For Jamie and Lynne, this represented a dilemma because they had witnessed the excellence of their daughter’s talent and agility and felt she was abandoning great potential. But they saw how fed-up it made her, compared to how her face lit up when she danced or sang. Even though it went against their better judgement at the time, they backed her decision. They didn’t wish to push her down a particular road, regardless of pleadings from coaches.
Nor were the Spears keen to push their daughter down the road of that showy American culture: the beauty pageant. Ever since the 1850s, these competitions have provided a somewhat cosmetic approval-bar. It is a culture which encourages dressing six-year-olds up as adults, with full make-up, building up an emphasis on image and beauty. One sour experience was enough for Lynne to realise the ‘horror’ of the system when Britney, who was painfully shy when not engaged in performance mode, lost out and finished almost bottom in a local ‘Little Miss Something’ contest.
Lynne was adamant her daughter would never again be made to feel ugly or rejected by the values of image and image alone. She always wanted Britney to know that it is someone’s qualities and attitudes that make them beautiful, not their looks. If there was one person in the world who could wipe away Britney’s tears and put her back together again, it was her mama. The irony, bearing in mind what she would ultimately be marketed as, was that the Spears family had vehemently railed against a pageant system primarily built on beauty as a commodity. Yet that’s exactly what their daughter would become: a marketable, image-led commodity; dressed up like a doll for the pop industry. Then again, Britney wouldn’t finish near the bottom of the table in the music industry as she did at the pageant. The Spears would argue that her success as a pop star was based on talent, not looks alone; that she is a performer, not a walkabout prop.
In recent years, a lot of emphasis has been placed on the fact that Britney was more performer and dancer than strong vocal talent. That suggestion seems hard to accept based on people’s recollections and what is evident in archive footage. It seems more like a well-embroidered argument promoted to mitigate the fact that the modern-day Britney lip-syncs when singing live; that she is more entertainer than great singer. But anyone who witnessed her sing as a child—and during 1999-2001—can feel rightly perplexed because she literally blew audiences away with her voice. On-lookers couldn’t help but get the chills when she sang as a child, with a mature quality and depth. She might not have come near the natural ability of a Christina Aguilera but she was nevertheless impressive. Let no one say Britney cannot sing live. She can. Or, more pertinently, she could…back in the early days.
She first stepped up to the plate in public at the First Baptist Church, aged four, holding a microphone bigger than her own forearm and immaculately turned out in a floral, conservative-church dress. It was Christmas 1985 and she sang the carol ‘What Child Is This?’ to the melody of ‘Greensleeves’. The congregation was stunned by the voice that emerged from the youngster. Lynne was told that her daughter was ‘Broadway-bound’.
Of course, she was as proud as punch but no one actually believed the toddler would get anywhere. No matter how talented, no matter how powerful, this voice would always be lost within the vastness of Middle America. Lynne simply did what any proud mother would do: she encouraged Britney to keep on singing.
Mum scoured local newspapers for talent competitions. If everyone was telling her that her daughter had a talent, then Lynne felt an urge to show it off. After all, Britney had given up on a natural flair for gymnastics and her mama didn’t want another talent to go begging.
One year later, Britney ended up winning a singing and dancing competition at the Kentwood Dairy Day Festival. She went on to win another competition in Lafayette, a two-hour drive away, singing ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’, and soon added first prize at the Miss Talent Central States contest in Baton Rouge. Soon enough, talent-contest rosettes, certificates and trophies vied for space on the mantlepiece with gymnastic medals and golden statuettes. Britney’s sense of self-worth was being pampered with much attention, admiration and acclaim, albeit on a local scale.
Aunty Chanda—who was in Britney’s life from 1991-8 through dating and then marrying her uncle, John Mark Spears—fondly recalls her niece’s voice: ‘Oh Lord, she was better back then than she is today. She needs to recapture her natural voice because that child could sing, let me tell you. She had a gorgeous voice, one that sent chills through everyone who heard her. She was breathtaking, and don’t let people tell you no different.’
Britney was the star turn at Chanda’s wedding to John Mark in 1993, at the Nazarene Church in Magnolia, Mississippi. Wearing a floral frock, she took centre stage to sing the Naomi Judd hit ‘Love Can Build A Bridge’. Chanda said: Actually she sang it better than Judd. It was a special day to have my niece singing to me, and there were tears rolling down people’s faces. Guests who didn’t know her were in awe, saying, “That young one’s going somewhere.’”
Even Britney was recognising her abilities. She recalls that she deliberately chose songs that ‘highlighted my range and how powerful my voice was.’
Steve Hood, a dance instructor in Baton Rouge who worked with eight-year-old Britney, remembers: ‘I didn’t exactly meet her the first time she came to our dance studio, but I certainly heard her. I was coaching one of her friends in a group class when we suddenly heard this powerful voice echoing through the building. When I went to check, there was Britney in the middle of the corridor outside our class, singing her heart out. Why? Because she felt like it, I guess.’
The more her daughter’s voice was heard, the more Lynne was impelled to do something about her talent. She has always sworn that Britney’s ‘…real…astonishing…powerful sound’ could blow the roof off a house in the days before she was given a ‘super-produced pop voice’.
As Lynne scoured the south for fresh opportunities, Britney simply kept plugging away, almost nonchalant to ambition. Despite numerous talent show triumphs, she wasn’t transformed into a petulant brat demanding success. Quite the opposite, she remained humble, impeccably well mannered and always responded to elders with a respectful ‘Yes, ma’am’ and ‘No, sir’. Oddly enough, when she wasn’t performing, Britney acted more like a shrinking violet; she seemed only comfortable in groups of people she already knew.
She was a diligent and well-behaved kid who was ‘a fine example to her folks,’ according to local consensus. ‘She was raised right by her mama, and knew right from wrong,’ said Aunty Chanda, who has since divorced John Mark, ‘Britney was a kind-hearted, down-to-earth country girl who liked to kick around in her bare feet and play. I can still see her wrestling with the other kids, giggling and laughing on the grass. I’ll tell you, she was as good as gold and respected her elders—she was the model child.’
What becomes clear is that Britney placed as much faith in adults as she did in God. What her elders did, she watched and learned; what they told her to do, she did. She was someone who always seemed eager to please.
This trust-all-elders mentality was imbibed at her private school, Park Lane Academy further down Highway 55 into Mississippi where Britney, dressed in a red-and-blue uniform with a ‘P’ as its embossed emblem, would take the yellow school bus or jump in a neighbour’s car, for the 25-minute drive. It was some drive to take each morning but Jamie and Lynne were determined their children would receive a good education. Jamie, a former pupil of Kent-wood High, wanted better for his kids.
Park Lane is a one-storey building of corrugated iron with an impressive football pitch and bleachers, and it has a strong reputation in the area. It cost around $200-a-month to enrol Britney as well as Bryan. Rules were aplenty in the wood-panelled classrooms, where teachers stood at pulpitlike wooden lecterns adorned with a crucifix at the front.
Red rulebooks were issued each term, instilling
