Britney Takes "Zone" on Road

Britney Spears hopes to keep the momentum of her fourth album, In the Zone, going into 2004, as the pop princess has lined up dates for a North American tour to kick off this spring.

The tour begins on March 2nd in San Diego. Twenty-five dates have been set so far, with the tour wrapping on either April 10th or 12th in New York City.

Zone splashed onto the charts last week at Number One, Spears' fourth straight chart topper. The album slipped to Number Three this week, but in two weeks it has sold 860,000 copies. While that figure is strong, it pales in comparison to the 1.3 million first week sales for Oops! . . . I Did It Again in 2000. But Spears seems comfortable having traded teen pop for more grown-up, dance-oriented fare.

"Of course, I'm not doing '. . . Baby One More Time' and those big, massive hits anymore," she said earlier this year. "I think this record is where I'm at right now in my life. It's sensual, it's sexual. I'm probably writing about [sex] subconsciously because I don't have that right now."

Britney Spears tour dates (venues TBA):

3/2: San Diego
3/3: Phoenix
3/5: Fresno, CA
3/6: Las Vegas
3/8: Los Angeles
3/9: Oakland
3/11: Portland, OR
3/12: Seattle
3/15: Denver
3/17: Omaha
3/18: Moline, IL
3/19: Chicago
3/21: Detroit
3/23: Atlanta
3/24: Columbia, SC
3/25: Jacksonville, FL
3/28: Miami
3/29: Orlando
3/31: Philadelphia
4/1: Cleveland
4/3: Toronto
4/4: Montreal
4/6: Manchester, NH
4/8: Providence, RI
4/12: New York

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Song Stories

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell | 1974

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.

More Song Stories entries »

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