Teen-pop starlet Britney Spears burst into worldwide consciousness with her debut single "...Baby, One More Time" in 1998, and followed that with a succession of hit singles that made her the biggest pop star in the world.

Singer, songwriter, dancer, actress, producer, author and Grammy Award winner Britney Jean Spears was born in 1981 in Louisiana. Her record sales put her in the top ten best-selling female artists in American music history.

By the age of eleven Britney was on her way to stardom thanks to a two-year spell on the New Mickey Mouse Club TV show. After a brief spell in all-female group Innosense, she struck out on her own and became the opening act for boyband sensations *NSYNC, which contained other former Mouseketeers Justin Timberlake and Joshua Chasez.

In 1998 Britney's debut single "...Baby, One More Time" went to No.1 worldwide and made Britney a household name, while the first album, also titled ...Baby, One More Time, went to No.1 in the Billboard 200 and achieved multi-platinum record sales.

The album Oops!...I Did It Again brought her more commercial success, but she started to move away from pure pop with the follow-up album, Britney, attracting a broader, more mature audience.

By the time her fourth studio album In The Zone was released in 2003 she was able to call on A-list producers R Kelly and Moby, and collaborated on the track "Me Against the Music" with Madonna.

Blackout was released in 2007, but by this time Spears had appeared to take a turn for the worse. Throughout the year she was photographed acting bizarrely and had even attacked a paparazzo. Her former husband Kevin Federline applied to a court to take Spears' children under his control, and Britney was held for psychiatric evaluation after refusing to let her kids be taken away.