LeAnn Rimes believes she has a lot in common with pop star Britney Spears. In a new interview published Sunday, the country music artist spoke about the similarities of their life stories.
“I saw the Britney Spears documentary and was thinking, like, all these people that make money out of her and she has nothing to do with it,” Rimes told the Times of London. “It’s just soul-sucking. That poor girl. That poor woman, really.”
Rimes, who rose to fame in 1996 with the release of her song “Blue” when she was 13 years old, went on to explain that child stars get “locked into a certain age” when it comes to public perception. “I was America’s sweetheart,” she said. “People didn’t want to see me grow up and explore my sexuality.”
In 2000, when she was 17, Rimes sued her father and manager, Wilbur, whom she accused of stealing millions of dollars from her. (In 2002, Rimes’ lawsuit with her father was reportedly settled on undisclosed terms.)
“Looking back, I think my dad did the best that he could,” said Rimes. “Parents managing a child is always a recipe for disaster. For me it became a business and I ended up not having parents.”
Spears released her debut single, “…Baby One More Time” in 1998 when she was 17 years old. Her father, Jamie Spears, was her manager and infamously placed her under a conservatorship in 2008, which legally granted him control over her life and finances. Spears now claims Jamie, alongside her former management company, took around $24 million from her while she was under the conservatorship, which was terminated in 2021. She has now cut ties with many of her family members, which she detailed in her revealing new memoir The Woman in Me.
“I think back now on my father and his associates having control over my body and my money for that long and it makes me feel sick,” Spears wrote. “Think of how many male artists gambled all their money away; how many had substance abuse or mental health issues. No one tried to take away their control over their bodies and money. I didn’t deserve what my family did to me.”
Today, Rimes believes she’s just now stepped into her womanhood within the last five years: “Learning to say no was probably the best thing in the world. I started to realize how disappointed I felt in myself when I did things that I just didn’t want to do.”