Britney Spears: The Complete Photo Timeline and Cover Stories

In the current cover story, Vanessa Grigoriadis examines the tragedy of Britney Spears, a star whose downward trajectory from chart-topping international superstar to hospitalized object of curiosity is more stunning considering how high Spears' career soared just a few short years ago, and how quickly she careened out of control. To illustrate the evolution of Spears from child star to teen-pop sensation to paparazzi magnet, Rock Daily has assembled a photo timeline of her life and posted her six previous Rolling Stone cover stories from April 15, 1999, May 25, 2000, September 13, 2001, December 6/13, 2001, October 3, 2002 and October 2, 2003. To watch all twenty-four of Spears' music videos, click here.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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