Britney Spears is one of the most famous pop musicians of our time, selling over 150 million records worldwide across nine studio albums. She’s been nominated for eight Grammy Awards, and her first two albums—…Baby One More Time and Oops!… I Did It Again—are among the best-selling albums of all time, making Spears the best-selling teenage artist of all time.
While Spears saw non-stop success in her professional life, her personal life was way more chaotic and toxic, as her family put her under a strict conservatorship in 2008, which lasted almost 14 years before a judge terminated it in 2021. There’s been plenty of speculation about what life was like for Spears under her father’s control, but not many details have been released. All of that is about to change as Spears is set to release a bombshell memoir that will expose a lot of previously held secrets.
When does Britney Spears’ memoir come out?
Spears is set to release her new memoir The Woman in Me on October 24. The pop star recently sat down with People magazine to chat about the book and how she feels about telling her story in her own words after spending over a decade kowtowing to the demands and expectations of others.
“Over the past 15 years or even at the start of my career, I sat back while people spoke about me and told my story for me,” Spears said. “After getting out of my conservatorship, I was finally free to tell my story without consequences from the people in charge of my life.”
The conservatorship has been a point of contention with Spears’ fans since its inception, as it gave Spears’ family, and more specifically her father, the power over her well-being, money, and public image. Spears’ family petitioned for control of her life after Spears suffered a public breakdown in 2007, which ended with her shaving her head in front of the paparazzi.
In 2023, it’s easy to look back and see that what Spears needed was not a conservatorship, but protection and help. Spears was a teenage pop star whose every move had been put under a microscope since she landed a record deal at 15 years old. She endured grown adults saying very out of pocket things about her music, body, clothes, and her romantic relationships. That amount of pressure put on an adult would be too much, but a child? It’s sad to say, but Spears’ meltdown was kind of inevitable, especially because it seemed like she was surrounded by people who just wanted her to make them money.
“It’s hard to speak about. Not getting a moment of peace, the judgments from strangers who don’t even know me, having my freedom stripped away from me by my family and the government [and] losing my passion for the things I love,” Spears explained as she recounted some of the darker moments of her life.
Spears added, “It is finally time for me to raise my voice and speak out, and my fans deserve to hear it directly from me. No more conspiracy, no more lies—just me owning my past, present, and future.”
When asked what Spears wanted people, both fans and haters, to take away from the memoir, she expressed that she hoped the book would help others “speak up.” She went on to say, “Be loud. Know your worth. Inspire people and most of all, just be kind.”
(featured image: Allen Berezovsky, WireImage)
