Little Miss Media Junkie

One of Spears’ most recent videos, from her 2011 album ‘Femme Fatale,’ is actually vintage Britney. The tousled blonde waves, the ultra-tanned skin, the dance sequences evoking orgies, the studded bodysuits, the laser beams; this music video is chock-full of references to the entire Britney canon. The song itself has a booming bass and Brit proclaiming that she’ll dance ‘Till the World Ends.’ I believe it.

Widely regarded as her return to form, the music video for ‘Circus’ features highly-choreographed dance routines, sunny blonde hair, exotic animals, leather, lace and sequins. In other words, everything that makes Britney’s videos some of the most iconic and entertaining entries of the art form.

All synthetic blonde wigs, denim cutoffs, and faux fur jackets, ‘Piece of Me’ and the corresponding music video is meant to be Britney’s eff you to the world and the relentless paparazzi. Unfortunately her dead eyes and sluggish dance moves, take some of the bite out of lyrics like ‘I’m Miss American Dream since I was 17/ They still gonna put pictures of my derriere in the magazine/I’m Mrs. Oh My God, That Britney’s Shameless.’

Club anthem ‘Toxic’ is from Brit’s dance-pop-electro-funk album ‘In the Zone.’ One part super-stylized super villain and one part mile high club, this may be her only video to feature a blonde, brunette and redhead Spears.

‘I’m a Slave 4 U’ from her self-titled, third studio album.

The glistening bodies, the taut tummy, the sick dance moves. This is actually my favorite Britney video of all time. Released 10 years ago if you can believe it!

‘Lucky,’ this most prescient of music videos, is from Britney’s sophomore attempt ‘Oops! …I Did It Again.’ Look past the awkward lip-syncing (a Britney staple) and somewhat clunky delivery because the lyrics here are truly ominous: ‘She’s a star/ but she cry, cry, cries in her lonely heart/ thinking if there’s nothing missing in my life/ then why do these tears come at night?’

Oh Britney.

In ‘…Baby One More Time,’ the eponymous single from her debut 1999 album, Britney Spears donned knee-high socks and pink-ribboned pigtails and changed the face of pop music forever.

Britney Jean Spears turns 30 today. While I know Brit is still making her signature electro-synthesized dance hits, it really feels like the end of an era. Hard to believe that she’s been in the public consciousness for 13 years now!

Rolling Stone has a good, short essay commemorating her career thus far.

Glamour’s 2008 ‘Britney Spears Starts Over’ cover story. 

NY magazine’s interesting essay on her rebellion as a sort of performance art.

A gallery of her Rolling Stone covers.

And, for the most devoted fan, Rolling Stone (they really have been the best chronicler of the pop princess) has an epic slideshow of her highs and lows, including her Mickey Mouse beginnings, that now-iconic nude, bejeweled jumpsuit, her and Justin’s matching denim disasters, the albino python, that kiss heard around the world, and her trainwreck Dateline interview with Matt Lauer. 

Images via Jive Records