History YMMV / BritneySpears

** Once the target of many, many cruel jokes for her sugary music, raunchy performances and [[BestKnownForTheFanservice perceived lack of talent over her physical appearance]], the general public has viewed her in a much more sympathetic light in recent years due to her personal issues becoming common knowledge and bubblegum pop music becoming more popular, allowing her to exist as just another pop singer and music fans to judge her music more objectively. Her extremely dedicated fanbase, [[Music/DuaLipa a]] [[Music/LadyGaga few]] [[Music/LanaDelRey of]] [[Music/BillieEilish whom]] became very successful and respected singers in their own right who vocally cited Britney as a major influence, doesn't hurt either.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: It can be hard to appreciate what a shock it was for the general public, after several years of more earnest genres like {{grunge}} and GangstaRap and just barely a decade after the Music/MilliVanilli scandal, to see bubblegum vocal pop get as popular as her's did. It would take ''another'' decade for her brand of pop music to itself become more socially acceptable, with similar acts like Music/LadyGaga being more transgressive with the foundation Britney built, to the point that Britney, while not as unpopular, is seen as another pop star these days. Even her overt sexuality isn't seen as anything groundbreaking after decades of even more provocative, if not outright raunchy, female pop singers (though unlike Britney, most of them started when they were ''over'' 18).

** Once the target of many, many cruel jokes for her sugary music and [[BestKnownForTheFanservice perceived lack of talent over her physical appearance]], the general public has viewed her more sympathetic in recent years due to her personal issues becoming common knowledge and bubblegum pop music becoming more popular, allowing her to exist as just another pop singer and music fans to judge her music more objectively. Her extremely dedicated fanbase, a [[Music/LadyGaga few]] [[Music/LanaDelRey of]] [[Music/BillieEilish whom]] became very successful and respected singers who vocally cited Britney as a major influence, doesn't hurt either.

** Once the target of many, many cruel jokes for her sugary music and [[BestKnownForTheFanservice perceived lack of talent over her physical appearance]], the general public has viewed her more sympathetic in recent years due to her personal issues becoming common knowledge and bubblegum pop music becoming more popular, allowing her to exist as just another pop singer and music fans to judge her music more objectively. Her extremely dedicated fanbase, a [[Music/LadyGaga few]] [[Music/LanaDelRey of]] [[Music/BillieEilish whom]] became very successful and respected singers who cited Britney as a major influence, doesn't hurt either.

* WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs: Pretty much everyone's reaction to her performance at the 2007 [=VMAs=].

* NeverLiveItDown: Her opening performance at the 2007 [=VMA=]s certainly qualifies as this during her CreatorBreakdown, with countless critics and fans noting she looked stoned and disoriented on stage, seemingly lip-synching through the whole thing. And then there was her paparazzi incident with the umbrella months before...

* FriendlyFandoms: With MOST fandoms, Lana Del Rey, Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus, and others.

** "[[Creator/CaraCrocker Leave Britney alone!!]]"

* MemeticMutation: "IT'S BRITNEY, BITCH!"

** Once the target of many, many cruel jokes for her sugary music and [[BestKnownForTheFanservice perceived lack of talent over her physical appearance]], the general public has viewed her more sympathetic in recent years due to her personal issues becoming common knowledge and bubblegum pop music becoming more popular, allowing her to exist as just another pop singer and music fans to judge her music more objectively. Her extremely dedicated fanbase, a [[Music/LadyGaga few]] [[Music/LanaDelRey of]] [[Music/BillieEilish whom]] became very successful and respected singers who cited Britney as an influence, doesn't hurt either.

* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: There are several ways to interpret one specific scene in the "Lucky" video. When Lucky is getting into her limo, she sees Britney among her fans wishing her well and drops the StepfordSmiler act for a moment. Is Britney really meant to be Lucky of the past before her fame, and is Lucky being reminded of who she was before? Does Lucky get a momentary burst of something from seeing fans that seem to care about her? Does Lucky briefly wonder why these fans would want her life when she finds it empty? Is the fan Britney is playing noticing the act dropping, making Lucky realise she can't keep continuing the charade?

* BrokenBase: Every single album, era, song, scandal, gains and loses her fans, but basically, 1999-2001, 2000-present, 2005-present, 1999-2004, 2001-2008, 1999-2011, 2004-2012, 2001-2004, 2008-2011, 2011-present. Her "old music" used to be easily defined as her first two albums, but now it's any of her first 7 albums. Some fans come in recently and go backwards and explore her older works, others pick and choose the era's and tracks and versions Britney they support. She's been around a while...

** Everytime video is an example of the worst case scenario when a star falls of the wagon and alienate all her associates and then almost dies.

** Speaking of conservatorship, the chorus from "My Prerogative" can come off as bitterly ironic: "Everybody's talkin' all this stuff about me / Why don't they just let me live? / I don't need permission, make my own decisions / That's my prerogative

* HypeBacklash: It's difficult to describe to those not around at the time just how much vitriol there was for Britney once she became popular. In the early 2000s, her image of "perfect bleach-blonde white girl" and production-heavy bubblegum vocal pop music were considered agonizingly manufactured, if not [[BestKnownForTheFanservice sexually exploitative]], especially for underage girls, not helped by the fact that [[FollowTheLeader so many similar acts came in the wake of her popularity]] (the {{boy band}}s got hit by this as well, but nowhere near as bad, for [[GirlShowGhetto unfortunately obvious reasons]]. It also didn't help that most of the female vocal pop acts in the later half of the decade ''only'' copied the hypersexuality, which seemed to validate her {{slut sham|ing}}ers). She was basically shorthand for everything wrong with pop culture. And not unlike [[Series/BarneyAndFriends another pop culture figure who's name starts with B]], she eventually became so unpopular that there was briefly an anti-Britney ''movement'' in pop music, with singer-songwriter acts like Music/MichelleBranch, Music/AvrilLavigne and Music/VanessaCarlton being marketed as the more "authentic" version of the attractive female pop star archetype. It wasn't until her public meltdown that the haters finally started to back off.

* MisattributedSong: “Candy from a Stranger” is attributed to Britney, when in reality the singer is Myah Marie. Though to be fair, Myah Marie was Britney’s backup singer.

* OvershadowedByControversy: She absolutely dominated the music charts in the late '90s and early '00s and is even starting to see a bit of a renaissance in the late '10s. However any discussion of her will be dominated by her very public breakdown that was so bad, she lost custody of her children and is officially under the conservatorship of her father, meaning all business and financial matters go through him.
* PopularityPolynomial: Once the divine object of hatred amongst music fans, Britney's downward spiral and public breakdown has caused some of her most ardent haters to feel pity for her and call for the media to lay off of her. Her father and attorney have been appointed as her conservators by the courts and now oversee her personal life and finances. She has since made a real comeback in regards to many opinions of her by scoring 5 number ones in America alone and headlining two successful worldwide tours. Many people these days tend to have sympathy for her given her obvious personal and mental problems.
* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: It can be hard to appreciate what a shock it was for the general public, after several years of more earnest genres like {{grunge}} and GangstaRap and just barely a decade after the Music/MilliVanilli scandal, to see bubblegum vocal pop get as popular as her's did. It would take ''another'' decade for her brand of pop music to itself become more socially acceptable, with similar acts like Music/LadyGaga being more transgressive with the foundation Britney built, to the point that Britney, while not as unpopular, is seen as another pop star these days. Even her overt sexuality isn't seen as anything groundbreaking after decades of even even more provocative, if not outright raunchy, female pop singers (though unlike Britney, most of them started when they were ''over'' 18).

* {{Squick}}: That famous "sexy schoolgirl" video for "...Baby One More Time" ? She's [[NoYay seventeen]] in it. It's a good thing most of her fans at the time were even younger (and if it makes you feel any better, at least it was ''her'' idea to be dressed like that).
* SurprisinglyImprovedSequel: Almost all of her era's earn her new fans. On her forums people will say they started becoming a fan of her between ''Oops'' and ''Circus''. Only ''Femme Fatale'' and ''Britney Jean'' may have caused a few walk aways, but only barely.
* ValuesDissonance: Needless to say, if a seventeen-year-old wanted to make "...Baby, One More Time" or show their bra on the cover of ''Magazine/RollingStone'' after TheNewTens, when even the most gently implied sexualization of someone under 18 is considered SickAndWrong, they'd be told point blank to wait a few years.

** Once the target of many, many cruel jokes for her sugary music and [[BestKnownForTheFanservice perceived lack of talent over her physical appearance]], the general public has viewed her more sympathetic in recent years due to her personal issues becoming common knowledge and bubblegum pop music becoming more popular, allowing her to exist as just another pop singer and music fans to judge her music more objectively. Her extremely dedicated fanbase doesn't hurt either.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: It can be hard to appreciate what a shock it was for the general public, after several years of more earnest genres like {{grunge}} and GangstaRap and just barely a decade after the Music/MilliVanilli scandal, to see bubblegum vocal pop get as popular as her's did. It would take ''another'' decade for her brand of pop music to itself become more socially acceptable, with similar acts like Music/LadyGaga being more transgressive with the foundation Britney built, to the point that Britney, while no longer as unpopular, is just seen as another pop singer these days. Even her overt sexuality isn't seen as anything special after decades of even even more provocative, if not outright raunchy, female pop singers (though unlike Britney, most of them started when they were ''over'' 18).

** "[[Creator/ChrisCrocker Leave Britney alone!!]]"

** Speaking of conservatorship, the chorus from "My Prerogative", a song about a woman living her own life no matter what people say or think, can come off as bitterly ironic: "Everybody's talkin' all this stuff about me / Why don't they just let me live? / I don't need permission, make my own decisions / That's my prerogative

** Given that the song is actually about needing a new man, this may be a stretch, but the lines "This time I need a soldier [...] That knows how to take, take care of me / I'm so damn glad it's over" could, if you really think about it, serve as foreshadowing for the conservatorship that she'd be placed under that same year that would, ultimately, cause even more turmoil and disappointment in her personal life.

* SurprisinglyImprovedSequel: Almost all of her era's earn her new fans. On her forums people will say they started becoming a fan of her between ''Oops'' and ''Circus''. Only ''Femme Fatale'' and ''Britney Jean'' may have caused a few walk aways, but only barely
* SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped: The ''Oops!... I Did It Again'' album had a lot of tracks about being yourself; Can't Make You Love Me, What U See, Don't Go Knocking On My Door, and Stronger. Alien and Lucky drops the aesop that even if your surrounded by people you can still feel lonely. Passenger teaches her fans to just let go and fall in love. What It's Like To Be Me drops the aesop of taking the time to know future significant others. "Toy Soldier" discusses the concept of wanting to date a "real man". Those are but a few examples.

* BestKnownForTheFanservice: For better or worse, her flirtatious image and sexual lyrics defined her for years, to the point that it earned her her fair share of jokes about how how her willingness to show off her body had more to do with her popularity than any singing or performing skills, or that her only fans were impressionable teenage girls or [[{{Jailbait}} creepy old men]]. On the less favorable side, meanwhile, were MoralGuardians freaking out over their teenage daughters idolizing a promiscuous woman who was only slightly older than they were.

* {{Squick}}: That famous "sexy schoolgirl" video for "...Baby One More Time" ? She's [[{{Jailbait}} seventeen]] in it. It's a good thing most of her fans at the time were even younger (and if it makes you feel any better, at least it was ''her'' idea to be dressed like that).

* AccidentalInnuendo: The first line of the chorus of "I Wanna Go," "Shame on me, to need release." She's talking about having a little fun to blow off steam, but "need release" is also a way of saying you need to get laid. Granted, this was on ''Femme Fatale'', which was already HotterAndSexier to begin with, so it might not have been all that accidental in the first place.

* {{Squick}}: That famous "sexy schoolgirl" video for "...Baby One More Time" ? She's [[{{Jailbait}} sixteen]] in it. It's a good thing most of her fans at the time were even younger (and if it makes you feel any better, at least it was ''her'' idea to be dressed like that).

* ValuesDissonance: Needless to say, if a sixteen-going-on-seventeen-year-old wanted to make "...Baby, One More Time" or show their bra on the cover of ''Rolling Stone'' after TheNewTens, when even the most gently implied sexualization of someone under 18 is considered SickAndWrong, they'd be told point blank to wait a few years.