Britney Spears on CNN

Interviewee: Britney Spears
Interviewer: Tucker Carlson
Date: 04 September 2003

Britney Spears is an American pop singer songwriter and dancer. She is ranked as the 8^th Best Selling Female Artist in American History according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). She has had record sales of more than 83 million units worldwide as of 2007. She holds seven #1 worldwide hit singles and four consecutive #1 albums on the Billboard Top 200 album sales chart.

Born Britney Jane Spears on December 2, 1981, Spears grew up in Kentwood, Louisiana and sang in their local Baptist church choir. She studied for three summers at the Professional Performing Arts School and at the Off Broadway Dance Center in New York, appearing in several Off Broadway shows. From 1993 to 1994, Spears was on The New Mickey Mouse Club in Florida. Jive Records was impressed with her demo tape and she signed with them in 1998. By the end of 1998, her debut single “…Baby One More Time” was released; it held the Number 1 spot on the Billboard charts and sold over 20 million copies worldwide.

Spears won the 1999 MTV Europe Awards for Best Female Artist, Best Pop Artist, and Best Breakthrough Artist. She also won four Billboard Music Awards.

In January 2000, she won an American Music award. In the same year, her second album, Oops!… I Did It Again, was released. In 2001, her self-titled album was released; in 2002, she starred in the movie Crossroads. In 2003, she released her fourth album, In the Zone, and won her first Grammy Award for the album’s breakout single, Toxic. Spears also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2004, Spears married her former backup dancer, Kevin Federline, but in 2006, she filed for a divorce. In 2007, her fifth album Blackout was released.