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Britney Spears has said she will "never return to the music industry" after rumours she was planning a return to the studio surfaced last week.
The pop star was responding to claims in the US media that she was lining up songwriters for a 10th studio album.
"Just so we're clear, most of the news is trash!!!" the singer wrote on Instagram.
"They keep saying I'm turning to random people to do a new album … I will never return to the music industry!!!"
Some outlets had suggested that Julia Michaels and Charlie XCX had been tapped up as collaborators.
But Spears added that she only wrote music for fun and revealed that she had written more than 20 songs for other people over the past two years.
"I'm a ghostwriter, and I honestly enjoy it that way!!!" wrote the singer, known for hits including Baby One More Time, Oops!... I Did It Again and Toxic.
The Woman in Me
Guido Reni's Renaissance masterpiece Salome Bearing the Head of St John the Baptist accompanies the post.
Spears released her first new album after being liberated from a conservatorship that governed practically every area of her life in August 2022.
Spears' comeback to music after a six-year absence was marked with Hold Me Closer, a duet with Sir Elton John.
Fans have been clamouring for her to return to music, and while she has previously intimated that she is apprehensive of doing so, this is the first time she has completely ruled it out.
She released her memoir, The Woman in Me, last year, detailing her time under conservatorship and revealing she had a medical abortion while dating Justin Timberlake
The artist wrote then: "Pushing forward in my music career is not my focus at the moment.
She added it's time for her not to be someone other people want; it's time to find herself.
BRIEF HISTORY OF BRITNEY SPEARS
Britney Jean Spears, also known as the "Princess of Pop," is an American singer and songwriter who has influenced the revival of teen pop during the late 1990s and early 2000s. With over 150 million records sold worldwide, she has earned numerous awards and accolades, including a Grammy Award, 15 Guinness world records, six MTV Video Music Awards, seven Billboard Music Awards, the inaugural Radio Disney Icon Award, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Spears signed with Jive Records in 1997 at age fifteen and released her first two studio albums,...Baby One More Time (1999) and Oops!... I Did It Again (2000), which are among the best-selling albums of all time. She later adopted a more mature and provocative style for her albums Britney (2001) and In the Zone (2003), and starred in the 2002 film Crossroads.
Spears was executive producer of her fifth studio album, Blackout (2007), but faced personal problems leading to limited promotion and being placed in a conservatorship. She released chart-topping albums, Circus (2008) and Femme Fatale (2011), and became the second artist after Mariah Carey in the Billboard Hot 100's history to debut at number one with two or more songs.
In 2019, Spears's legal battle over her conservatorship led to the establishment of the #FreeBritney movement. In 2021, the conservatorship was terminated following her public testimony accusing her management team and family of abuse.
In the United States, Spears is the fourth best-selling female album artist of the Nielsen SoundScan era and the best-selling female album artist of the 2000s. She was ranked by Billboard as the eighth-biggest artist of the 2000s and has had six number-one albums on the Billboard 200 and five number-one singles on the US Billboard Hot 100.
