilst her sound matured and developed from her third album, Britney (2001), she maintained her unique sound and continued to sell millions. Spears is an artist who has divided critics, and I think her albums deserve so much more respect and attention. Some of the reviews for her albums have been very cruel and negative, and she has had to navigate some hard times through her career.
I am glad that she has won respect and adulation from her fans, and she is rightly seen as a hugely influential artist - referred to as the ‘Princess of Pop’, Spears was credited as one of the driving forces behind the return of teen Pop in the late-1990s. There are Pop artists today who definitely have a bit of Britney Spears in their blood, but it is a shame that her sound of the late-1990s is not as prevalent as you’d like – I still think modern Pop lacks a lot of fun and energy. If many critics have been woefully spiteful and ignorant towards her music, I think the legacy she has left is incredible. There is no doubt that some of the biggest artists today – including Charli XCX – are inspired by Spears. I have always had a lot of affection for Britney Spears, and she has worked tirelessly through her career. She has, as I said, faced some demons and trials, but she has come through and remained strong. Many might have heard in the news and been following this case for a while now. There is an ongoing legal wrangling and contest regarding Britney Spears finances. This conservatorship battle has been raging for quite a while, and it seems to be that there is no easy end in sight. The Guardian reported early last month:
“Britney Spears has pushed for greater transparency in the court hearings regarding the legal arrangement that has managed her life and finances for more than a decade, and in doing so appeared to endorse the #FreeBritney movement.
Since Spears’s breakdown in 2007, her father, Jamie (known legally as James Spears), has primarily been at the helm of a conservatorship that means the 38-year-old must seek permission before making significant decisions related to her affairs, a setup that is usually reserved for elderly and infirm people with little hope of recovery. He is thought to receive around $130k (£97k) annually from Spears’s estate for his role.
PHOTO CREDIT: Nina Prommer/EPA, via Shutterstock
After Jamie Spears stepped down in 2019 owing to illness, the role was taken over by an independent professional conservator, Jodi Montgomery. Spears is petitioning for her father to be permanently removed from the role and for wealth management company the Bessemer Trust to be permanently appointed as custodians of her $57.4m (£42.5m) fortune. Spears’s objection to her father’s position aside, she has described the arrangement as “voluntary”.
Jamie Spears has always sought to keep hearings related to his daughter’s affairs sealed, citing the inclusion of private medical information and information about her two children. Yet the star’s lawyer, Samuel Ingham III, has now said Spears is “vehemently opposed to this effort by her father to keep her legal struggle hidden away in the closet as a family secret”.
Ingham stated that such a strategy of secrecy may have had “merits” when Spears was trying to restart her career, but that that was no longer the case: Spears announced an “indefinite work hiatus” in January 2019. “The sealing motion is supposedly being brought by her father to ‘protect’ Britney’s interests, but she is adamantly opposed to it,” he wrote”.
It is a tense time for Spears, and the impact it will be having on her is worrying. I want to track back to August and another article from The Guardian, and it seems that there is this split between the courts (who feels she is unable to manage her finances) and a movement, #FreeBritney, that wants her to have control and independence. Arwa Mahdawi expressed her opinions:
“While the exact details of Spears’ conservatorship are unclear, the bottom line is that a court has determined she is incapable of making her own decisions. She is more than able to make money – she played 248 shows during her 2013-17 Las Vegas residency, getting $500,000 a gig – but not to freely spend it. Every single purchase she makes, even a coffee, is tracked in court documents and scrutinised. According to some legal experts, it is unusual for someone as young and industrious as Spears to be subject to a conservatorship: they are usually intended for people with conditions such as dementia, where there is little hope of getting better.
A growing #FreeBritney movement believes the singer is being exploited; her dad says that’s nonsense, he just wants what’s best for Spears and her $59m fortune (as it stood in 2018). But even if he does have her best interests at heart, the sweeping powers a conservatorship grants, and the extent to which these can be exploited, should alarm us all. It has certainly alarmed the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). “People with disabilities have a right to lead self-directed lives,” the ACLU tweeted last week. “If Britney Spears wants to regain her civil liberties … we are here to help her.” As the ACLU has noted, there are far less draconian alternatives to conservatorships that can support vulnerable people. The situation that Spears is in is clearly toxic. I don’t know about you, but I’m team #FreeBritney”.
I have been looking at Spears’ Instagram account, and she has been posting updates and thanked fans for her support. Things have been rumbling on since last year, and Vulture reported last year about the different sides to the case and various details. After her much-publicised breakdown in 2007, there is a huge worry that this protracted and stressful legal battle will create a setback for Spears! One cannot help but feel sorry for her and sympathise with her plight. I do hope that there is a resolution soon, and it does seem unreasonable that Spears is being viewed as almost incapable of managing her wealth responsibly. Regardless of what is the best recourse, I do think that elongated and public legal problems like this are damaging. I hope that Spears will be okay and that her welfare and health is also being considered. She has announced that she is on a career hiatus and, I guess, this year is not the best time to record and surge forward, what with COVID-19 and the problems she has before her. I do hope that there is a positive outcome and that things do not drag on too much longer. I think Spears is a hugely important artist, and she has given guidance and inspiration to so many artists. It would be good to think there would be a tenth studio album – her last album, Glory, was released in 2016 -, and that she continues making music. As she put her career on hiatus and it seems like there is not going to be a quick return, I would hate to think that this marks the end of Britney Spears’ recording career. For someone who has given the world so much, it is only right that Spears is allowed to take responsibility of her own estate and finances and that…
JUSTICE is done.