Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I grew up loving artists like the Spice Girls and Britney Spears - artists who seemed to live this fantasy lifestyle, and I remember always wanting to join these fantasy people in that world.
When I was on the 'Mickey Mouse Club,' there was Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and Ryan Gosling and Christine Aguilera. But they were 12 and I was 17, so there was a bit of an age difference.
The first time I got into the studio, when I was 17, 18, I got to work with people who were some part of the Cheiron thing, who did all the early Britney Spears stuff, all the early 'NSync stuff.
If a Martian came down to Earth and watched television, he'd come to conclusion that all the world's society is based on Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. He'd be amazed that our society hasn't collapsed.
Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears all the rappers, they're doing my dances and they're making billions doing my dances. When they do that little thing they do with their hands that's The Fly and The Pony.
Is letting our children watch TV a form of child abuse? If our children grow up knowing everything about Britney Spears and nothing about nature or faith, about anything, is that not a form of child abuse?
I think pop music, for me as a kid, I hated school and ran home to watch Britney Spears videos. I just felt like I could forget about the stuff I didn't like about my life and listen to pop music and escape.
I just like food too much, and I don't want to change. I spent so much of childhood trying to change, and I just got sick of it... I don't want to look like Britney Spears, I just don't want to. She's hideous.
I try to take elements from all kinds of music. Even if I'm listening to anything off the wall, like Britney Spears, there might be a certain way someone did something, that I can feel, in some hip-hop flavor.
The fact that the public are mesmerised by Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and all these miserable people makes me laugh because those celebrities are more miserable than the people reading about them for escapism.
Klaus from the Teddybears, Bloodshy and Avant and Mike Snow, they've done lots of Britney Spears production. They went backwards from production to being in a band, which might be cool. I might do that, too, one day.
If you write a hit song for Britney Spears, it's worth several million dollars. Just one song! And it might have taken you two hours to do it. It's like mining for gold. It takes a lot of skill and a lot of technique.
We never thought it would be something everyone would listen to. We never thought people who listen to Britney Spears would run to listen to it. It was intended for people on the fanatical side of production and hi-fi.
The pirating thing is bad. The people it hurts the most are the ones you least think it hurts. It's not the big Britney Spears albums that are being pirated; it's the indie bands that don't have two cents to their name.
I grew up on a farm in eastern Tennessee with a very southern lifestyle, so my roots are super country and southern, but my first concert was Britney Spears. I think that you can hear both of those influences in my music.
My dad's quite a conservative person, and he brought me up to be very questioning of the commercial world. He looked down on pop culture. I definitely got the impression that pop was evil and that Britney Spears was evil.
The first CD that I ever bought was 'Britney Spears.' It was at a 7-Eleven and I was like, 'Can I get this?' It was literally her EP and I picked it up and, of course, I fell in love with her. It was an early crush for me.
Part of the reason I fell in love with dance so early was because of people like Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson, and Britney Spears. When they would dance onstage and in their videos, that was huge for me. I lived for that.
You know, I look at Britney Spears who can't even drive without paparazzi in her face, and if I ever get to that level, which I don't expect, but if it does happen and success does happen to come my way, then I'm going to be prepared.
My personal favorite person we worked with in the U.K. is Cathy Dennis, who is absolutely incredible. She wrote 'Can't Get You Out of My Head' for Kylie Minogue and 'Toxic' for Britney Spears, so she's one of my absolute favorite pop writers.
Pop music means everything to me. I've been listening to pop since I was kid, running home from school to watch Britney Spears and Spice Girls and Christina Aguilera music videos, and it felt like it was a world to escape to for me personally.
People don't analyze Britney Spears' lyrics 'cause they're so obvious, you know? And her image is so kind of blah and mainstream that who really wants to read between the lines, because it's all so out there in front of you and boring and white bread.
It's interesting in American culture. We like to build people up and then push them off the pedestal, and then we want to see them come back. Like Britney Spears, and a lot of people, it's what we do, and it's not like that in other parts of the world.
Britney Spears is a big influence. Huge. I think people thought I was joking about that for a long time. But when I was a teenager, there was a genuine connection with this sweet girl who also had this very sexual side that people didn't really want to accept.
I made video art for quite a long time, and I made this video covering myself in burgers and dancing to Major Lazer and doing covers of Britney Spears songs... I can't remember how I got there, but my teacher said he'd have to fail me because it had mild nudity.
My true memory has been tainted by old home videos of my sister and I, ages 3 and 5 respectively, singing karaoke to Britney Spears' 'Lucky' in our living room, and tape recordings of my parents trying to elicit songs out of our throats at a similar or younger age.
If Rihanna stripped it all down morally rather than with her clothes, perhaps we'd get closer to Nina Simone. She's talented, but all we want is to sing the truth. If Britney Spears was to sing closer to her heart, she might have been the new Bobby Gentry or Dolly Parton.
When you grow up in the music industry, trying to be Britney Spears because that's what sells records and then you realize, 'All I have to do is be myself? I should have thought of that a long time ago,' it feels good to have success come from what's actually inside of you.
When I sing along with Britney Spears I will sing in an American accent. But eventually I found my own voice. My songs are so brutally honest, it would be alien to sing in any accent other than my own. Don't get me wrong - I can imitate singers. I can do bar mitzvahs and weddings.
I did a cake for the 60th birthday of Elton John, for Britney Spears' 27th birthday and for the 'Circus' album she put out - the cake had circus themes. I prepared a cake for a surprise 82nd birthday event for the architect Frank Gehry; the cake was comprised of mini-replicas of his buildings.
I remember being in Atlantic City once when I was 18 or 19, and a sea of people were screaming and pulling their hair because I was there. It was weird. Nobody deserves adulation like that. I tried to explain it to my kids once. I said, 'Mommy used to be kind of cool, kind of like a Britney Spears.'
When I'm dealing with Britney Spears and Katy Perry, these massive brands, like, really, very Coca-Cola, you know what I mean? There are certain kinds of standards. There are risks you can take, and there's risks that you don't. And I think I'm interested in taking a little more risk in my own music.
I've worked with all sorts of random people - everybody from Metallica to Britney Spears to Ozzy Osbourne to Michael Jackson to the Beastie Boys. I've got a really strange CV. It's interesting - I work with a lot of these disparate, different people to learn what it's like to work with random people.
I think that if you know people who are performers on stage and actresses or whatever it may be, the bottom line is what you do on stage. You just take on a different persona - that's what makes her so successful. Lights come on, and suddenly, it's Britney Spears, and the lights go off, and she's just Britney.
When I was first starting out in the music industry, I was always coupled in the same sentence with Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera - and I was probably the worst of them. I think a lot of people back then thought, 'Mandy Moore... she'll probably go back to where she came from in a year.'
I do sing in the car. I actually sing Britney Spears songs in the car - me and a close friend of mine. She lives in West Palm and I live in Miami, and when we're going back and forth to see each other, we sing: 'Oh, Baby Baby.' We sing all these 1990s songs. We're like two 14-year-old kids just having a good time.