10 Biggest Music-Related Revelations in Britney Spears’ Memoir ‘The Woman in Me’

Spears reveals in her memoir that label executives wanted her first big music video — the one for lead single and title track off debut album …Baby One More Time – to be space themed, and she would play a futuristic astronaut. She was not into that idea.  

“The mock-up I saw had me looking like a Power Ranger. That image didn’t resonate with me, and I had a feeling my audience wouldn’t relate to it, either,” she writes. “I told the executives at the label that I thought people would want to see my friends and me sitting at school, bored, and then, as soon as the bell rang, boom — we’d start dancing.” 

Spears adds that the director of the video, Nigel Dick, was very open to her ideas. She came up with the school bell cuing the dancing and made a firm point that there need to be “cute boys.” 

“I thought we should wear school uniforms to make it seem more exciting when we started dancing outside in our casual clothes,” she writes. “Making that video was the most fun part of doing that first album.” 

At the 2000 VMAs, Spears performed The Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and her hit “Oops!…I Did It Again” in a suit, and then a bikini top with matching flesh-toned bottoms. According to the pop star, MTV later decided it was a good idea to record Spears watching people react to her performance, and air the footage.  

While some people had nice things to say about her performance, Spears recalls a lot of folks complaining about her “skimpy outfit” and stating that she was a bad example for kids.  

“The cameras were trained on me, waiting to see how I would react to this criticism, if I would take it well or if I would cry. Did I do something wrong? I wondered. I danced my heart out on the award show. I never said I was a role model. All I wanted to do was sing and dance,” she writes.  

She adds that the MTV host kept pushing her about whether or not she was “corrupting America’s youth, to which she replied, “Some of them were very sweet … but I’m not the children’s parents. I just got to be me. I know there are going to be people out there — know not everyone’s going to like me.’” 

“It shook me up,” she writes now. “And it was my first real taste of backlash that would last for years.” 

In 2001, Spears was once again set to take the stage for the annual MTV VMAs. This time, she would be promoting her single “I’m a Slave 4 U” with a special guest — a yellow python. Spears was terrified of the snake, even though its handler was a woman even smaller than she was. The star felt fine when the handler was in reach, but once she was on stage alone with the snake, she thought it might kill her.  

“In my head, I was saying, just perform, just use your legs and perform. But what nobody knows is that as I was singing, the snake brought its head right around to my face, right up to me, and started hissing at me,” she writes. “You didn’t see that shot on the TV, but in real life? I was thinking, Are you f–king serious right now? The f–king godd–n snake’s tongue is flicking out at me. Right. Now. Finally, I got to the part where I handed it back, thank God.” 

In Spears’ memoir, Madonna is referenced as a mentor and trusted confidant for Spears. The two connected throughout Spears’ career, but one moment stands out for many fans – the infamous 2003 VMAs kiss.  

According to Spears, every time she and Madonna (and presumably Christina Aguilera, who was also featured in the performance, but not referenced in this section of the memoir) practiced the kiss beforehand, it was an air kiss.  

“About two minutes before the performance, I was sitting on the side of the stage and thinking about my biggest performance to date at the VMAs, when I pulled off a suit to reveal a sparkly outfit. I thought to myself: I want a moment like that again this year. With the kiss, should I just go for it?” she writes.  

“A lot was made of that kiss,” she continues. “Oprah asked Madonna about it. The kiss was treated as a huge cultural moment — ‘Britney kissing Madonna!‘ — and it got both of us a lot of attention.” 

Spears claims that her record company felt “lukewarm” about her song “Me Against the Music,” while she was in love with the track. She suggested doing a feature on the song to help propel it into a hit. “I thought if we could find someone to be on the song, we could create a story around it,” she writes.  

While rehearsing for the 2003 VMAs with Madonna, Spears suggested the icon to the team, and they loved the idea. Instead of going through Madonna’s team to ask if she would like to be on the song, Spears went directly to the legendary singer at rehearsals.

“I told her how much fun it would be to do the song with me and how I thought we could help each other. It was something that would benefit us both. She agreed,” Spears writes. “‘Me Against the Music’ is still one of my favorite songs, and the collaboration with her is part of what makes it so memorable.”  

Despite the hectic times surrounding the release of Spears’ fifth studio album, Blackout, she still considers it her favorite. She writes, “Blackout, the thing I most proud of my whole career, came out right around Halloween in 2007.” 

The career-defining album featured hits “Gimme More,” “Break the Ice” and “Piece of Me.” 

She performed “Gimme More” at the 2007 MTV VMAs, but ahead of the set, wasn’t feeling great after having two babies, suffering from postpartum depression and a series of other issues behind the scenes.

“Backstage at the VMAs that night, nothing was going right,” she writes. “There was a problem with my costume and with my hair extensions. I hadn’t slept the night before. I was dizzy. It was less than a year since I had my second baby in two years, but everyone was acting like my not having six-pack abs was offensive. I couldn’t believe I was going to have to go out on stage feeling the way I felt.” 

To make matters worse, she also ran into her ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake backstage, and everything resulted in her having a panic attack before going live.  

“I went out there and I did the best I could at that moment in time, which — yes, granted — was far from my best at other times,” she writes. “I could see myself on video throughout the auditorium while I performed; it was like looking at myself in a fun house mirror.” 

To add salt to the wound, following her unflattering performance, comedian Sarah Silverman made fun of her to the global audience. “She said that at the age of 25 I done everything worthwhile in my life I’d ever do,” Spears recalls. “She called my two babies ‘the most adorable mistake you’ll ever see.’ I didn’t hear that until later, though. At the time I was backstage sobbing hysterically.” 

After making two albums she was not pleased with, Spears writes that she felt relieved to work with new songwriters – Julia Michaels and Justin Tranter – for her 2016 album, Glory. 

“We’d sit and write everything together. I had a passion about it. It was the one thing in the 13 years of the conservatorship that I really put my heart into,” she writes. “I worked hard on those songs, which gave me confidence. You know when you’re good at something and you can feel it? You start doing something and think, I got this? Writing that album gave me my confidence back.” 

She played the album for her sons once it was done and asked them what she should title it. Her son Sean Preston said, “Just name it Glory.” 

“Seeing the kids so proud of that album meant a lot to me — I thought, I’m proud of this, too! It was a feeling I hadn’t had in a long time,” she writes.  

Throughout Spears’ four-year Britney: Piece of Me Las Vegas residency, criticism was lobbed at the Princess of Pop for her visible lack of enthusiasm for the show. Spears became disillusioned with the gig when her father and team would not let her change up the show for the duration, and she was silently staging her own rebellion on stage.  

“In the most immortalizing moments of my Las Vegas residency, I wore tight wigs, and I’d dance in a way where I wouldn’t move a hair on my head,” she writes. “Everyone who is making money off me, wanted me to move my hair, and I knew it — and so I did everything but that.” 

Looking back, she writes, “I realize how much of myself I withheld on stage, how much by trying to punish the people who held me captive I punished everyone else, too — including my loyal fans, including myself. But now I know why I’ve been sleepwalking through so much of the past 13 years. I was traumatized.” 

“By holding back on stage, I was trying to rebel in someway, even if I was the only one who knew that was what was happening,” she writes. “And so I didn’t toss my hair or flirt. I did the moves and I sang the notes, but I didn’t put the fire behind it that I had in the past. Toning down my energy on stage was my own version of a factory slowdown.” 

Spears does not spend a lot of time in her memoir discussing the years she created her 2011 and 2013 albums, Femme Fatale and Britney Jean, respectively, both of which will.i.am helped produce. But buried in the memoir, she makes it clear that those tracks were not her best work.  

“I made one good song with will.i.am — ‘Work Bitch.’ But I wasn’t making a lot of music that I was proud of, probably because I wasn’t into it,” she writes.

She explains that she was demoralized by the depressing and dark studios her dad picked for her to work in at the time, and thought that “some people got a thrill from thinking I didn’t notice those things.” 

“I felt concerned in those situations; I thought they set me up. It was like they thrived on my fear, turned it all into drama, which in turn made me unhappy, and so they would always win,” she adds. “All I knew was I had to work, and I wanted to do the right thing —to make an album that I was proud of. But it was as if I had forgotten that I was a powerful woman.” 

Toward the end of her memoir, Spears explains that music and live performance no longer bring her the joy they once did. It is unclear — possibly for both the reader and Spears — whether or not she will return to music.  

“Pushing forward in my music career is not my focus at the moment. Right now it’s time for me to try to get my spiritual life in order, to pay attention to little things, to slow down. It’s time for me not to be someone who other people want; it’s time to actually find myself,” she writes. “As I’ve gotten older, I like my alone time. Being an entertainer was great, but over the last five years, my passion to entertain in front of a live audience has lessened. I do it for myself now. I feel God more when I’m alone.”