Amid rumors that she’s releasing a new album, Britney Spears took to Instagram to set the record straight. While she’s not leaving the industry, it’s not going to be the same pre-court orders.
Several tabloids under the Murdoch family’s News Corp kicked off the new year convincing people new Spears album is coming. If true, this would be a big deal. Not including compilation albums, Spears hasn’t released a new album since her eighth in 2016. Now, over seven years later, she’s free from her abusive familial conservatorship and newly divorced. So many life events for an artist sound like an interesting record in the making. However, Spears took to Instagram and made it clear she doesn’t see a new album happening any time soon.
Captioned under a Baroque painting of Salome with the Head of John the Baptist by Guido Reni, Spears wrote she “will never return to the music industry!!!” While this seems like a total rebuke, it might not be. She very likely means she has no plans to return with her own full album and rollout. After all, a year ago Spears released a remix to the song Hold Me Closer with Sir Elton John. In her her memoir, The Woman in Me, Spears talked about how much this song meant to her. “My first number one and my longest-charting in single in almost ten years. And on my own terms. Fully in control.” Single, the Spears released other singles and so some think this is leading to an album.
I keep getting asked when I’m going to put on shows again. I confess that I’m struggling with that question. I’m enjoying dancing and singing the way I used to when I was younger and not trying to do it for my family’s benefit, not trying to get something, but doing it for me and for my genuine love of it.
Spears, The Woman in Me
In the caption of that now-deleted post (on her suddenly deactivated account), Spears revealed that over the past two years, she wrote 20 songs for other artists. “When I write, I write for fun or I write for other people !!! […] I’m a ghostwriter and I honestly enjoy it that way !!!” More hardcore fans of her music might be disappointed by this, but I see this as a win. I’m glad to see her be able to still find joy in making new music and dancing on Instagram. Despite how Spears’ music and life as a performer connected with her father’s control of her life and body—including her reproductive health—she can bring herself to still want to make things and share. Spears was told she was sound of mind enough to perform, release music, and even do a Vegas residency. However, courts upheld that she couldn’t make decisions about her personal life and money.
Now that Spears holds her freedom she’s navigating how to stay in an industry that her family weaponized against her. If she ever changes her mind, it’ll be her decision alone and not one forced by a conservator. Spears ended the update with a confirmation The Woman in Me came with her approval and that she feels so loved and blessed. Within a day of that post, she deactivated her Instagram account.
(via The Associated Press, featured image: screencap)
