The pop icon will bring her bag of tricks to Tel Aviv.
By ERICA SCHACHNEBritney Spears(photo credit: PR)
Excitement is mounting as pop phenomenon Britney Spears is set to appear in Israel for the first time. The July 3 concert at Hayarkon Park in Tel Aviv will showcase the multi-platinum, Grammy-winning star’s infectious tunes, snappy dance moves and sexy, inventive costumes.Raised in small-town Louisiana, Spears began her rise to fame at age 10 on The Mickey Mouse Club TV show, appearing alongside future boyfriend Justin Timberlake and future sometime-competitor Christina Aguilera. Her pivotal year was 1999, when she exploded on the scene as a teen with the international smash album (and title track) Baby One More Time, replete with a video featuring Spears in a now-iconic schoolgirl uniform.Spears continued her rise with bestselling albums like Oops!... I Did It Again (giving us a title-track video that spotlighted a spaceage Britney clothed in an otherworldly red leather jumpsuit and another huge hit in “(You Drive Me) Crazy”) and In the Zone (which gave us “Toxic”).Adapting her style from the more bubble-gum, clean teen to the temptress who famously draped herself with a live python at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards (while performing “I’m a Slave 4 U”) and kissed Madonna at the 2003 show (as did fellow Mouseketeer Aguilera), she cemented her status as a popculture fixture.But fame took its toll, and Spears began to become better known for her antics: an ill-fated 2004 marriage to back-up dancer Kevin Federline (which spawned a reality show), nights out with starlet Paris Hilton, a one-day stay in drug rehab and meltdowns throughout 2006-2007 that saw her flashing paparazzi and shaving her head. Fans feared she was going down a road that would end in a breakdown, overdose or worse.Taking a step back under the conservatorship of her father, Jamie, her comeback was sealed with her 2008 album Circus (in which the singer called out guys with roving eyes in “Womanizer”). Embracing motherhood (to her two sons with Federline), she appeared for two seasons as a (highly paid) judge on the US version of The X Factor. More recent hits have included “Hold It Against Me” and “Criminal.”In 2013 Spears began a fouryear residency show, Britney: Piece of Me, at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas. This past March, she announced that the show would be performed abroad as a world tour, Britney: Live in Concert. In addition to Israel, the tour is scheduled to visit Japan and the Philippines.Tickets don’t come cheap, but that doubtless won’t daunt the many Israelis who will go to see the spectacle that is Britney and join her circus.Britney Spears will perform on July 3 at Hayarkon Park in Tel Aviv.