Britney Spears signed off on the Once Upon A One More Time musical after her conservatorship ended
Though previously not involved, Spears has given the jukebox musical her approval
Aux News Britney Spears
We’ve known about Once Upon A One More Time—the fairy tale musical featuring the hits of Britney Spears—for a while now, but, weirdly, the story was always that Spears herself was not involved in any way. As far as we knew, Washington D.C.’s Shakespeare Theater Company had decided to put together a female-empowerment take on classic fairy tale princesses, decided to mix in some Britney Spears tracks, and then… spent several years trying to get the musical on its feet. (These things are hard to do.)
But now, in a shocking twist that’s almost as shocking as when the boy gave Britney the Heart Of The Ocean at the end of the “Oops!… I Did It Again” video, the people behind Once Upon A One More Time have revealed that, actually, Spears has been involved for a while and actually signed off on the use of her music after her conservatorship ended in 2021. This comes from The Hollywood Reporter, which says the Shakespeare Theater Company had previously licensed the music through the original songwriters, but the story notes that it was unclear who would’ve had to approve the song use while Spears was under the conservatorship (luckily that’s no longer relevant).
Once Upon A One More Time is set to open on Broadway on June 22, with previews starting this weekend, and producers James L. Nederlander and Hunter Arnold say that—in addition to the show being “fully authorized and licesned by Britney Spears—all of the necessary agreements were made in 2022 after Spears’ conservatorship ended. In other words: Everything is above board. On top of that, Spears supposedly attended an early reading of the show and was very supportive of the whole thing. In other words: It’s all good! Spears is most likely getting some money from this, or at least she was able to make the decision for herself about whether or not her music would be used in this Broadway show, which is great. Good for her.
15 Comments
Hit me one more time with the royalty cheques!
Good for Britney! She’s innocent until proven guilty and baby steps are acceptable.
Sounds absolutely awful.
Good on her. I hope she makes bank.
Why is Britney Spears iconic in a way that, say, her usual comparator Christina Aguilera never was? I’m curious. Discuss:
Christina’s catalog was never as consistently good as Britney’s nor was she the same caliber of show(wo)man that Britney was/is.
Plus Christina was, for many years, known to be notoriously difficult to work with and pretty maligned by a lot of industry folks.
Christina may have had the voice, but she didn’t have the overall market bank-ability
I would suggest that Christina’s repeated reinventions – remember the short-lived Drrrty era? – made it harder to attach an identity to her. Britney, on the other hand, has always been Britney.Also, never underestimate the power of being identifiable by just one name.
See Madonna and Cyndi Lauper
Unfair comparison. I’ve never heard anyone disparage Lauper.
the comparison is the same, why did the less talented singer become more famous and popularas for disparaging Lauper… Google it, Cyndi has a dreadful reputation of being difficult to work with.
Chuck Klosterman has a good essay on Britney from back in the day. I can’t remember a lot of it but a basic point is that she was either a genius or had a borderline learning disability given how insistent she was on not making any effort to promote her sexuality while simultaneously promoting it to the hilt, again consciously or unconsciously.
Does she have kind of a Judy Garland vibe going on now?
Serious question, how is Spears profiting if she didn’t write the songs?
They’re probably paying to use her name, but they will also have to pay Max Martin and the other songwriters to use the music.
She always looks like she’s just woke up from a long winter’s nap.