Waiting for Britney Spears

A gonzo account of Britney Spears's meteoric rise and almost equally iconic fall, from Jeff Weiss, LA's Hunter S. Thompson.

America, 2003: A country at war, its shiny veneer beginning to crack. Von Dutch and The Simple Life dominate. And on the cover of every magazine, a twenty-two-year-old pop star named Britney Spears. Tracking her every move for a third-tier gossip rag in Los Angeles is a young writer named Jeff Weiss, who took whatever job he could to pursue his dream of being a "serious" writer. He'd instead become a firsthand witness to the slow tragedy of a changing nation, represented in spirit by "the coy it-girl at the end of history."

Years later, after finally making it as a celebrated cultural critic, Weiss presents Waiting for Britney Spears, a gonzo, nostalgic, and mostly true recounting of Britney's rise and fall during his years in the tabloid underbelly of Los Angeles. Weiss follows America's sweetheart through Vegas superclubs and Malibu car chases, annulled marriages and soul-crushing legal battles, all the way to Britney's infamous 2005 VMA performance. As Weiss lives through the years leading to Britney's conservatorship, he observes, with peerless style, cringe-inducing fashion waves, a destructive culture of celebrity surveillance, and a country whose decline is embodied by the devastating downturn of its former golden child.

With the narrative flair that established him as a singular chronicler of modern pop culture, Weiss goes for broke in Waiting for Britney Spears, a roaring Künstlerroman of celebrity, obsession, morality, and the last great pop star.