Britney Spears has shut down the rumor that she is working on a new album in a candid Instagram post where she declares she will “never return to the music industry.”
The pop singer was seemingly responding to reports that surfaced early Wednesday morning on Page Six about Spears potentially tapping Charli XCX and writer Julia Michaels for an unannounced record — what would be her first in nearly a decade. The report claimed Spears had not recorded any new material yet, “as the project is only starting to take shape.”
“They keep saying I’m turning to random people to do a new album … I will never return to the music industry,” Spears wrote in the caption to an Instagram post of the Italian Renaissance painting “Salome Bearing the Head of St. John the Baptist.”
She continued, “When I write, I write for fun or I write for other people !!! For those of you who have read my book, there’s loads that you don’t know about me … I’ve written over 20 songs for other people the past two years !!!”
Michaels and Spears have worked together in the past, although the nature of their collaborative relationship is unknown. Michaels is credited as a writer on Spears’ “Slumber Party,” a song that appeared on her last studio album, “Glory” (2016). It was also co-written by Mattias Larsson, Robin Fredriksson and Justin Tranter.
Spears went on to call herself a “ghostwriter,” meaning she writes for other artists without attaching her name to the projects, and said she “honestly [prefers] it that way.”
She also addressed comments that claimed her book, “The Woman in Me,” was released without her approval. The book was a national bestseller, with over 1.1 million copies sold in its first week across print, pre-sales, e-books and audiobooks.
In a review for Variety, Stephen Rodrick described Spears’s memoir as a lesson about the way the media destroys young, successful women, writing, “Talk show hosts and paps have expressed regret that they turned the Princess of Pop into a hunted animal, and the object of scorn. We talk about how we all have learned our lesson. Don’t bet on it.”
“That’s far from the truth,” Spears wrote at the end of her Instagram post. “Have you read the news these days ??? I’m so loved and blessed.”