Everything You've Been Dying to Know About Britney Spears

Boy! Where to begin? Britney Spears is one of the most successful female solo artists of all time. She’s sold millions of albums and won every award under the sun, but it’s the behind-the-scenes scandals that have made up the story of her life. 

There's enough heartbreak, betrayal, drama, setbacks, and comebacks in Britney’s life to write a six-season TV series. By the end of the 2000s, she’d been crowned the best-selling female album artist of the decade, and Guinness World Records named her as the most internet searched person of the decade, but not necessarily for the right reasons. So let’s start at the best place to kick off all stories: the beginning.

Britney Jean Spears was born on December 2nd, 1981 in McComb, Mississippi. She was the second child of Lynne Irene Bridges and James Parnell Spears. Her maternal grandmother, Lillian Portell, was English, and one of her maternal great-great-grandfathers was from Malta. She has an elder brother, Bryan James, and a younger sister, Jamie Lynn Spears. Coming from right in the middle of America’s Bible Belt, Britney was baptized as a Southern Baptist and sang in a church choir as a child.