After a nearly three-decade career, Britney Spears says she’s never returning to the music industry.
Reports have been swirling this week that Spears, 42, is in the process of staging a major comeback and enlisting the help of pop titans Charli XCX and Julia Michaels to write songs for what would be her new album in nearly a decade.
However, Spears took to her Instagram account to debunk the rumors, writing, “Just so we’re clear most of the news is trash !!! They keep saying I’m turning to random people to do a new album … I will never return to the music industry !!!”
Spears continued, “When I write, I write for fun or I write for other people !!! For those of you who have read my book, there’s loads that you don’t know about me … I’ve written over 20 songs for other people the past two years !!! I’m a ghostwriter and I honestly enjoy it that way !!!”
The Princess of Pop also called out false reports claiming that her memoir, The Woman in Me, was “released without my approval illegally,” saying that those rumors are “far from the truth.”
Rolling Stone writes that "minutes before" Britney's post, a source "close to the Spears project-in-the-works" told the magazine her team was assembling music to draw her to the studio. The insider informed RS, “Right now, management and A&R are trying to get her excited for the music. As of right now, she’s not actively in recording but they’re getting [songs] done to present to her. Nothing is cemented or in stone. ... The hype around this is that everyone wants her to make music again, but I don’t know if she’s there yet."
For dedicated fans of the singer, Spears’ retirement shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. After she was freed from her 13-year court-appointed conservatorship, Spears said in 2021 that her withdrawal from the music industry would be her way of saying “fuck you.”
“So much wasted time to only embarrass me and humiliate me and I guess it seems odd to most now why I don’t even do my music anymore...that’s just the surface issues. People have no idea the awful things that were done to me personally…and after what I’ve been through, I’m scared of people and the business,” Spears wrote at the time.
She continued, “They really hurt me! Not doing my music anymore is my way of saying ‘Fuck You,’ in a sense when it only actually benefits my family by ignoring my real work.”
Spears’ last studio album, Glory, was released in 2016 and had sold 157,000 copies in the U.S. as of 2020, per Billboard. The record spawned singles such as “Make Me” featuring G-Eazy and “Slumber Party” with Tinashe.
In 2022, Spears made a brief return to music with a revamped version of Elton John’s “Hold Me Closer.” A music video starring Spears was reportedly in the works but never materialized. She reunited with past collaborator will.i.am last July for “Mind Your Business,” a follow-up single to their 2012 hit “Scream and Shout.”
Happy retirement, Britney. You will be missed.
