The black BMW had been speeding and swerving between lanes, the police dispatcher said, before the vehicle was pulled over by California Highway Patrol.
At the side of a road in Ventura County on Wednesday night, a motorist suspected of driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs performed a field sobriety test.
Their car was towed and they were taken to jail. The motorist was Britney Spears.
The arrest was the latest indignity for a celebrity whose career has become a byword for dysfunction.
There was hope that Spears would return to former glory after the termination of her conservatorship in November 2021 which, in the eyes of her fans, freed her from the control of an overbearing father.
Yet the Toxic singer seems no closer to returning to the stage, there is no new music on the horizon and her eccentric social media posts have become a cause for alarm.
A Free Britney rally outside the courthouse where her conservatorship was ended in November 2021
PATRICK T FALLON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Those close to Spears, 44, are said to hope the judge does not jail her but allows her to seek treatment in an attempt at rehabilitation. California Highway Patrol said that chemical tests from her arrest were still pending.
“Britney is going to take the right steps and comply with the law, and hopefully this can be the first step in long overdue change that needs to occur in Britney’s life,” her management said. “Hopefully she can get the help and support she needs during this difficult time.”
This was not the outcome the #FreeBritney movement expected when a Los Angeles judge ended the conservatorship after 13 years. The complex legal arrangement was introduced in 2008, originally as an emergency measure, during Spears’s public mental health crisis. Jamie Spears, her father, was placed in control of her life and career.
He oversaw successful tours and a lucrative Las Vegas residency, though Spears later said she was deeply unhappy while performing.
Jamie Spears, 73, is now estranged from his daughter and remains a villain in the eyes of her global fanbase — but some who have worked with Spears believe time has vindicated him.
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Rob Shuter, a veteran showbusiness journalist and PR expert, worked with Spears in the early 2000s and insists her father’s intervention saved her life. “We all wanted this conservatorship to end but nobody had a plan afterwards,” he said. “Britney’s always been a broken sparrow but she had enough people around her to protect her, and now we got rid of them.
Rob Shuter says it is a “miracle” Britney is still alive
“We’re going to rue the day that we got rid of her dad. He kept her alive for a decade. The Brit[ney] I saw, it’s a miracle she’s still with us.”
Shuter, who writes the Naughty But Nice Substack blog, recalled being with Spears after she shaved her head in 2007. As executive editor of a celebrity magazine he had paid for an interview and photoshoot, but the material proved unusable.
“She was out of her mind, and the people around her were shady,” Shuter said. “Her dad managed to keep them away, but now there’s no safeguard.”
Born in the small Bible-belt town of McComb, Mississippi, and raised in Louisiana, Spears was an unlikely pop star. Yet after the 1998 release of the single Baby One More Time, the 16-year-old was one of the most famous singers in the world.
Spears dominated the charts with songs including Oops!… I Did It Again, I’m A Slave 4 U and Toxic. Her relationship with Justin Timberlake was a tabloid obsession.
Spears married the back-up dancer Kevin Federline in 2004 and the couple have two sons, Sean Preston and Jayden. They split amid Spears’s mental breakdown.
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Federline was granted full custody of the children. Spears wrote in her 2023 memoir that during the episode she was “out of my mind with grief … flailing those weeks without my children, I lost it, over and over again”.
Kevin Federline and Spears in 2004
BAUER-GRIFFIN/GC IMAGES
With her sons Sean Preston and Jayden, right
JON SOOHOO/LA DODGERS/GETTY IMAGES
The conservatorship brought stability, outwardly at least. Spears has not performed live since 2018 and her most recent album was 2016’s Glory. Only the most optimistic fan expects a follow-up anytime soon.
Despite the inactivity, interest in Spears remains sky high. “We love a car crash, especially a woman car crash,” said Jennifer Otter Bickerdike, author of the 2021 biography Being Britney: Pieces of a Modern Icon.
Spears, the writer says, remains part of the “cultural tapestry”. “She’s a figure that straddles the pre-internet world and social media,” Bickerdike said, adding that modern pop stars such as Taylor Swift may view Spears as a cautionary tale.
“With these women everything is so carefully curated and presented,” she said. “They learnt that lesson from Britney — what happens when you go rogue and try to have your own life outside the pop-music machine.”
Spears’s social media presence is unlike that of almost any pop star of her stature, featuring eccentric dance videos and semi-nude photos covered with emojis.
Spears has worried fans with eccentric dancing videos…
INSTAGRAM/@BRITNEYSPEARS
… and nude images
INSTAGRAM/@BRITNEYSPEARS
Shuter, who has known Spears for more than 20 years, said she had always been the personality fans now see on Instagram — only at the height of her fame as the world’s biggest music star, a vast infrastructure was in place to maintain the image of a polished pop princess.
The illusion was shattered long ago. The situation may get worse — Spears has a court date for May 4 related to the alleged DUI.
Despite all of her riches — last month she agreed to sell her back catalogue in a deal said to be worth about $200 million — it is easy to believe that Spears would have been better off without pop stardom.
Shuter said: “If she’d never found this fame, if she’d done community theatre in Louisiana and been the star of My Fair Lady at her local school, I think she would be happier.”