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 Christian values and beliefs, and teachers issued guidance such as: ‘Thank God for all your many blessings. He gave you a brain and expects you to use it!’ or ‘Give God your best and he will help with the rest’. For Britney, such teachings merely mirrored her mama’s beliefs. Already she had learned the power of the Lord at home and so it wasn’t surprising for her when each school day started with a Bible reading and prayer.
There was nothing particularly extraordinary about the young Britney. She happily joined in with others and had a healthy number of friends. Always diligent with her homework, she kept her textbooks immaculate and non-creased. Her recreations outside school—aside from singing, dancing and gymnastics—revolved around go-karting and basketball.
The dirt tracks and sprawling plains is where Britney, like every other child in the area, could be found bombing about in her own motorised go-kart buggy. Where most people grew up riding bicycles, most kids in Kentwood had go-karts or ATV quad-bikes, zipping around the community in little packs.
‘She’d join all the kids out in their go-karts, seeing how fast she could go and how much mud she could get on her!’ recalls Aunty Chanda.
The family would often convene at Jamie and Lynne’s for two reasons: first, Jamie was known for cooking up a mean crawfish boil party and second, whenever bad storms knocked out the electricity, they were the only ones with a generator. But on Sundays after church service, it became a family tradition in Britney’s early years for everyone to visit the home of Jamie’s dad, Papa June, who built his all-wood property with his own hands. He had a reputation in the area for tearing down old houses and ‘making ’em beautiful’.
It resembled an afternoon at the Waltons when the Spears and the Bridges, and all their children, gathered around a wooden, oval table for early Sunday dinner. When the meal was finished and the plates cleaned, everyone knew the routine: Papa June would make little Britney climb onto the table and sing his favourite song, ‘Amazing Grace’.
‘I can see her now,’ recalls Aunty Chanda, ‘stood in the middle of that table, singing just beautifully, and everyone was woo-hooing. Then she’d climb down and run outside to play’
Another place to find Britney was the local basketball court on summer evenings. She played point guard for her school team, wearing the No. 25 shirt: ‘I loved it,’ she said, ‘I could play basketball all night long, but would have to be up in the morning to help out at Granny’s Deli.’
Lexie Pierce, Britney’s great-grandmother, ran the deli. The place is now a lawyer’s office and she has since passed away but Britney turned up at 9am on weekends, eager to work, shelling crawfish and crabs before manning the cash register and cleaning tables. Locals can still visualise her to this day: expert at shelling, singing while she worked, and her hands in a bucket of crawfish, pulling off the legs and heads, preparing them. There was great demand for Granny’s crawfish and Britney was the eager assistant.
She was meticulous in everything she did, not just preparing crawfish and performing. Within the home, she strived for perfection, too. She made her own bed and kept her little bedroom pristine by folding and stacking clothes into neat piles. Her school uniform was laid out on her day bed for the next day and she organised her doll collection into well-ordered groups. These twelve collectibles were a prized and well-groomed gathering of pale-faced porcelain dolls, vintage looking with blonde, Annie-style ringlets and sparkling glass eyes. Lynne bought her one each birthday for twelve years. She