Last Saturday we got our first look at Britney Spears on the cover and in the pages of the new issue of Glamour magazine … today, the mag has updated its official website and has posted Britney’s interview in full along with a few more photos from the photospread … check it out:
“America’s reigning pop princess has a firm grip on fame, fortune and, more important, reality.” At least that’s how it looked the last time Glamour profiled Britney Spears, in December 2003, when we named her one of our Women of the Year. Back then, the 22-year-old was a certified pop music powerhouse. With her most recent CD perched on top of the charts, she’d already sold 28 million albums in the United States alone, was pulling in a staggering $39 million a year and had created an arts immersion camp for underprivileged children. And then the trouble began. Over the past five years, our hearts have broken again and again for Spears. No, not because of her career (she continues to be a hit-making machine), but because of everything else. To recap: two failed marriages, a custody battle and what seemed like a slow-motion breakdown. In 2006 she called herself an “emotional wreck” in an interview with Matt Lauer, then flashed the entire world in numerous no-underwear paparazzi shots. In 2007 she stunned us by shaving her head for the cameras, made several visits to rehab and attacked a photographer’s car with—remember this?—a green umbrella. She attempted a sexy “See, I’m OK” performance on the VMAs that September,only to be ravaged by critics and fans for her drowsy dancing and off-time lip-synching. Her peers went public with their concern: “She can call me and come live in our house with us for a couple of months,” Heidi Klum said in a show of support. “I would help set her straight.” Of course it wasn’t that easy. Within a month, Spears was charged with a misdemeanor hit-and-run and lost custody of her kids to K-Fed. Then, on January 3, 2008, the pop star was carried out of her L.A. home on a gurney and whisked to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Her diagnosis was widely rumored to be bipolar disorder, but her mother, Lynne Spears, has a different opinion. “I believe Britney had postpartum depression, which [in addition to]…the end of her marriage to Kevin and the enormous pressures of her career, brought her to the breaking point,” Lynne claims in her tell-all book, Through the Storm. “Something inside of her had broken and needed to be healed.” Spears was released January 5 but hospitalized again within a few weeks … The next day, while she was in a psychiatric ward, her father, Jamie Spears, signed documents in a Los Angeles court that stated his daughter was “in an immediate and substantial medical emergency.” He then became her court-appointed temporary conservator, with a say in her medical care and control over her financial and personal decisions. Her father’s first order of business: banishing some of her entourage, including taking out a restraining order against her manager at the time, Sam Lutfi. With her dad’s help, Spears began to show signs of recovery, quickly regaining visitation rights with her little boys. In the following months, the pop star was rarely photographed, caught on camera by the paparazzi only when she was driving to the gym and during a few Starbucks runs. She was even working on a new album. Soon enough, Spears fully emerged from her cocoon. MTV invited her to open September’s VMAs with a pretaped skit. The singer looked healthy and composed, making the entrance we were all hoping to see, in a sexy silver dress, a gift from Donatella Versace. The energy in the room was palpable, even on TV, and the crowd responded to a fresh-faced Spears with a standing ovation. She took home three trophies, including a Video of the Year award for her single “Piece of Me.” “It was Britney’s night,” wrote an MTV journalist. “What a difference a year makes.” Her fans seem thrilled to have her back: In October, “Womanizer,” the first single off Circus, made pop music history by jumping from number 96 to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in a week. A month later a packed Dodger Stadium erupted in wild cheers as a superconfident Spears made a surprise appearance onstage with Madonna during the Material Girl’s Los Angeles concert. Next, Spears’ documentary about her return to the pop music scene airs on MTV. And the star plans to celebrate her twenty-seventh birthday on December 2 with the release of Circus and a performance on Good Morning America. The big question, of course, is: Will it stick? Spears’ cover story with Glamour was the first of many tests, and judging from the signals she sent during two separate interviews and a cover shoot, it’s a recovery in progress. In our first conversation at a recording studio in Hollywood, she was eager to talk about the album she thinks might be her best yet, and she looked pulled together in a Forever 21 top, black Paige jeans, Chloé heels and a charm bracelet with her sons’ initials dangling prettily. But I noticed how nervous she seemed, even with her bodyguard standing nearby, and her manager Larry Rudolph and a publicist hovering within earshot. At our shoot less than a week later, her energy level fluctuated between alert (at one point, she took a break to hold a meeting about her next music video) and lethargic (at another point, she excused herself to take a nap). When I brought up the subject of depression, Rudolph cut me off and spoke for Spears, saying firmly, “That’s beyond what we want to talk about.” All that said, these pictures don’t lie. On the shoot, Spears asked her dad, “How do I look?” and the honest answer was, radiant. Spears’ team says the change in her is more than just physical. “Britney went through a dark time,” acknowledges music exec Teresa LaBarbera Whites, who worked closely with Spears on Blackout and Circus. But she “can’t wait to perform—it’s what makes her happy. And it’s so good to see her happy again.”
Thruout the course of this Glamour magazine interview, which you can read in full HERE, Britney talks about the 2008 VMAs, her new album, etc. but it’s when she talks about her children that she sounds most poignant. Also, for the first time in any of her recent press, she talks a bit about her mother Lynne Spears. Altho Britney opened up quite a lot in her MTV documentary which aired last night, this interview with Glamour magazine offers a bit more in addition. If there is still more info from Britney that y’all are lookin’ for, you might find it in this interview. Even if you’re not looking for more, the photos are deffo worth a second look.
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