Christopher Heard - Britney Spears: Little Girl Lost

Published by Transit Publishing Inc.

Copyright 2010 by Christopher Heard

The reproduction or transmission of any part of this publication in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, or storage in a retrieval system, without the prior consent of the publisher, is an infringement of copyright law. In the case of photocopying or other reprographic production of the material, a licence must be obtained from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright) before proceeding.

ISBN: 978-1-926745-94-7

Editor: Timothy Niedermann Copyeditor: Mary Williams Proofreaders: Tami Xanthakis and Aime Verret Cover design: Franois Turgeon Text design and composition: Nassim Bahloul

Cover photo: Reuters/CORBIS

Transit Publishing Inc. 1996 St-Joseph Boulevard East Montreal, QC H2H 1E3

Tel: 514-273-0123 www.transitpublishing.com

Printed and Bound in Canada

Dedication

For Isabelle (IHQOW)

Acknowledgements

My thanks first and foremost to the finest group of publishing people anywhere, the Transit Publishing team. Transit is a Canadian publishing house with guts and drive and spirit, all of which are woefully lacking elsewhere in publishing in this country, and it is Pierre Turgeon who deserves a ton of credit for this. Thanks also to Francois Turgeon for his energy and determination. Thanks to Dwayne and Christine and Isabelle and Sarah, who get behind their books with a savage intensity that ensures everyone out there knows about them. And thanks to Gratia Ionescu who keeps all of the above in line.

Special thanks to my editor, Timothy Niedermann, who edits with a surgeons precision but with a sculptors vision. I am very lucky indeed to have someone of your skill in my corner.

A special word of thanks to brother Ian Halperin, a good friend who is always there when I need a bit of advice.

Thanks to everyone who spoke to me on the record or off during this process, from the good people of Kentwood, Louisiana, on up to the clinical psychologists who tried to give me as much of an understanding of the seriousness of postpartum depression that is possible for a male to grasp.

Thanks to my family: my father, Bill, my mother, Marie and my brother Peter. It is through them that the confidence to dream begins.

Thanks to my other family, the special people that surround me in my home in the beloved Royal York Hotel, from Melanie Coates to Heather McCrory to Mike Taylor to Kolene Elliott to Josh downstairs in the health clubyou all create a wonderful atmosphere that has made me extremely and most enjoyably productive.

Heartfelt thanks to the beautiful Rhonda Thain. Once again, you saw to it that work was balanced with comfort and warmth and supportall deeply appreciated.

Not long ago, my three-year-old daughter, Isabelle, was visiting me in the grand old hotel I live in. Like Eloise at the Plaza, Isabelle loves to run along the hallways and skip and dance across the spacious mezzanine overlooking the chandeliers and the ornate lobby. On this day, Isabelle and I explored the old Imperial Rooma venerable nightclub/lounge that has played host to performers like Marlene Dietrich and Tony Bennett. The room was deserted, quiet; Isabelle wanted to go onto the stage, so I lifted her up there. She began to sing and twirl and dance. I sat at a front-row table and watched, beaming proudly as my beautiful little girl performed for an imaginary audience.

When she had finished her act and become bored with the dark empty space of the Imperial Room, we returned to the lobby. An old British lady was sitting there by herself. As we passed by, she looked at Isabelle and said to me, She is adorable! You should put her in show business. I thanked the lady, but her words struck an ominous chord. I stopped and hugged Isabelle for a second and thought of little Britney Jean Spears. I wondered to myself, did someone say something like that about their little girl to Lynne or Jamie Spears? Is this how the Britney odyssey started, how the end of her innocence began? Or would it have happened anyway? Was making Britney a superstar what her parents had always intended and vowed to achieve?

Staggering, sustained success of the sort achieved by Britney Spears is never an accident. She had sold nearly a hundred million albums before she turned twenty-eight, and she is the only female artist to have had her first four albums debut at number 1 on the Billboard charts. While chance certainly plays a role in the careers of most recording artists, Britney did not get to where she is by mere happenstance.

* * *

This book is about the tumultuous life of a smart, talented young woman named Britney Jean Spears, born in the Mississippi mud and raised in Louisianas sweltering Southern Baptist country. It traces her meteoric rise to the very heights of pop-culture success. But, like Goethes Dr. Faust, who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for everything he wants on this earth, Britney has had to pay an enormous price to achieve her desires.

Though manipulated by an ambitious mother, controlling managers, and greed-driven entertainment executives, Britney has, perhaps naively, been a willing party to it all. Others may have dangled the carrot of fame before her, but she allowed herself to become mesmerized by it. She began to channel all of her gifts and focus all of her energies toward one thing: churning out product to feed the cash machine that bore her name. And, despite everything that has happened to her, despite all of the obstacles in her path, she has never let that machine falter. She achieved the dream every little girl has of being a star. But once she got there, the bill came due in many ways.

This book follows her rise to the heights of fame and fortune and her descent into personal hell; it also details her recent return to stability and relative happiness. A new Britney has emerged. The question we may find ourselves asking is: What Britney is this? The one we thought we knew, or the one who is truer to herself? But, in the end, all we can do is hope that the little girl inside Britney who loves to sing and dance finally finds happiness.