Sagittarius Season Playlist

Meet the Knight of Wands (IRL) - Britney SPears

conic Sagittarius Sun Britney Spears is our Knight of Wands IRL. On December 2, 1981, she was born in McComb, Mississippi, to Lynne and Jamie Spears. Spears is a Libra Rising with her natal Saturn and Pluto in the 1st House in Libra. She's a 3rd House Sagittarius Sun, with a stellium in that same house and sign containing her Uranus, Mercury, Sun, and Neptune, plus a 6th House Aquarius Moon. Her chart is steeped in air/fire energy, making her the perfect Knight of Wands.

Everyone knows Sagittarius values freedom above all else. Ironically, the very thing that gave Spears the ability to expand and travel is also the thing that's held her captive — her career.

Spears was a born performer. As a child, she routinely performed for company the family had over, and in 1992 she debuted on Star Search. She didn't win, but a few years later she was cast on The All-New Mickey Mouse Club at age 11, alongside other cast members you may know — Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera (a fellow Sagittarius), and Keri Russell.

The Mickey Mouse Club was canceled in 1995, and Spears turned her focus to music, performing in malls and shopping centers, anything for exposure. Then in 1998, she released "...Baby One More Time," which reached number 1 by the end of January 1999. Its popularity surged when the music video dropped, featuring a sixteen-year-old Spears dancing through the halls of a high school in a Catholic school uniform. Somewhat controversial at the time, it was all part of the marketing. Many people believe the record label pushed Spears to adopt the breathy, high-pitched, nasal "baby" voice we know her for today — and watching her at age ten on Star Search, she actually has a very mature voice, not unlike Christina Aguilera's. But there could only be one Christina, who was being marketed heavily as a pop star around the same time, so the theory goes that it was all about differentiation. The record company managed to simultaneously infantilize and sexualize Spears.

Britney led the teen pop wave that followed in the early 2000s. Her albums ...Baby One More Time and Oops!... I Did It Again topped the charts, and she went public with her relationship with Justin Timberlake of *NSYNC, whom she'd been dating since 1998. Throughout their relationship, the media hounded the pair with incredibly personal questions about their sex life (or lack thereof) — they even asked whether Spears had gotten implants. It was wildly inappropriate, and Spears handled it with surprising grace given her age.

As Britney grew up, she wanted to make more mature music, so in 2001 she released Britney, beginning to shed her innocent, childlike image. Around this time, she took a leading role in Crossroads, which didn't do well in theaters but grossed over $60 million and became a cult classic for its unintentional high camp.

Shortly after the film's release, Justin and Britney split. Timberlake publicly revealed that Spears had lost her virginity to him in a radio interview while promoting his solo career launch in 2002, then followed that up by releasing the now-famous revenge track "Cry Me a River" — even casting a Spears look-alike in the video. Having partnered with producer legend Timbaland, his career was taking off; he was the man of the moment, while Spears was slut-shamed and branded a "liar" over her public remarks about being a virgin. She was just trying to protect her privacy. The early 2000s were a deeply misogynistic moment in pop culture.

In 2003, Spears released In the Zone and made waves at the VMAs when she and Christina Aguilera each shared an onstage kiss with Madonna during a performance.

In 2004, Spears began pushing back against her rigid work schedule. She wanted a break — some real freedom — but her parents, manager, and label only pushed her harder. She didn't know a life outside the spotlight where she could simply exist. That year, she had a wild night in Las Vegas (as many young 20-somethings do) and married her childhood friend Jason Alexander; it made headlines everywhere, and the marriage was annulled 48 hours later.

Shortly after the annulment, Spears became involved with one of her backup dancers, Kevin Federline. Britney proposed to him on a transatlantic flight, and the two married only a few months later, drawing even more public scrutiny. Her sales were declining, and yet she seemed happy. In April 2005, the couple welcomed their first child.

The early 2000s were a brutal time for tabloids. Paparazzi went to unreal lengths for a photo of a celebrity doing something mundane, and Perez Hilton's ruthless — and deeply unethical — celebrity blog was on the rise. Spears was a frequent target. In 2006, she drove with her infant son in her lap, and her parenting became the subject of national debate. Spears apologized, explaining she'd been trying to escape the paparazzi to protect her son.

Later that year, Federline and Spears welcomed their second son, and the couple divorced two months later. After the split, Spears was frequently spotted in the club scene alongside fellow party girls Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan — and you can bet Perez Hilton's blog and every tabloid in the world were there to chronicle it. By mid-2006, Federline and Spears were locked in a public custody battle over their children, and Spears had become estranged from her mother, Lynne.

Despite the chaos, she released Blackout later that year. At the 2006 VMAs, her performance was a total disaster, and rumors swirled that she was on drugs. Only days later, she was charged with a hit-and-run in a parking lot.

2007 brought more of the same — Spears was in the headlines daily, constantly criticized for perceived erratic behavior. But recent documentaries have shown what her day-to-day actually looked like back then: she couldn't get a coffee without 50 paparazzi swarming her. Her behavior was a direct response to being suffocated and consumed by the public, though that's not how the tabloids framed it at the time.

That year, everything came to a head (pun not intended). After leaving a rehab facility in Antigua, Britney went to Federline's home asking to see her children. Kevin refused. She then drove to a nearby hair salon and asked the stylist to shave her head; when the stylist refused, she grabbed the clippers and did it herself. More than 70 paparazzi were photographing through the salon windows the entire time, and her security did nothing. This was how she lived, every day.

Shortly after the head-shaving incident, she fought back against paparazzi with an umbrella after they chased her down and refused to give her space. Her father had a conservatorship put in place in 2008 following her public breakdown the year before.

Spears was hospitalized and underwent numerous evaluations and back-to-back psychiatric holds. The conservatorship was initially meant to be temporary, but in October 2008 a judge ruled it permanent, with her father, Jamie Spears, and her attorney, Andrew Wallet, serving as co-conservators. Almost immediately, the star began to change. In the MTV documentary Britney: For the Record, she's quoted as saying, "If I wasn't under the restraints I'm under right now, with all the lawyers and doctors and people analyzing me every day — if that wasn't there, I'd feel so liberated. When I tell them the way I feel, it's like they hear, but they're really not listening … It's like, it's bad. I'm sad."

Britney didn't publicly comment on the conservatorship for nearly a decade. During this time, she staged a major comeback with the albums Circus and Femme Fatale, toured the world, held a residency on the Vegas Strip, and served as a judge on The X Factor. Her father and Andrew Wallet were raking in money off her hard work the entire time, while Jamie controlled nearly every aspect of her life — from her ability to have another child to the cabinet colors in her own home. Britney was given a $2,000 weekly allowance. She was deemed well enough to perform but not well enough to spend her own money or choose her cabinet colors? Something wasn't right.

Around 2019, the Free Britney Movement began to grow. Britney's increasingly cryptic social media presence led many fans to believe she was embedding coded pleas for help in her posts. Around this time, she started actively fighting her 13-year conservatorship. A wave of documentaries helped put eyes on the movement, and with public support, after a two-year battle, the conservatorship was finally lifted.

Spears has since had a lot of public conflict with her family, including her sister, since the conservatorship ended. No one knows whether Spears will return to the stage or the studio now that she's free, but it's safe to say she's more than earned the freedom we all hope she'll enjoy.

Spears was the obvious choice to represent the Knight of Wands. She's a creative and talented powerhouse with a legendary career — 707 total award nominations, with a staggering 378 wins. She's always been passionate, fiery, and in love with love. But she's been taken advantage of by almost everyone close to her, when all she ever wanted was classic Sagittarian freedom.