Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:The new Taylor Swift album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” and Swift’s “imperial era”How the album addresses her rumored relationship with Matty Healy of the 1975A possible face-off between this album and Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” at next year’s GrammysThe Tortured Poets Department” as a detailed recitation of Swift’s life over the past two yearsThe production choices of Jack Antonoff and Aaron DessnerHow the album alludes to the work of the 1975 and HealySwift’s resentfulness streakSongs of the week from Drake featuring A.I. versions of “Tupac” and “Snoop Dogg,” plus Mozzy and Odetari featuring Ayesha EroticaSnack of the weekConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

In a 23-minute speech, the singer said she desperately wants to end her conservatorship, calling it an abusive system in which she was drugged and forced to work against her will.In February 2008, a California judge placed Britney Spears in a conservatorship, a legal arrangement that granted oversight of her personal life and finances to her once-estranged father, James P. Spears, amid concerns around her mental health and potential substance abuse. In court on Wednesday, Ms. Spears addressed the judge and the public in an emotional 23-minute statement detailing what she described as mistreatment under the conservatorship, and emphatically asked for it to end.Here is a transcript of her full speech, with annotations.They’ve done a good job at exploiting my life and the way that they’ve done my life, so I feel like it should be an open court hearing and they should listen and hear what I have to say.Ms. Spears had previously stayed largely silent on the conservatorship in public. But from the start of her statement on Wednesday, it was clear that she was ready to change the narrative about her life under its control.OK, well, I just got a new phone, so bear with me. OK, so I have this written down, I have a lot to say, so bear with me. Basically, a lot has happened since two years ago, the last time — I wrote all this down — the last time I was in court. I will be honest with you, I haven’t been back to court in a long time because I don’t think I was heard on any level when I came to court the last time. I brought four sheets of paper in my hands and wrote in length what I had been through the last four months before I came there. The people who did that to me should not be able to walk away so easily. I’ll recap: I was on tour in 2018 I was forced to do. My management said if I don’t do this tour, I’ll have to —JUDGE BRENDA PENNY: Ms. Spears, Ms. Spears? I hate to interrupt you, but my court reporter is taking down what you’re saying, and so you have to speak a little more slowly —The last time Ms. Spears addressed the court was at a closed-door hearing in 2019. She told the court that she had felt forced by the conservatorship into a stay at a mental health facility and to perform against her will.Oh, of course, yes. OK, I apologize, great. The people who did this to me should not get away and to be able to walk away so easily. To recap: I was on tour in 2018. I was forced to do. My management said if I don’t do this tour, I will have to find an attorney, and, by contract, my own management could sue me if I didn’t follow through with the tour. He handed me a sheet of paper as I got off the stage in Vegas and said I had to sign it. It was very threatening and scary and, with the conservatorship, I couldn’t even get my own attorney. So, out of fear, I went ahead and I did the tour.When I came off that tour, a new show in Las Vegas was supposed to take place. I started rehearsing early, but it was hard because I’d been doing Vegas for four years and I needed a break in between. But no, I was told, “This is the timeline, and this is how it’s going to go.” I rehearsed four days a week, half of the time in the studio and half of the other time in a Westlake studio. I was basically directing most of the show — with my whereabouts, where I preferred to rehearse — and actually did most of the choreography, meaning I taught my dancers my new choreography myself. I take everything I do very seriously; there’s tons of video with me at rehearsals. I wasn’t good; I was great. I led a room of 16 new dancers in rehearsals.Fans gathered outside of a Los Angeles courthouse to support the pop star.Etienne Laurent/EPA, via ShutterstockThe new Las Vegas show was supposed to begin in February 2019. But a month before the opening, Ms. Spears canceled, and announced an “indefinite work hiatus.” Her statement at the time said that her father, known as Jamie, had “almost died” after suffering a ruptured colon.It’s funny to hear my managers’ side of the story. They all said I wasn’t participating in rehearsals and I never agreed to take my medication, which, my medication is only taken in the mornings, never at rehearsal. They don’t even see me, so why are they even claiming that? When I said no to one dance move into rehearsals, it was as if I planted a huge bomb somewhere. And I said no, I don’t want to do it this way.After that, my management and my dancers and my assistant of the new people that were supposed to do the new show all went into a room, shut the door and didn’t come out for at least 45 minutes. Ma’am, I’m not here to be anyone’s slave. I can say no to a dance move. I was told by my at-the-time therapist — Dr. Benson, who died — that my manager called him in that moment and told him that I wasn’t cooperating or following the guidelines in rehearsals. And he also said I wasn’t taking my medication, which is so dumb because I’ve had the same lady every morning for the past eight years give me my same medication, and I’m nowhere near these stupid people. It made no sense at all.There was a week period where they were nice to me and I told them, I don’t want to do the — no wait — they were nice to me, they said if I don’t want to do the new Vegas show, I don’t have to because I was getting really nervous. I said I can wait — it was like they told me I could wait. It was like lifting literally 200 pounds off of me when they said I don’t have to do the show anymore, because it was really, really hard on myself and it was too much. I couldn’t take it anymore.In January 2019, Ms. Spears tweeted that pulling out of the residency “breaks my heart” but that “it’s important to always put your family first.” In court, she revealed that trouble arose behind the scenes when she had a disagreement over a dance move, and believes she was punished as a result of speaking up.So I remember telling my assistant, but “you know what, I feel weird if I say no, I feel like they’re going to come back and be mean to me or punish me or something.” Three days later, after I said no to Vegas, my therapist sat me down in a room and said that he had a million phone calls about how I was not cooperating in rehearsals, and I haven’t been taking my medication. All this was false.He immediately, the next day, put me on lithium, out of nowhere. He took me off my normal meds I’ve been on for five years, and lithium is a very, very strong and completely different medication compared to what I was used to. You can go mentally impaired if you take too much, if you stay on it longer than five months. But he put me on that, and I felt drunk. I really couldn’t even take up for myself. I couldn’t even have a conversation with my mom or dad really about anything. I told them I was scared and my doctor had me on — six different nurses with this new medication come to my home, stay with me to monitor me on this new medication, which I never wanted to be on to begin with. There were six different nurses in my home and they wouldn’t let me get in my car to go anywhere for a month.Not only did my family not do a goddamn thing, my dad was all for it. Anything that happened to me had to be approved by my dad, and my dad only. He acted like he didn’t know, but I was told I had to be tested over the Christmas holidays before they sent me away when my kids went home to Louisiana. He was the one who approved all of it. My whole family did nothing.Ms. Spears asserted that the disagreement in rehearsals led to her being medicated against her will. The public has long speculated about the singer’s mental health, but a diagnosis that led to the conservatorship has not been disclosed. Lithium is a mood stabilizer that is used to treat mood cycling, which is a symptom of bipolar disorder. Ms. Spears made clear that lithium was not her regularly prescribed medication.Over the two-week holiday, a lady came into my home for four hours a day, sat me down and did a psych test on me. It took forever. But I was told I had to. Then, after I got a phone call from my dad saying, after I did the psych test with this lady, basically saying I’d failed the test or whatever. “I’m sorry, Britney, you have to listen to your doctors. They’re planning to send you to a small home in Beverly Hills to do a small rehab program that we’re going to make up for you. You’re going to pay $60,000 a month for this.”I cried on the phone for an hour and he loved every minute of it. The control he had over someone as powerful as me — he loved the control, to hurt his own daughter, one hundred, thousand percent. He loved it. I packed my bags and went to that place. I worked seven days a week, no days off, which in California the only similar thing to this is called sex trafficking, making anyone work, work against their will, taking all their possessions away — credit card, cash, phone, passport card — and placing them in a home where they work with the people who live with them. They all lived in the house with me — the nurses, the 24-7 security. There was one chef that came there and cooked for me daily, during the weekdays. They watched me change every day — naked — morning, noon, and night. My body — I had no privacy door for my room, I gave eight gals of blood a week.If I didn’t do any of my meetings and work from eight to six at night, which is 10 hours a day, seven days a week, no days off, I wouldn’t be able to see my kids or my boyfriend. I never had a say in my schedule; they always told me I had to do this. And ma’am, I will tell you, sitting in a chair 10 hours a day, seven days a week, it ain’t fun. And especially when you can’t walk out the front door.And that’s why I’m telling you this again two years later. After I’ve lied and told the whole world “I’m OK, and I’m happy.” It’s a lie. I thought I just maybe I said that enough maybe I might become happy. Because I’ve been in denial. I’ve been in shock. I am traumatized. You know, fake it till you make it. But now I’m telling you the truth, OK? I’m not happy. I can’t sleep. I’m so angry it’s insane, and I’m depressed. I cry every day.Ms. Spears’s speech was the first time that the world had heard the singer address in detail her struggles with the conservatorship granted to her father, James P. Spears, in 2008.Gabriel Bouys/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFor years, Ms. Spears’s Instagram account has been her primary means of sharing her life with the public. It portrays her as joyful and carefree via videos of her dancing in her home, spending time with her boyfriend and posing at the beach. In court, she revealed the turmoil behind the veneer.And the reason I’m telling you this is because I don’t think how the state of California can have all this written in the court documents from the time I showed up and do absolutely nothing — just hire, with my money, another person, and keep my dad on board. Ma’am, my dad, and anyone involved in this conservatorship and my management, who played a huge role in punishing me when I said no — ma’am, they should be in jail. Their cruel tactics working for Miley Cyrus — she smokes on joints onstage at the VMAs — nothing is ever done to this generation for doing wrong things.But my precious body, who was worked for my dad for the past [expletive] 13 years, trying to be so good and pretty, so perfect when he works me so hard, when I do everything I’m told and the state of California allowed — my ignorant father — to take his own daughter, who only has a role with me, if I work with him, they set back the whole course and allowed him to do that to me? That’s giving these people I’ve worked for way too much control. They also threatened me and said if I don’t go, then I have to go to court and it will be more embarrassing me if the judge publicly makes go the evidence we’ve had, you have to go.I was advised for my image, I need to go ahead and just go and get it over with. They said that to me. I don’t even drink alcohol — I should drink alcohol considering what they put my heart through. Also the Bridges facility they sent me to — none of the kids — I was doing this program for four months, so the last two months I went to a Bridges facility — none of the kids there did the program. They never showed up for any of them. You didn’t have to do anything if you didn’t want to. How come they always made me go? How come I was always threatened by my dad and anybody that participated in this conservatorship — if I don’t do this, what they tell me to enslave me to do, they’re going to punish me.Ms. Spears sought to draw a contrast between the way other young pop stars are viewed after acting out in public and her own life under the conservatorship. Several times, she said her conservators should be punished or sued for the ways they exerted control over her.The last time I spoke to you by just keeping the conservatorship going and also keeping my dad in the loop made me feel like I was dead. Like I didn’t matter, like nothing had been done to me, like you thought I was lying or something. I’m telling you again because I’m not lying. I want to feel heard, and I’m telling you this again so maybe you can understand the depth and the degree and the damage that they did to me back then.I want changes, and I want changes going forward. I deserve changes. I was told I have to sit down and be evaluated, again, if I want to end the conservatorship. Ma’am, I didn’t know I could petition the conservatorship to be ended. I’m sorry for my ignorance, but I honestly didn’t know that. But honestly, I don’t think I owe anyone to be evaluated. I’ve done more than enough. I don’t feel like I should even be in a room with anyone to offend me by trying to question my capacity of intelligence, whether I need to be in this stupid conservatorship or not. I’ve done more than enough.Vivian Lee Thoreen, a lawyer for Mr. Spears, said in a statement earlier this year that if Ms. Spears wants to end her conservatorship, she should simply petition to do so: “She has always had this right but in 13 years has never exercised it.” In court, Ms. Spears said she never knew that was an option.I don’t owe these people anything. Especially me, the one that has roofed and fed tons of people on tour, on the road. It’s embarrassing and demoralizing what I’ve been through, and that’s the main reason I’ve never said it openly. And mainly, I didn’t want to say it openly, because I honestly don’t think anyone would believe me. To be honest with you, the Paris Hilton story on what they did to her, to that school? I didn’t believe any of it — I’m sorry, I’m an outsider and I’ll just be honest, I didn’t believe it.And maybe I’m wrong and that’s why I didn’t want to say any of this to anybody, to the public, because I thought people would make fun of me or laugh at me and say, “She’s lying, she’s got everything; she’s Britney Spears.” I’m not lying. I just want my life back and it’s been 13 years and it’s enough.It’s been a long time since I’ve owned my money, and it’s my wish and my dream for all of this to end, without being tested. Again, it makes no sense whatsoever for the state of California to sit back and literally watch me, with their own two eyes, make a living for so many people, and pay so many people, trucks and buses on tour, on the road with me, and be told I’m not good enough. But I’m great at what I do. And I allow these people to control what I do, ma’am, and it’s enough. It makes no sense at all.Mr. Spears manages his daughter’s $60 million fortune alongside a corporate fiduciary, Bessemer Trust. Even as the singer has raised concerns about her father remaining her conservator, she has paid for his legal representation, including media strategy for defending her conservatorship.Now, going forward, I’m not willing to meet or see anyone — I’ve met with enough people against my will. I’m done. All I want is to own my money, for this to end, and my boyfriend to drive me in his [expletive] car.And I would honestly like to sue my family, to be totally honest with you. I also would like to be able to share my story with the world, and what they did to me, instead of it being a hush-hush secret to benefit all of them. I want to be able to be heard on what they did to me by making me keep this in for so long is not good for my heart. I’ve been so angry and I cry every day. It concerns me I’m told I’m not allowed to expose the people who did this to me.For my sanity, I need you, judge, to approve me to do an interview where I can be heard on what they did to me. And actually, I have the right to use my voice and take up for myself. My attorney says I can’t, it’s not good, I can’t let the public know anything they did to me, and by not saying anything, is saying it’s OK. I don’t know what I said here. It’s not OK — actually, I don’t want to interview. I’d much rather just have an open call to you for the press to hear, which I didn’t know today we were doing, so thank you. Instead of having an interview, honestly, I need that to get it off my heart, the anger and all of it.In 2020, Ms. Spears’s court-appointed lawyer, Samuel D. Ingham III, filed court papers saying that the singer “is vehemently opposed to this effort by her father to keep her legal struggle hidden away in the closet as a family secret.” In court on Wednesday, Ms. Spears said she didn’t want to grant an interview, but she wanted the world to hear her story.It’s not fair they’re telling me lies about me openly. Even my family, they do interviews to anyone they want on news stations. My own family doing interviews, and talking about the situation and making me feel so stupid, and I can’t say one thing. And my own people say I can’t say anything.It’s been two years. I want a recorded call to you — actually, we’re doing this now, which I didn’t know that were doing this, and to the public knows what they did to me. I told my — I know my lawyer, Sam [Ingham], has been very scared for me to go forward because he’s saying if I speak up, I’m being overworked in that facility, of that rehab place, the rehab place will sue me. He told me I should keep it to myself, really. I would personally like to — actually, I know I’ve had, grown with a personal relationship with Sam, my lawyer. I’ve been talking to him, like, three times a week now, we’ve kind of built a relationship, but I haven’t really had the opportunity by my own self to actually handpick my own lawyer by myself, and I would like to be able to do that.At the time the conservatorship was imposed, a judge deemed Ms. Spears incapable of hiring her own counsel and appointed Mr. Ingham. After Ms. Spears’s speech, Mr. Ingham told the judge that he would be willing to step aside if that was the court’s decision.I would like to also — the main reason why I’m here is because I want to end the conservatorship without having to be evaluated. I’ve done a lot of research, ma’am, and there is a lot of judges who do end conservatorships for people without them having to be evaluated all the time. The only times they don’t is if a concerned family member says, “Something’s wrong with this person,” and consider otherwise.And considering my family has lived off my conservatorship for 13 years, I won’t be surprised if one of them has something to say, go forward, and say, “We don’t think this should end, we have to help her.” Especially if I get my fair turn in exposing what they did to me.Also I want to speak to you about, at the moment, my obligations, which, I personally don’t think at the very moment I owe anybody anything. I have three meetings a week I have to attend no matter what. I just don’t like feeling like I work for the people whom I pay. I don’t like being told I have to, no matter what, even if I’m sick, Jodi [Montgomery] the conservator says I have to see my coach Ken even when I’m sick. I would like to do one meeting a week with a therapist. I’ve never before, even before they sent me to that place, had two therapy sessions, a therapy session, and one therapy session with — I have a doctor and then a therapy person. What I’ve been forced to do illegal in my life. I shouldn’t be told I have to be available three times a week to these people I don’t know.I’m talking to you today because I feel again, yes, even Jodi is starting to kind of take it too far with me. They have me going to therapy twice a week and a psychiatrist. I’ve never in the past had — wait, they have me going, yeah, twice a week, and Dr. [unclear] — so that’s three times a week. I’ve never in the past had to see a therapist more than once a week. It takes too much out of me going to this man I don’t know, number one.The Jodi Ms. Spears referenced is Jodi Montgomery, a licensed professional conservator who stepped into the role of managing the singer’s personal life after her father stepped back from the role in 2019. Last year, Mr. Ingham said that Ms. Spears preferred to keep Ms. Montgomery as her personal conservator, saying that she was “strongly opposed” to her father returning to that role.I’m scared of people, I don’t trust people with what I’ve been through. And the clever setup of being in Westlake, one of the most exposed places in Westlake, which today, yesterday, paparazzi showed me coming out of a place literally crying in therapy. It’s embarrassing and it’s demoralizing. I deserve privacy when I go. I deserve privacy when I go and have therapy either at my home, like I’ve done for eight years. They’ve always come to my home. Or when Dr. Benson — the guy, the man that died — I went to a place similar to what I went to in Westlake, which was very exposed and really bad. OK, so wait, where was I? It was identical to Dr. Benson, who died, the one who illegally, yes, 100 percent abused me by the treatment he gave me, too. And I’ll be totally honest with you I was —JUDGE BRENDA PENNY: Ms. Spears, excuse me for interrupting you, but my reporter says if you could just slow down a little bit, because she’s trying to make sure she gets everything that you’re saying.OK, cool. And to be totally honest with you, when he passed away, I got on my knees and thanked God. In other words, my team is pushing it with me again. I have trapped phobias being in small rooms because of the trauma. Locking me up for four months in that place. It’s not OK for them to send me — sorry, I’m going fast — to that small room like that twice a week with another new therapist I pay that I never even approved. I don’t like it. I don’t want to do that. And I haven’t done anything wrong to deserve this treatment.Ms. Spears spoke of Dr. Timothy Benson, a psychiatrist who died in 2019 at age 47. His death came amid increasing scrutiny over the arrangement of Ms. Spears’s conservatorship.It’s not OK to force me to do anything I don’t want to do. By law, Jodi and this so-called team should — honestly, I should be able to sue them for threatening me and saying if I don’t go and do these meetings twice a week, we can’t let you have your money and go to Maui on your vacations. You have to do what you’re told for this program and then you will be able to go. But it was very clever — they picked one of the most exposed places in Westlake, knowing I have the hot topic of the conservatorship that over five paparazzis are going to show up and get me crying coming out of that place. I begged them to make sure that they did this at my home so I would have privacy. I deserve privacy.The whole conservatorship from the beginning was — the conservatorship from the beginning, once you see someone, whoever it is, in the conservatorship, making money, making them money and myself money and working — that whole statement right there, the conservatorship should end. There should be no — I shouldn’t be in a conservatorship if I can work and provide money and work for myself and pay other people. It makes no sense. The laws need to change. What state allows people to own another person’s money and account and threaten them in saying, “You can’t spend your money unless we do what we want you to do.” And I’m paying them.“I’ve been in denial. I’ve been in shock. I am traumatized,” Ms. Spears said.Martin Bureau/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMore than a decade after the paparazzi’s constant presence contributed to Ms. Spears’s public struggles, the singer made clear they are still an unwanted presence in her life. In February, after the release of “Framing Britney Spears,” a documentary by The New York Times, the public reassessed the media’s treatment of Ms. Spears when she was at her lowest point.Ma’am, I’ve worked since I was 17 years old, you have to understand how thin that is for me — every morning, I get up to know I can’t go on somewhere unless I meet people I don’t know every week in an office identical to the one where the therapist was very abusive to me. I truly believe this conservatorship is abusive. And we can sit here all day and say, oh, conservatorships are here to help people. But ma’am, there is 1,000 conservatorships that are abusive as well.I don’t feel like I can live a full life, I don’t owe them to go see a man I don’t know and share him my problems. I don’t even believe in therapy; I always think you take it to God. I want to end the conservatorship without being evaluated. In the meantime, I want this therapist once a week, he can either come to my home — no, I just want him to come to my home, I’m not willing to go to Westlake and be embarrassed by all these paparazzi, these scummy paparazzi laughing at my face while I’m crying coming out and taking my pictures as all these white, nice dinners where people drinking wine at restaurants, watching these places. They set me up by sending me to the most exposed places, and I told them I didn’t want to go there because I knew paparazzi would show up there.They only gave me two options for therapists. And I’m not sure how you make your decisions, ma’am, but this is the only chance for me to talk to you for a while. I need your help, so if you can just kind of let me know where your head is. I don’t really honestly know what to say but my requests are just to end the conservatorship without being evaluated. I want to petition basically to end the conservatorship, but I want to, I want it to be, petition to end it, but I don’t want to be evaluated and be sat in a room with people four hours a day like they did me before. And they made it even worse for me after that happened.Based off her own experience with a conservatorship, which she views as unfair, Ms. Spears asserted that the larger issue of guardianship requires further inquiry. Conservatorships are typically reserved for those who are old, ill or infirm — people who are deemed unable to take care of themselves or susceptible to outside influence or manipulation. Ms. Spears isn’t the only one who is questioning the system: California state legislators have introduced bills that would seek to firm up the legal rights of people under conservatorships; the legislation is still being considered.I just — I’m honestly new at this. And I’m doing research on all these things. I do know common sense and the method that things can end — for people, it has ended without them being evaluated. So I just want you to take that in consideration. I’ve also done research, wait — it also took a year, during Covid, to get me any self-care methods, during Covid. She said there were no services available. She’s lying, ma’am. My mom went to the spa twice in Louisiana during Covid. For a year, I didn’t have my nails done — no hairstyling and no massages, no acupuncture. Nothing for a year. I saw the maids in my home each week with their nails done different each time. She made me feel like my dad does, very similar, her behavior and my dad, but just a different dynamic.Team wants me to work and stay home instead of having longer vacations. They are used to me sort of doing a weekly routine for them, and I’m over it. I don’t feel like I owe them anything at this point. They need to be reminded they actually work for me. They tricked me by sending me to the — OK, I repeated myself there.Also, I was supposed to be able to — I have a friend that I used to do AA meetings with. I did AA for two years. I did three meetings a week. I’ve met a bunch of women there. And I’m not able to see my friends that live eight minutes away from me, which I find extremely strange.I feel like they’re making me feel like I live in a rehab program. This is my home. I’d like for my boyfriend to be able to drive me in his car. And I want to meet with a therapist once a week, not twice a week, and I want him to come to my home. Because I actually know I do need a little therapy.Throughout her speech, Ms. Spears described her desire to exercise control over her daily life. She said she wants to see her friends, get her nails and hair done, receive therapy at her home and ride in her boyfriend’s car. Earlier this week, The New York Times reported that Ms. Spears was forbidden by her father from making cosmetic changes to her home, like restaining her kitchen cabinets.I would like to progressively move forward, and I want to have the real deal. I want to be able to get married and have a baby. I was told right now in the conservatorship, I’m not able to get married or have a baby. I have a ID [IUD] inside of myself right now so I don’t get pregnant. I wanted to take the ID [IUD] out so I could start trying to have another baby. But this so-called team won’t let me go to the doctor to take it out because they don’t want me to have children, any more children. So basically, this conservatorship is doing me way more harm than good.One of Ms. Spears’s most shocking revelations came at the end of her speech, when she said that those managing her conservatorship wouldn’t allow her to have her birth control device removed so that she could try to have more children. Alexis McGill Johnson, president and chief executive of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, called it “reproductive coercion.”I deserve to have a life. I’ve worked my whole life. I deserve to have a two- to three-year break and just, you know, do what I want to do. But I do feel like there is a crutch here. And I feel open and I’m OK to talk to you today about it. But I wish I could stay with you on the phone forever, because when I get off the phone with you, all of a sudden I hear all these no’s — no, no, no. And then all of a sudden I get I feel ganged up on and I feel bullied and I feel left out and alone. And I’m tired of feeling alone. I deserve to have the same rights as anybody does by having a child, a family, any of those things, and more so.And that’s all I wanted to say to you. And thank you so much for letting me speak to you today.After Ms. Spears spoke, there was a brief recess, then Ms. Thoreen read a brief statement on behalf of Mr. Spears: “He is sorry to see his daughter suffering and in so much pain. Mr. Spears loves his daughter, and he misses her very much.”Watch ‘Framing Britney Spears’Our documentary about Britney Spears and her court battle with her father over control of her fortune is free on our site for New York Times subscribers in the United States. Watch it now.Watch The New York Times documentary about Britney Spears and her court battle with her father over control of her career and her fortune. The full video is streaming on Hulu and free on our site for Times subscribers in the United States.Ting-Li Wang/The New York Times More

The video game has become a music venue as the pandemic continues to keep live shows off the road. The Latin pop star put his own colorful spin on the experience. More

The Brazilian singer radiated quiet poise and subtle undercurrents.Astrud Gilberto, who died on Monday at 83, brought the first, alluring taste of Brazilian bossa nova to countless listeners worldwide. Her collaborations — with Stan Getz, Gil Evans, Stanley Turrentine and others — also helped cement the connections of bossa nova and jazz.Her voice was disarmingly modest, sometimes hitting notes a little flat and often barely above a whisper; the effect was intimate and seemingly weightless. When she sang in English, her Brazilian accent gave her an endearing hint of awkwardness and approachability, even as her phrasing stayed supple, while the translated lyrics invited a wider audience to hear great Brazilian songwriters like Antonio Carlos Jobim. Her early recordings are her most radiant ones, steeped in the pensive, nostalgic longing that Brazilians call saudade.Here are six indelible Astrud Gilberto performances.Stan Getz featuring Astrud Gilberto: “The Girl From Ipanema” (1963)This was the bossa nova that seduced the world: a purposeful crossover collaboration by the American saxophonist Stan Getz, Jobim, Astrud Gilberto and her then-husband, the definitive bossa nova guitarist and singer João Gilberto. Its full version opened with João Gilberto singing the Portuguese lyrics, but the world-conquering single cuts quickly to Astrud Gilberto’s breathy voice in English, with Jobim on piano trickling just a few perfect notes to answer her.The New Stan Getz Quartet featuring Astrud Gilberto: “It Might as Well Be Spring” (1964)Gilberto doesn’t exactly sound “as jumpy as a puppet on a string” in this live performance of the Rodgers and Hammerstein standard with the Stan Getz Quartet. Instead, she’s poised and sure-footed, musing about the possibility of romance as Getz’s saxophone scurries and spirals around her.“Água de Beber” (1965)Jobim rejoined Gilberto as a collaborator on her luminous solo debut, “The Astrud Gilberto Album.” His voice shadows hers on their nonchalantly elegant version of his bossa nova standard “Água de Beber” (“Water to Drink”); as she sings about a love as essential as water, the song glows with mutual fondness.“The Shadow of Your Smile” (1965)A studio orchestra offers a hint of fanfare, then falls into an admiring hush behind Gilberto’s voice in this Oscar- and Grammy-winning song from the movie “The Sandpiper.” Written by Johnny Mandel and Paul Francis Webster, with strong bossa nova influences, the song’s arrangement ripples around Gilberto with little instrumental flourishes — strings, flutes, piano, vibraphone — but Gilberto’s voice maintains its serene wistfulness.“Berimbau” (1966)A berimbau, the one-stringed percussion instrument prized in Bahia, Brazil, twangs its way through this song by Baden Powell and Vinicius de Moraes. The brassy, slightly ominous arrangement by Gil Evans highlights the pinpoint syncopations of Gilberto’s vocal.“Maria Quiet” (1966)Gilberto sang most often about love as it arrives and disappears. But every so often she turned to other thoughts — like the feminist resentment in “Maria Quiet,” a brisk samba with lyrics (de Moraes translated by Norman Gimbel) about women’s endless work. Gilberto’s delivery is pointed, and quietly seething. More

They were teenage sweethearts, but their marriage turned tragic, and when she married the protégé singer Bobby Womack, the publicity was intense and the boos were loud.Their story started out as if lifted from one of his love songs. Sam Cooke was 18 and Barbara Campbell was only 13 when they met on the South Side of Chicago.Fifteen years later, Mr. Cooke, by then a pop superstar, was dead, murdered in a motel tryst gone awry. And only three months after his death, Barbara Campbell Cooke, his widow, would marry her husband’s protégé Bobby Womack, the gravelly-voiced soul singer and guitarist. Widely publicized, their union made them pariahs in their families, to much of the music community and to Mr. Cooke’s adoring fans.In her later years Ms. Cooke lived in relative obscurity, and when she died in April at 85, no public announcement was made, at her and her family’s wish. The death was recently confirmed by David Washington, a Detroit radio host who is close to the Cooke and Womack families. No cause was given.The Cookes’ life together and its aftermath were the stuff of Greek tragedy. Mr. Cooke, once a teenage gospel singer, was music royalty, a movie-star-handsome crooner of hits like “You Send Me” and “Wonderful World,” as well as the wrenching “A Change Is Gonna Come,” which would become a civil rights anthem.The son of a preacher, he took a firm stand in playing the American South, refusing to perform for segregated audiences. He was a canny businessman who retained the rights to his work and built a publishing and recording company to promote the work of others. He was a voracious reader, of everything from James Baldwin to William L. Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.” (Aretha Franklin, who as a young singer was often on tour with him, remembered buying the book just because he had it.)He was also a voracious womanizer. Mr. Cooke was 33 when he was shot by the manager of a $3-a-night motel in Los Angeles in December 1964 while chasing a prostitute who had stolen his clothes and money. Conspiracy theories still surround the death.Barbara was his teenage sweetheart but only one of many girlfriends. She had their daughter, Linda, when she was 17; three other women would also have daughters by Mr. Cooke.Barbara and Sam had married and divorced other people before marrying each other in Chicago in 1959, with Mr. Cooke’s disapproving father, the Rev. Charles Cook, performing the ceremony. The couple settled down in Los Angeles in a vine-covered Cape in the Hollywood area. (Mr. Cooke had added an “e” to his name at the start of his career.)The marriage was a hard bargain. Mr. Cooke, steely in his ambition and chronically unfaithful, went about his life while Ms. Cooke fended for herself. In his exhaustive biography “Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke” (2005), Peter Guralnick noted how Ms. Cooke, whom he had interviewed at length, had tried to keep her end up, attempting to read James Baldwin at her husband’s prompting and joining a group of philanthropic African American women known as the Regalettes. And she had her own affairs, as she explained to Mr. Guralnick.In 1963, their third child, Vincent, drowned in their pool when he was 18 months old. A year later, Mr. Cooke was dead.When Mr. Cooke died, Ms. Cooke was still numb from grief over her son’s death and humiliated by the tawdry circumstances of her husband’s murder, she told Mr. Guralnick. She said she had welcomed the 19-year-old Mr. Womack into the house as a kind of protector. She was 29 at the time. At her urging, they married in early 1965.In his own memoir, “Bobby Womack: My Story” (2006), Mr. Womack likened Ms. Cooke’s proposal to a scene out of the “The Graduate,” the 1967 film in which a dazed and disillusioned young man is seduced by a friend of his parents. “If you promise to give me five years,” Ms. Cooke told Mr. Womack, by his account, “I will give you a lifetime. You know, whatever you need to do. I just need you to walk with me here.”Mr. Womack wrote of his new wife: “She could, and did, take a lot. She could endure.” He added: “She and Sam were a pair. They lived each other. They really did.”The marriage of Ms. Cooke and the soul-singer and guitarist Bobby Womack, a protégé of Sam Cooke’s, attracted wide publicity in 1965. Mr. Cooke had been murdered three months earlier. EBONY MediaBut it upset many people to see Mr. Womack, sometimes in Mr. Cooke’s clothes, squiring Mr. Cooke’s widow about. The couple received hate mail, including a package containing a baby doll in a coffin. At a Nancy Wilson concert, when Ms. Wilson introduced the couple sitting in the audience, the crowd booed. In his telling, Mr. Womack, goaded by his new wife, took to cocaine. He also began a sexual relationship with the Cookes’ daughter, Linda, by then a teenager. When Barbara found them in bed, she shot Mr. Womack, the bullet grazing his temple. (Ms. Cooke was not charged, according to Mr. Womack’s book.) They divorced in 1970.Years later, Linda Cooke married Mr. Womack’s brother Cecil, and the couple became a recording duo, Womack & Womack. Linda now goes by the name Zeriiya Zekkariyas, a nod to her African heritage.Ms. Cooke and Bobby Womack had a son, whom they named Vincent, after the Cookes’ drowned baby. Vincent Womack struggled with drugs and alcohol, his father wrote, and committed suicide in 1986 when he was 21.Bobby Womack experienced fame early on when the Rolling Stones covered his 1964 song “It’s All Over Now,” their first No. 1 hit. He died in 2014 at 70, but not before suffering other tragedies. Another son of his, Truth, died when he was a baby, and Mr. Womack’s brother Harry was murdered by a girlfriend.“I don’t speak to Barbara no more,” Mr. Womack wrote in his memoir. “Linda doesn’t speak to her. Haven’t spoken to Cecil for years. No one speaks to no one.”Barbara Campbell and her twin sister, Beverly, were born on Aug. 10, 1935, in Chicago. She attended Doolittle Elementary School. Mr. Cooke had graduated from high school when they met, but Barbara, a teenage mother, worked two jobs to support herself and her child.In 1986, when Mr. Cooke was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Ms. Cooke stood by Mr. Cooke’s father to accept the award on the singer’s behalf.“I think if Sam were able to be here tonight, he would be thrilled just to see me on this stage,” Mr. Cooke’s father declared. (The elder Mr. Cook had not initially been thrilled with his son’s transition from gospel to secular music.)Ms. Cooke is survived by Ms. Zekkariyas and another daughter, Tracey Cooke; her twin sister, Beverley Lopez; and a granddaughter.Family members and Mr. Guralnick declined to speak about Ms. Cooke’s life and death, citing her wish for privacy.But Ms. Cooke had the last words in Mr. Guralnick’s nearly 750-page biography. The author quoted her reminiscing about falling in love with Mr. Cooke, and he with her, and about their wandering through Chicago’s Ellis Park in the snow when they were teenagers.“We’d walk around the park and fantasize,” she told Mr. Guralnick. “We didn’t have a dime between us, but you’d have thought I was the princess and he was the prince. Every time a Cadillac went by, I’d say, ‘That’s our chauffeur. He’s coming to take us to our mansion.’”She added: “Everybody wants a happy ending. That’s the way I see it.” More