Rolling Stone - 2000
May 25, 2000
The Girl Can't Help It
How do you sell nine million copies of your first record?
Hit them, baby, one more time.
By Chris Mundy
Here are nine songs, five costume changes and 10,000 screaming fans. Explosions erupt from each side of the stage, eight dancers writhe suggestively in unison, and in the center of it all is one small girl.
The songs are from her debut album, . . . Baby One More Time, a record that has sold more than 9 million copies and helped to fuel a phenomenon. A new album, Oops! . . . I Did it Again, is due on May 16th, and the plan is for an upcoming tour to be twice as lavish as the one she is currently headlining. At a time when indistinguishable teen acts clog the airwaves, she has managed to separate herself from the masses and become the nation's prom queen.
Onstage, she sings "Oops! . . . I Did it Again," which is yet to be released at the time of tonight's show. Despite the fact that they have never heard it before, the audience members scream in deafening unison.
And when it is all over, the girl sprints from the stage to a waiting bus, still sweaty from the performance. She climbs onboard and, within seconds, before the fans have even left their seats, the girl is on the road, a police escort leading the way. Her name is Britney Spears. She is eighteen years old, and this may be her only moment, so she is working like there's no tomorrow.
It's easy to excuse Britney Spears. Last night's drive from Chicago to Worcester, Massachusetts, took sixteen hours, so it's only natural that, when you arrive to meet her, she is wearing pajamas in the middle of the afternoon.
You step into her hotel room, and her eyes immediately dart from the clutter to her outfit. "Look at me," she says, displaying her tank top and flannel bottoms. "I look like such a goob."
Britney Spears is a teenager. She is wide-eyed and sweet. She has crushes on a movie star or two, a penchant for romance novels and a Yorkshire terrier puppy named Baby. She also has a 350-pound bodyguard named Robert, a tour bus with a fully functional tanning bed and well over a million dollars tucked away for a rainy day. It's 1:30 in the afternoon. She seems tired.
At the moment, Spears is where she is every day at this time: in a hotel room, somewhere in America. Specifically, she is on the floor, underneath a table on which a plate of browning fruit sits untouched. Dog toys and stuffed animals are strewn about; Baby wanders in endless circles; and in the corner, Felicia Culotta, Spears' assistant, is making a cup of General Foods International Coffee.
"Felicia makes coffee exactly the way I like it," says Spears in a soft Southern accent. You mention that it is instant coffee, that the only skill required to make it is an ability to boil water.
"I know," says Spears. "But somehow it tastes better when she does it."
Culotta grins. She is a family friend, a thirty-five-year-old former dental assistant who serves as Spears' surrogate mother and best friend when Spears is on the road. Which is to say, almost all the time. She hands a cup to Spears.
"Thanks, Fee," says Spears.
"You got it, Boo," says Culotta in a matching Southern accent.
Spears takes a calming sip and looks around the room. "Since the beginning of this year, I've been such a worrywart," she says. "My anxiety has just been crazy. At the beginning of last year, when everything was rolling and everything was good, it was so new and exciting to me. Maybe I'm just changing and getting older, but I find I need to have my downtime, just to myself, or I'll go crazy."
There are several ways Spears deals with her stress. When she is alone, she writes in a prayer journal. When she and Culotta are together, they play a game in which Spears pretends to be someone else. Some days it is Ashley Judd. Other days she is Lenny Kravitz. But there are also times when the crowds press in on Spears, in dressing rooms and at photo opportunities, and the pressure of all those people and those expectations gets to be too much. In those moments, she and Culotta have a special code.
"I just say, 'Fee, it's stormy outside,' and she knows to clear everyone away and let me be by myself," says Spears.
She smiles. You tell her that she is much more of a kid than you expected, and then, a moment later, you ask whether you have offended her. "No, not at all," she says. "It makes me feel good when people realize I'm just a kid, because people expect so much out of me right now."
Here are ten buses in Spears' tour convoy, but it's not difficult to guess which one is hers. It is the one with the bedroom in back, complete with lace and candles and a queen-size bed that sports a lavender comforter and pillows that say BRITNEY.
We pile onto the bus to ride to the venue, and, although the trip is short, Spears insists on giving the rolling tour: the living room, the bunks, the tanning bed, her bedroom. It is obvious that great care has been taken to make Spears' home on wheels as comfortable as possible.
Spears was raised in Kentwood, Louisiana, a small town an hour outside of New Orleans. Her brother, Bryan, is four years older; her sister, Jamie Lynne, ten years younger. The family is tightknit, very committed to the Baptist faith, and both parents continue to hold down jobs. Her mother, Lynne, is a teacher, and Spears' father, Jamie, is a building contractor. Because the closest work for Spears' father is in Memphis, he only comes home every other weekend.
"I don't think people realize how hard it was on my family to have me do this," says Spears. "It wasn't overnight."
Some of the strains were financial. "It was really tough, but something always worked," says Lynne Spears. "We had just enough to make it work. Of course, we didn't eat very fancy."
And then there were the strains created by distance. When she was nine years old, Spears and her mother, who was pregnant, moved to New York so Spears could attend the Professional Performing Arts School. Eventually, with the arrival of Spears' baby sister, the three female Spears lived in Manhattan while the males resided in Louisiana.
"We had the clothes on our back and a few pictures," says Lynne of life in New York. "We'd get a sublet for a few months and then move on."
In New York, Spears landed an off-Broadway play and a few commercials, and she won as a contestant on Star Search. A year after that, she moved to Orlando for two years to be a member of the new Mickey Mouse Club. After a brief stint back in Kentwood, she was shipped back to New York to audition for Jive Records. This time, Spears left Louisiana for good.
"I was so bored," says Spears of Kentwood. "I was the point guard on the basketball team. I had my boyfriend, and I went to homecoming and Christmas formal. But I wanted more. I mean, it was fun while it lasted, but then I got the record deal, and I left."
Spears was in ninth grade. Today, she has completed high school correspondence classes up through grade eleven. You ask Spears why her parents allowed her to leave at such a young age.
"Because they knew I wanted it so bad," she says. "I thank God every day for my parents."
When Spears spoke to her mother this afternoon, her family had just laid the foundation on a new house in Kentwood. It is not a mansion, says Spears, but will be much bigger than the house she grew up in. Besides, fans have begun to come to the old house and knock on the door and steal dirt from the yard.
"I mean, what do you want with dirt?" asks Spears.
The plan is for Spears to head back home when her current tour winds down. You wonder if, after life on the road, without rules, she is subject to any ordinary eighteen-year-old's restrictions.
"I go through that," she says. "My mom will say, 'You have to be in by 11:30,' and I'll say, 'What?' "
Culotta's head swivels.
"Believe me, there are rules on the road," says Culotta.
She and Spears laugh.
"Because I have to answer to her mom," continues Culotta. "It's awful. I have to be her friend and her authority figure. She gets so mad at me."
"I sneak out," says Spears.
"So she has people who take care of her," says Culotta. "She has me, and she has bodyguards. She has people taking care of her."
We arrive at the venue, and Spears is immediately hustled onto the stage for sound check. When she finishes, she speed-walks down a long corridor, where her dancers and the members of LFO (one of the prepackaged teen dance-pop groups that is opening the show) stretch and bounce like escapees from a Tommy Hilfiger boot camp. Spears heads straight to her dressing room.
It is a large room that usually houses a minor-league hockey team, but tonight it has been transformed with flowers, two couches and floor lamps. A fluffy pink robe hangs from a wardrobe door.
Some nights, Spears spends time in the dancers' room, but usually she is alone. During the summer, her mother plans to come on tour. And hopefully Laura Lynne, Spears' cousin and best friend.
"I miss her," says Spears of her cousin. "Her mom has cancer. I'm going to fly her out and have her join me, to get her mind off things."
Spears' voice trails off, something it does often when she speaks of Laura Lynne. Or her mom. Or any of her longtime girlfriends.
"We've known each other since we were babies," says Spears of her group. "And I'm sure that when we get older, we'll all have kids at the same time." She pauses. "Well, that probably won't happen, but I would love that. That would be so nice."
Spears smiles.
"I guess it's easier not to think about it," she says. "I mean, it could happen . . . right?"
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