Britney Spears is revisiting some of her most controversial moments. Spears revealed in her new memoir, The Woman Inside Me , that she was pressured by her team to perform at the 2007 Video Music Awards.
A subsequent performance of "Gimme More" caused a backlash at the time, which she attributed to all the issues that arose in the days leading up to the ceremony.
"I was supposed to perform 'Gimme More' at the VMAs to help promote it," she wrote. "I didn't want to, but my team was putting pressure on me to go out there and show the world that I was fine. The only problem with this program was: I wasn't in good shape."
At the time, Spears was going through a divorce from Kevin Federline and was distraught over not being able to see her two sons, Sean Preston and Jayden James, who were less than 2 years old at the time.
She decided to push through, but "everything went wrong" backstage at the awards show - and she had to deal with snarky comments about her body.
Preparation before the performance
"I have issues with my outfit and my hair extensions," she wrote. "I didn't sleep the night before. I was dizzy. It's been less than a year since I gave birth to my second child in two years, but everyone was acting like it was offensive that I didn't have a six-pack. I couldn't believe I I have to go on stage with my feelings.”
But meeting her ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake for the first time since their breakup gave her a scare beforehand.
“Everything was going right in his world,” she recalled. "He was at the top of his game in every way, and he was so cocky. I had a panic attack. I didn't rehearse enough. I hated the way I looked. I knew it was going to be bad."
Spears said she was "doing the best she could during that time," while admitting that overall she was "far from her best." However, what she couldn't let go of was the huge criticism that followed.
"I'm not going to defend that performance or say it was good, but I will say that as performers we all have bad nights," she wrote. "They don't usually have such extreme consequences."
'Extreme' VMA strongly opposes
Spears recalled that in the weeks following her VMA performance, she experienced a huge wave of backlash, from jokes about her body to her mental health. Things started when comedian Sarah Silverman mocked Spears on stage.
"She said that at 25, I had done everything worthwhile in my life," she wrote. "She called both of my kids 'the cutest mistakes you've ever seen.'"
In 2021, Silverman said that MTV asked her to "little bitch" about Spears after the performance, but she had not seen it beforehand and expressed regret for her bitch. "I wish I could delete it but I can't," she wrote on the X.
But things didn't stop there. Spears recalled magazine headlines commenting on her body, with Dr. Phil calling the performance "a disaster."
Critics used the performance to question her mental health and parenting skills, which influenced an interview she did for her 2007 album Blackout , in which she said Ryan Seacrest asked her Parenting issues, not albums.
"It feels like this is the only thing people want to talk about: whether I'm a suitable mother," she wrote. "It's not about how I made such a powerful album while holding two babies on my hip and being chased by dozens of dangerous men every day."
