Britney Jean Spears was born Dec. 2, 1981 in the small Southern town of Kentwood, Louisiana (population: 1,200), where she has lived most of her life. She started performing at a very young age, first in local stage productions and church choirs, later in national commercials and off-Broadway plays, and finally, starting at age 11, in two seasons of The Mickey Mouse Club TV show alongside future 'N Sync members Joshua "JC" hasez and Justin Timberlake. After leaving MMC in '94, she auditioned for an all-girl singing group but instead wound up with a solo recording deal with Jive Records, home to similarly-minded teen-pop sensations the Backstreet Boys.

Jive savvily and aggressively marketed Britney to the Backstreet crowd, by including her songs on a Backstreet Boys CD sampler, offering free previews of her video (which features the pop starlet doing her best Lolita impression in a very short plaid Catholic schoolgirl skirt and skintight baby tee) to anyone who requested the Backstreet Boys' "I'll Never Break Your Heart" video on cable music channel the Box, getting her a slot alongside the Boys on the Sabrina The Teenage Witch soundtrack, and landing her generous coverage in teenybopper mags like Superteen, Bop, Teen Machine and Teen People--all this before her debut album, the somewhat suggestively titled ...Baby One More Time, even came out! (Rumors of Britney's romances with 'N Sync's Timberlake and Backstreet's Nick Carter--which Britney has denied, though she admits that Justin gave her her first kiss back in the MMC days--probably helped generate interest as well.) The boy-band connections didn't end there, either; Britney toured with 'N Sync, and also enlisted the management team of Johnny and Donna Wright, the Backstreet Boys' former managers and the current managers of--you guessed it--'N Sync.

All this cross-marketing obviously paid off, as ...Baby One Mor Time's first single (the title track) went to No. 1, and the album also debuted in the top spot on the Billboard charts, making Britney the youngest female artist in Billboard history to have her first single and first album go to No. 1 in the same week.

With cutesy song titles like "Soda Pop," "Email My Heart" and "Born To Make You Happy"--not to mention appearances in McDonald's commercials and Tommy Hilfiger print ads--it was easy to dismiss Britney Spears as a pretty puppet whose sole purpose in the mega-marketing food chain was to push products of any kind, be they record albums, Big Macs, or various pieces of merchandise bearing her perky blonde likeness. But Britney proved her initial success was no fluke with Oops!…I Did It Again. Spurred on by the hit title track, the album entered the album chart at No. 1, setting a new record for single-week sales by a female artist in the process. A string of hit singles followed, including "Lucky," "Stronger" and "Don't Let Me Be The Last To Know," pushing the album to sales of an incredible 9 million copies.

Adding to Britney's star appeal was the admission that she was dating fellow former Mouseketeer and *NSYNC member Justin Timberlake.

With the release of 2001's Britney, Spears attempted to grow out of her teen-dream image, admitting as much in one of the album's singles, "I'm Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman." Like her previous two albums, Britney also entered on top of the chart, but her star was beginning to dim slightly, as parents of her young fans likely steered their children away from the now-naughty Britney. While the album's first single, the Janet Jackson-like "I'm A Slave 4 U" reached No. 8, the subsequent singles from the album failed to crack the top 10.

Making matters worse was her big-screen debut Crossroads, which flopped miserably. Britney redeemed herself slightly was an amusing turn as a fembot in Austin Powers: Goldmember and managed to stay in] the gossip columns with news of her breakup with Timberlake and subsequent dating and nightclubbing episodes.

Prior to the release of her fourth album in the fall of 2003, Britney again made headlines when she played tongue tag with Madonna during an opening tribute to the Material Mom at the 2003 MTV Music Video Awards. Madonna returned the favor by appearing on the recording and in the video of "Me Against The Music," the first single from Spears's In The Zone.