For years, Britney Spears's conservatorship made the live stage she once loved part of the prison her father Jamie Spears built as the conservator of her estate. But now that his tyrannical rule is finally over, Spears is basking in her newfound freedom — and that could mean never returning to the stage ever again.
TMZ has reported that people intimately involved in Spears's touring and music business dealings strongly believe the first female mega pop star of the millennium may no longer perform again. As heartbreaking as it may be for her millions of fans and supporters, Spears's reluctance to return to the stage isn't the least bit surprising. In July, Larry Rudolph, Spears's longtime manager of more than 25 years, resigned from his position. He noted in an email sent to Spears's personal conservator Jodi Montgomery, and Spears's father, that Spears informed him she wanted to take an indefinite hiatus from work when they last communicated more than 2.5 years earlier. The longtime manager's decision to leave seemed to have ultimately been made after learning of Spears's intentions on retiring completely from music.
Weeks after Rudolph's email, Spears let the world know on her Instagram page of her intentions to never perform again as long as her father had control over everything in her life as her estate's conservator. Spears hasn't performed on stage since the conclusion of her Britney: Live in Concert Tour on October 21, 2018, and the trauma she described experiencing around her live performance is more than enough to make retirement feel like freedom. In her brave, scathing testimonial during a court hearing over her conservatorship in June, Spears shared that she informed her management that the Britney: Pieces of Me Las Vegas residency she had been doing for four years had become overwhelming, and she wanted to stop. In response, her therapist accused Spears of being uncooperative and placed her on lithium, which made the star feel inebriated to the point she "couldn't even have a conversation with my mom or dad really about anything."
Days after a Los Angeles judge suspended Jamie Spears as conservator, Britney viewed the court decision as a new lease on life, and not necessarily permission to return to her old one. "Although there is change and things to celebrate in my life, I still have a lot of healing to do. Thankfully I have a good support system and am taking time to understand it's ok to slow down and breathe," Spears wrote in an Instagram post from earlier this month. In another post on Monday, she thanked the loyalists of the #FreeBritney movement for all of their support. If she does decide to never grace the stage again, she'll be living a dream some of the greatest artists of all time never had the privilege of experiencing.
Until his dying day, Michael Jackson hated touring, comparing it to "going through hell" and once cancelling his mega-successful Dangerous Tour in 1993 due to his dependency on painkillers increasing following the controversy surrounding the child molestation allegations lobbied against him in the middle of the tour. Spears's conservatorship could potentially end at a scheduled court hearing in November, but it's not hard to imagine the paparazzi attention and constant swarm of rumors persisting well after that. Her first tour, ...Baby One More Time Tour, occurred in 1999, nine years before she was placed in the oppressive 13-year conservatorship. That means most of the touring history of one of the most internationally revered pop stars of all time happened while under slave-like conditions where she was pushed out on stage as nothing more than a vessel for revenue generation.
While she hasn't herself announced her retirement from the stage, her fans will have to understand seeing Britney happy could mean never seeing her relive the songs that made them fans ever again. And we should all rejoice.
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