Britney Spears is finally freed from the shackles of the conservatorship that Jamie Spears imposed on her. The pop princess’ life was completely under the control of her father, which has sent her into mental exhaustion. In 2021, the court abolished the singer’s conservatorship after her heart-wrenching testimonial. But, during and after her conservatorship, many news and media outlets tried to capitalize on her pain.
Many reputed media houses tried to control her narrative through filtered storytelling of the life of a globe-trotting pop star. The New York Times released ‘Controlling Britney Spears’ in 2021. Recently, Britney heavily criticized TMZ’s ‘Britney Spears: The Price of Freedom’ documentary. But the ‘Outrageous’ singer is now taking charge of her life and preventing any media from taking advantage of her story. Broadway has debuted a musical, ‘Once Upon A One More Time,’ based on Britney’s discography, which she greenlit.
Britney Spears Approached The Producers Of ‘Once Upon A One More Time’ To Produce A Musical
On June 22nd, 2023, Producers James Nederlander and Hunter Arnold debuted a musical based on Britney Spears’ hit ‘Once Upon A Time.’ It is a fictional story about Cinderella finding Betty Friedan’s ‘The Feminine Mystique’ when her Prince Charming is controlling her life.
After finding the book, she shares her wisdom with other princesses like Snow White, the Little Mermaid, Princess Pea, and others. When they confront Prince Charming and Cinderella’s stepmother, the princesses perform Britney’s timeless hits.
Hunter Arnold sat down with Variety to talk about the musical and how Spears approached them for it. Hunter said, “It was actually Britney who approached us and said, ‘We’d like to have a show based on my music, and specifically not a bio-musical.'”
He continued, “The original idea came from ideas brought forth by her: She loves fairytales, princesses, storybooks. We took a couple of passes at it — we didn’t get it right instantly. Then we did a workshop after we got the current-ish version together, and she came to see it and give thoughts on it.”
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The Singer’s Team Gave Liberty To Tweak Lyrics Of Her Songs
‘Once Upon A One More Time’ has incorporated many hits by Britney Spears to tell the tale. But two of her songs— ‘Baby One More Time’ and ‘Oops… I Did It Again’—are the centerpieces. It may have been difficult for the team to infuse these hits with originality. However, Britney and her team allowed them to tweak the lyrics of the songs.
Hunter Arnold continued, “The songs work way better than they have any right to work. Most importantly, Britney and her team gave us pretty liberal ability to shift lyrics here and there to make sure things didn’t feel clunky but purposeful. You don’t want to change too much because this is music that everyone on Earth loves; it’s a half art, half science to make sure everything fits where it is.”
He added, “Some songs that were big numbers of hers, there weren’t places to fit. Outside of the megahits, there was no expectation that every song would be in it. They gave our creative team freedom to do what makes the show make sense.”
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