Britney Spears: Life in pictures
1999: Spears, 17, releases her first album and it debuts at No. 1. In the spring of that year, she is featured on the cover of Rolling Stone and the busty photo launches rumors that the singer had breast implants. A few months later, she kicks off her first headlining tour. She wins four Billboard Music Awards that year but loses the Grammy for best new artist in February of 2000 to teen rival
2000: Spears releases her second album, “Oops’
I Did It Again.” The album sells more than 1 million units in the first week. At the
2001: Spears ups the spectacle ante at the MTV music awards by performing I’m a Slave 4 U with an albino python. (
2003: After a year of lying low, Spears creates a sensation at the
2004: The first hint of an unruly Spears emerges when the star marries her childhood friend Jason Allen Alexander in a joke wedding in Las Vegas. The marriage is promptly annulled after less than three days. Later that year, her fourth world tour is canceled midway through when the singer injures her knee. The injury does not stop the singer, now 22 years old, from marrying Kevin Federline. At the time, Federline’s former girlfriend was pregnant with their second child. (Eric Jamison / Associated Press)
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Nov. 6, 2006: Britney files for divorce from Kevin Federline. Hopeful Spears fans claim this is Step 1 in the singers comeback.
December 2006: Now free of Federline, Britney is frequently photographed hitting the town with
February 2007: After a month of manic partying dancing on tables, getting dirty with pole dancers, allowing her lady parts to be photographed by the paparazzi and going in and out of rehab, Britney shocks the world by shaving her head at a salon in Tarzana because, she claimed at the time, her extensions were giving her a headache. The general public grows concerned for her welfare, and she finally enters, and stays, in rehab.
March 2007: Britney is released from rehab and her managers say she is fully recovered. (AFP / Getty Images)
August 2007: Following her stints in rehab and her head-shaving incident, Britney attempted to get back on stage and move ahead, but her lead-off performance at the
January 2009: Spears and her manager father obtain a restraining order against her former manager, Sam Lufti, ex-boyfriend Adnan Ghalib and attorney Jon Eardley, all of whom are accused of attempting to gain control of Spears’ business affairs.
March 2009: Britney embarks on a tour in support of “Circus,” her sixth studio album. The tour will go on to be the fifth highest-grossing tour of the year. (Matt Sayles / Associated Press)
