Britney Spears, the Newly Liberated Princess of Pop

Spears released her first album, … Baby One More Time, in 1999. It sold 25 million copies and turned the former Mickey Mouse Club star into a global phenomenon. But with fame and fortune came scrutiny of her life—and, eventually, public meltdowns. In 2008 a court appointed her once-estranged dad, Jamie, as conservator. The guardianship gave him and other managers control over the singer’s life and finances—even as she hit her 30s and made millions of dollars recording albums and starring in a Las Vegas residency. These developments led observers to question the necessity of the arrangement.

In cryptic Instagram posts, Spears appeared to hint at her discontent. (In May she wrote, “Normalize starting over as many times as you need.”) The #FreeBritney movement, a group of supporters who protested for an end to the conservatorship, saw the posts as cries for help and brought attention to Spears’s plight on social media and outside her court appearances. At the hearing in June, Spears said that she’d been denied a phone, credit card, and passport, and that she’d been prevented from removing an IUD. In August, after a broad public outcry, Jamie said he’d step down, and in late September the judge granted a petition by Spears’s lawyer to have Jamie suspended. (An accountant was named as temporary conservator.) After the same judge ended the arrangement on Nov. 12, Spears tweeted, “Best day ever ... praise the Lord.”