Spears was only 17 when she reached #1 on the U.S. pop music charts with her 1999 debut album ...Baby One More Time. Her catchy tunes and hubba-hubba physique made Spears one of America's biggest pop stars, and she became a near-constant presence on MTV, radio broadcasts and magazine covers around the world. Spears had an early head start on teen stardom: she was in the cast of the Disney Channel's The Mickey Mouse Club during its 1993 and 1994 seasons. (Future pop stars Christina Aguilera, and Justin Timberlake and J.C. Chasez of the band 'N Sync got their starts on the same show. Spears and Timberlake were romantically linked on and off from 2000-2003.) Spears's second album, Oops!...I Did It Again was released in May of 2000 and went gold in its first week. In 2003 she released her third album, In the Zone. She also starred in the 2002 teen road-trip film Crossroads.

Spears married Kevin Federline, a professional dancer, in 2004. The ceremony was held on 18 September, but papers formalizing the wedding weren't filed until October 7th. It was the first marriage for Federline, who previously fathered two children with Moesha star Shar Jackson... Spears and Federline had their first child, a son named Sean Preston Federline, on 14 September 2005.