Author Talk

America, 2003: A country at war, its shiny veneer beginning to crack. Von Dutch and The Simple Life dominate. And on the cover of every magazine, a twenty-one-year-old pop star named Britney Spears. Tracking her every move for a third-tier gossip rag in Los Angeles was an unknown young writer taking whatever job he could while pursuing his distant literary dreams. He'd instead become an eyewitness to the slow tragedy of a changing nation, represented in spirit by “the coy it-girl at the end of history.”

Years later, after finally establishing himself as a celebrated journalist, Jeff Weiss presents Waiting for Britney Spears, a gonzo, nostalgic, and “allegedly true” recounting of his years as a tabloid spy in the lurid underbelly of Los Angeles. Weiss follows America’s sweetheart through Vegas superclubs and Malibu car chases, annulled marriages and soul-crushing legal battles, all the way to Britney’s infamous 2007 VMA performance. As Weiss lives through the chaos leading to Britney’s conservatorship, he observes, with peerless style, cringe-inducing fashion waves, destructive celebrity surveillance, and a country whose decline is embodied by the devastating downturn of its former golden child.

With the narrative flair that established him as a singular chronicler of modern pop culture, Weiss goes for broke in Waiting for Britney Spears, a descent into a neon hall of mirrors reflecting our obsession with fame, morality, and the mystery of what really happened to the last great pop star.

Jeff Weiss is a music writer and cultural critic whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, FADER, and many other outlets. A former columnist for LA Weekly, he is the cofounder of The LAnd magazine and the founder of the pioneering hip-hop blog Passion of the Weiss, along with its record label, POW Recordings. He lives in Los Angeles.

Chris Richards is a writer living in Silver Spring, Maryland. He has been The Washington Post’s pop music critic since 2009, and his work has also appeared in various underground publications, including his self-published zine, Debussy Ringtone. He played in the post-harDCore band Q and Not U among other groups.

Timothy Denevi’s most recent book is Freak Kingdom: Hunter S. Thompson's Manic Ten-Year Crusade Against American Fascism. He is also the author of Hyper, a cultural and personal history of ADHD. His essays on politics, sport, and religion have recently appeared in The New York Times, Salon, New York magazine, CNN.com, The Atlantic, County Highway, Tablet, and Time. He is an associate professor in the MFA program at George Mason University, where he teaches nonfiction.