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“I can't believe this is my eighth studio album and I know I keep telling you that it is my most personal record yet, but its true and I'm really proud of that”

This quote from The Legendary Miss Britney Spears would most likely haunt her for the rest of the career, especially because it came in the eve of the release of her infamous 2013 album Britney Jean, whose title anticipated a rare introspective look into a star with over a decade on the spotlight (most of the times for the wrong reasons)… also, it came right after her previous album, 2011’s Femme Fatale, became her first full-length effort without any songwriting input from the Princess of Pop, although a Japanese bonus track features a co-writing credit from her.
Of course Britney Jean deserves most of the criticism it receives and yet, it also deserves way more than just being outright ignored even by most of Britney’s diehard fans: Britney Jean is more than just Work Bitch and 13 b-sides, is more than Brit’s most dated-on-arrival release… Britney Jean is a case study of what was pop in its time, what changed and why it stopped being as popular as it once was….

POP BEFORE BRITNEY JEAN

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Early 00s pop music was being left aside by the general public during the heydays of gangsta rap, Timbaland/Pharrell-infused R&B and rock/nu-metal… at least until around the period between 2007 and 2009, the start of the Golden Era for popheads: The anthemic choruses, the prominent synths, the light and care-free nature of the lyrics, everything was there to pump you up and make you dance… however everything would change in 2013, when streaming was finally introduced to the Billboard formula. After the satirical K-pop track Gangnam Style by Psy took the world by storm, it was noticed how in the United States the song was blocked from the top spot by the inconsequential One More Night by Maroon 5, even if Style had the lead in sales for most of the 12 weeks it stayed at the Top 10 (as you might have guessed, radio had something to do with that), pushing Billboard to update their methodology and add streaming to the mix.
The first song that benefited from the change in the tracking methodology would prophetize what would come next for the charts in general: Harlem Shake, a nearly-instrumental meme song debuted at the top spot and stayed there for 6 weeks total. Another novelty song, Ylvis’ The Fox (What Does The Fox Say?) would visit the Top 10 later in the year based on virality alone.
Although rap, indie music and more traditional pop music found their way during this year, the presence of outliers like Lorde’s Royals, genre-defying tracks like Avicii’s Wake Me Up! (a country/folk tinted EDM anthem) and Florida Georgia Lane’s Cruise (considered the grandfather of the bro-country genre, made popular on pop radio thanks to a tackled-on rap feature by Nelly), and the aforementioned viral hits not only showed that general audiences were craving something new, but their success would pave the way for a big change in pop music.

BRITNEY BEFORE BRITNEY JEAN

"Sometimes you don't need to use words to go through what you need to go through, sometimes it's an emotion you need to feel when you dance, that you need to touch. And the only thing that can touch it is when you move a certain way."
Britney Spears on the For The Record documentary, one of the rare glimpses she gave us on her life before Britney Jean

Britney, of course, was partially a pioneer and a tail-rider of the maximalistic electro sound of the era, as proven by the influence and cult following of what most people consider her magnum opus, or at least her more direct and honest album, 2007’s Blackout, which is ironic considering that Britney only has two writing credits in the whole project and how even The Unstoppable Danja called it ‘impersonal’.
After Blackout, Britney would continue to ride the same sonic palette with her follow-up, 2008’s Circus and then move onto Femme Fatale, which, in spite of its “forward-thinking” nature (as described by the label-appointed producer and current persona non grata Dr. Luke) and slick production, it was heavily criticized for its anonymity and lack of input of the singer in the record, which led to Britney to defend herself stating, rightfully, that she had nothing to prove.

THE MAKING OF A PERSONAL ALBUM

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The mastermind behind Britney Jean was none other than hitmaker will.i.am, whose involvement on the record came as a surprise to no one given how they have collaborated twice at that point and get along really well (you can read more about it in this post I made a couple of months ago), however, the Black Eyed Peas frontman doesn’t deserves all of the credit for the record as Britney herself decided that she would be more involved and had a pivotal role into the making of this record.
Although the early stages of the album pointed towards a more hip-hop release, will.i.am’s involvement and her chemistry with Britney put her forward into the recording and making of the album.
Realizing that she wanted a more straightforward release that wasn’t as bouncy and genre-hopping as her predecessors, Britney searched with will.i.am a series of collaborators that could help her bring her ideas to life, as she didn’t wanted to sing impersonal songs that her team just happened to receive; this, unfortunately, ruled out the involvement of the Saint Patron of pop production Max Martin, although it relegated Dr. Luke to a sole bonus track so that’s a win in my book. Britney Jean is her only release in which she’s credited as a co-writer in each track, including bonus tracks… her closest before that was In The Zone in which 9 of the 14 (including bonus) tracks sported a Britney co-write.

THE PERKS OF BEING A PERSONAL ALBUM

I have been through a lot in the past few years and it has really inspired me to dig deeper and write songs that I think everyone can relate to […] I want to show you the different sides of Britney Spears.
I am a performer.
I am a Mom.
I am funny.
I am your friend!
I am Britney Jean.
Britney Jean Spears

Britney has never been the kind of performer that would pour her soul into her lyrics, and even have occasionally distanced her private life from her lyrics (she famously rejected the Timberlake-bashing Sweet Dreams My LA Ex, later given to ex-S Club 7 member Rachel Stevens as her debut single), although in the few glimpses we have gotten from her real persona (the stunning Everytime and the dubious My Baby for example) have always leaved her fans with the idea of her getting more involved with the subject matter of the tracks… I mean, the exploration of fame in tracks like Circus and Piece of Me are great, but what about explorations of who is Britney?
Britney Jean is her first album released in her 30s, and after finally deciding to get this involved in the songwriting department 15 years into her singing career was no fluke: chalk it up to coincidence, to the fact that it was long due given her background (Britney had lived A LOT of unwanted stuff during her career, married twice, had two kids, survived the most public mental breakdown unimaginable and more while being one of the most successful female performers currently working… also, that year she had ended her engagement with her manager Jason Trawick) or to misogyny (if you wanna go there) but female singers seems to go personal and/or mature in their 30s, with some popular examples including Madonna’s Like A Prayer (described by her as being "about my mother, my father, and bonds with my family"), Mariah Carey’s post-divorce genre-bender Butterfly (if her birth year is believed to be 1969), Beyoncé’s whole post-Matthew Knowles era (4 was released three months before she turned 30), Nicki Minaj’s back-to-my-roots release The Pinkprint and Katy Perry’s purposeful woke pop release Witness (Katy, I love you but 💀) among others.
Another thing to consider is that doing “personal” songs have always being interpreted as tracks with stripped-away or piano-driven arrangement, something that Britney, who had sung about being on the club or having sex (or even both on the same track) so many times it kinda become her trademark, is not something she’s might get allowed to do, especially when the current-at-the-time pop scene and Britney’s then-current sound were a far cry from the kind of sound these “confessional” tell-all songs normally have.

#BritneyPleaseSavePopMusic

(this was a real hashtag that was worldwide trending topic on Twitter in September 2013)
With the anticipation of what a Britney-fied personal record would sound like, anticipation was in an all-time high among fans… so it was natural that her most introspective record would be anchored with an EDM song called Work Bitch. In Britney’s defense, will.i.am pointed out almost immediately how the braggadocio track didn’t represented the album but it was rather about Britney Spears herself.
Promoted with what was heavily rumored to be a 6.5-million-dollars budgeted video which was supposedly heavily sanitized from its originally sexed-up original version (more on that later), the video itself represented most of the promotion the whole album received, as the album’s second and final single (Perfume) was left to rot in negligence after the album’s release.
Outside of a couple of TV appearances (not performances, just interviews), including one to promote her then-upcoming “2-year” Las Vegas residency Britney Spears: Piece of Me, and an E! documentary about the making-of the album and said residency, no actual promotion took place for Britney Jean, which led to the inevitable.

BRITNEY UNLEASHES HER MOST “PERSONAL” ALBUM

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Britney Jean was unleashed to the world on December 3rd of 2013, one day after the Princess’ birthday, and was a big commercial disappointment, debuting at number 4 on Billboard with sales of 107,000 copies (a little bit more than a third of the sales of Femme Fatale), even lower than those of her debut album …Baby One More Time; 3 years after its release, BJ had sold less in the United States than FF in its opening week, although it was eventually certified Gold by the RIAA… this February. Internationally, the release didn’t fare any better and debuted at record-low positions for her releases in most international markets, including missing the Top 30 in the UK.
As most of you already know, reviews we’re nasty all around, the worst of Britney’s career. Because of the somewhat mean content of some of those reviews, I would instead resume what are the biggest perks critics had with the release:

• The album’s production (carried mostly by will.i.am protégé Anthony Preston, who hasn’t done anything ever since) was considered monotone, repetitive, dated, backward-thinking, overproduced and by-the-numbers. The album, full, on EDM beats and synthesizers, doesn’t really have that much of a breathing spot as there’s not that much of musical variety.
• Lyrically, the album was considered a disappointment considered its nature as a “personal album”, with the lyricism being considered somewhat superficial given the self-titled naming and Britney’s hype surrounding the content itself.
• Vocally, Britney Jean was ripped apart by critics and even some listeners. When the opening track’s autotune-less “warm up” vocal sessions leaked in 2014, critics complained about Britney’s (lack of) vocal talent and added fuel to the debate about wherever she’s actually talented at all, accusations that the song producer William Orbit dismissed.

SING A SONG OF SIXPENCE, MISS BRITNEY SPEARS

After one of the songs leaked ahead of the album’s release, there were accusations that backing vocalist Myah Marie (who had appeared on Brit’s previous two albums) was the lead singer not only on said leaked track but also in a large portion of the album (this is what she sounds like), accusations that Marie herself denied as well as Britney’s reps.
Her representatives claimed that Marie wasn’t involved in neither Perfume nor Passenger, the tracks that were the source of most of the controversy, and ultimately she wasn’t credited in none of those songs, although she’s credited as a (not background) vocalist in several of the other tracks of the album (mostly the Preston-produced songs as Work Bitch, Tik Tik Boom, Til It's Gone, Chillin' With You and Now That I Found You), including Alien (in which she’s not credited), who had a vocal steam leak in 2014 which showcases how uncanny is Myah’s impression of Britney is. A credited background singer is Sia in her co-composed single Perfume, which was the source of a weird misstep when Britney was caught lip-syncing to a version of the song with Sia’s vocals forefront in the mix.
A lot has been said about how Britney’s signature singing ‘baby’ voice is not her real one, how do they compare and how much damage has done to Brit’s current vocal chops, and even though she can still sing wherever she wants to, it’s quite obvious that she’s not that comfortable with it and, as such, she prefers to enhance her voice with the use of technology and some studio trickery… also, she might have gotten used to it considering how effortless and vivid were her earlier performances… here’s I’m A Slave 4 U at the 2001 VMAs just because how iconic it is.

BRITNEY JEAN… BY BRITNEY JEAN SPEARS

"People can take everything away from you, but they can never take away your truth.
The question is: Can you handle mine?"
Britney Spears in a song that’s not from this album and not originally from her

Described by critics as “a concept album about the loneliness of pop life”, Britney Jean actually open with quite a promise with Alien, a mid-tempo, melancholic, airy, ethereal dance pop opener that works as a more teenage-sounding version of Ray of Light, which is not surprising considering the involvement of said album’s mastermind (the aforementioned William Orbit) and that sonically picks-up where FF closer Criminal left off, but lyrically is quite different, as it portrays Britney having an intimate and personal realization that she, after years of tumultuous and erratic events, has lost grip of who she was and how she felt like an extraterrestrial in her own world; however she realizes that she’s not longer alone as she looks at the glow in the stars as a light to guide her home away from her insecurities of the past, and to feel safe and finally finding comfort in her true skin, as the chorus repeats the catchphrase ‘not alone’ “until it is pitchshifted up like a departing space ship”
Originally intended to include Gaga in the song (and also supposed to be released as a single, which unfortunately didn’t happened), Alien was considered the conceptual and musical highlight of the project by critics, and is easily the most personal, vulnerable and my personal highlight of the project… which made everything that came afterward a hard pill to swallow. Before that, I can’t help to mention THE GLITCH (2:14 in the song), which was apparently, as everything wrong with music of the period, will.i.am’s fault.
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Work Bitch (alternatively known in censored form as Work Work, or in the explicit version as Bitch Bitch) is a hard hitting EDM smasher and heavy mood-whiplash, which was definitely not co-written by Sebastian Ingrosso, in which Britney gently asks us (over a basic club beat which grows more overloaded as the song moves forward) is we want a hot body, an European luxury car (either a Bugatti, a Maserati or a Lambo ^{skirrt skirrt skirrt}) or to sip martinis while partying in a big mansion in France, only to disappoint us by calling us bitches and telling us to better work as if we were supermodels and she was RuPaul.
WB is, if you wanna practice some mental gymnastics, more ‘personal’ than its given credit for, as Britney details how much benefits she gets from hustling all these years, and inviting us to dance with that smashing wall-of-sound-laden beat that drowns most of the track. Way more forward-thinking and exciting that everything that comes after it, WB has become somewhat of a new classic for the Princess of Pop, and is pretty much deserved of said designation.
Perfume, co-written by Sia, is another album highlight (actually Britney’s favorite from the album) and one of the finest ballads of Brit’s late-catalogue. Written about her ex-fiancé Jason Trawick, the song deals with Britney’s insecurity about a current relationship, with Britney singing with some of her strongest vocals in years about how she believes that her partner is cheating on her and how she puts on her perfume in order to mark her territory. Released with a tie-in with her perfume Fantasy, the song kinda flopped worldwide and halted all of the promotion of the album, however it still remains (alongside the rawer Dreaming Mix, included as a bonus track) as one of the most interesting songs in 2010s Britney catalogue.
The music video, directed by known troll and middling talented videomaker Joseph Khan, has an unreleased director’s cut in which the straightforward concept of a cheating partner is changed to that of Britney playing the Angelina Jolie role in a gone-wrong version of Mr. and Mrs. Smith sans the boyfriend who is also an assassin.
It Should Be Easy finds Britney’s voice drown in both the auto-tune setting used by Kanye for the Runaway coda and the vocals of guest-star will.i.am in the chorus, all while produceco-writer David Guetta rehashes Swedish House Mafia (which originally broke up the same year in which BJ was released). The song, about Britney imagining a bright-normal-future with a man who had stolen her heart, stating that love “shouldn't be complicated”. Although I like this song, and her team obviously likes it to as it commissioned remixes to be serviced to clubs, it signals when things start to go somewhat downhill.
Tik Tik Boom, the T.I.-assisted fifth track, was always dubbed as a potential third single (remixes were commissioned but nothing official ever came up), and it’s not hard to see why: as one of her rare collaborations with a rapper, the static-y, dance-floor ready production presents Britney teasing a male partner with a night of… well… tik tik boom… that means sex, doing so while serving some circa-2001 sexy vocals as T.I. raps about treating her like an animal up to the point that PETA (which hates Britney) should be called in response. It’s fast, it’s straightforward and yet, it’s kinda forgettable and also very disappointing coming from or Princess Urbanney.
Guetta comes back with Body Ache, another outdated EDM bop in which Brit (accompanied by vocoder and several dozens of vocal distortion treatments) sings about the kind of ‘I wanna dance so hard it gonna turn you on’ anthem which Miss Spears can do on her sleep, with a backtrack that sounds straight out of the EDM will.i.am was doing with the Peas during the Beginning/E.N.D. era. Also it ends in a somewhat anticlimactic way.
Personal Britney makes a return with this track that wouldn’t be too out of place in FF: The Guetta co-written Til It’s Gone, in which Brit realizes that, after losing the love of her life (Trawick), her life would never be the same, or how “you never know what you got 'til it's gone”. Coming some two years to late sonically, in terms of lyrics the track it’s another story, as some interesting imagery pops here and there and it’s nice to leave the dance floor behind, especially when talking about a woman who (at least in the previous albums) rarely shut up about them.
Katy Perry arrives on the record but not as a feature, but as a writer, in the Diplo-produced, Sia-co-written and Prism outtake Passenger, in which some interesting EDM beats moves out of the way after the opening (they come back, don’t worry) to reveal a refreshing and very welcome electropop rock song with some great Britney vocals about letting someone to guide her after she’s willing to let herself be his ‘passenger’. Great lyrics, daring production, good vocal performance… it’s not hard to see why critics loved this track so much, and it’s a shame it gets buried among so much underwhelming stuff.
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Chillin’ with You, the album’s most infamous moment, finds Britney dueting with her sister, ex-Nickelodeon star and attempted country singer Zoey Meredith Brooks, about hanging out together and drinking wine (Brit likes red, Chase Matthews' ex likes white wine) while, as the southern white suburban moms they are, they feel they have nothing else to worry about. Although the lyrics are… well… cute, and the subject matter is decidedly novel by Britney’s standards, the mixture of country and EDM doesn’t mash as well as the producers might had expected… also, the fact that their vocals were so obviously recorded in different sessions (as showed by the kind of chemistry you only see in cheesy 70s movies starring John Travolta and Lily Tomlin) makes the whole ordeal so surreal.
The album closer in the standard edition is Don’t Cry, a FUCK YOU MR. TRAWICK song in which Britney reassures his man that it’s not worthy to cry as their relationship was always directed to end no matter what they do, and how she’s gonna go to not see him all tear eyed. The bouncy but subdued dubstep back track by pop goblin and producer will.i.am enhances what is arguably Britney’s best vocals in the whole album and some really nice lyrics which still doesn’t work as an album closer.
Sia comes back in the first bonus track of the deluxe edition, Brightest Morning Star, and she brings with her current pop Pariah (that would be Dr. Luke, but he’s only in this track) to the mix, on a track about God (or maybe about her kids, according to Dr. Puke), or at least one that implies to be one; in Sia’s words: ‘Britney was extremely sweet. She came in with the title ‘Brightest Morning Star’ and told me that’s how Jesus found his way. She wanted to write a kind of gospel song that wasn’t ramming it down your throat’. Despite the good intentions, BGS is no Jesus Walks and it gets short in the musical department, with a surprisingly weak instrumental which doesn’t do any good service to the song.
Britney continues her religious quest with Hold on Tight, a mid-tempo ballad that in which Miss Spears details how God comes into her dreams (or it might be an Incubus?) showing her the path to righteousness, even when the road is not as friendly with her, and… to be honest, this is my least favorite song on the album, it’s just so forgettable even if it’s quite refreshing in the context of BJ.
To end the evening, Britney continues her unintentional audition to become a gospel singer with Now That I Found You, a shameless EDM track (with early-10s euphoric drop and everything) about how incomplete she was until she found Him (to be honest, this could also be another love song, but after two bonus tracks about God it’s easy to see where she was pointing towards with the vague lyrics) and how everything is better now. Unlike the forgettable predecessors, NTIFY is fun (dated? Sure… but also fun), it’s bright, it’s colorful, it’s happy, and one of my favorite songs on the record… even if co-writer Guetta basically ripped off his own hit Without You from 3 years before.

u/radiofan15’s UNWANTED OPINION ABOUT BRITNEY JEAN

Britney Jean is not an autobiography, it’s not a tell-all gossip-venting machine, it’s a clean, overproduced product of misdirection and lack of focus… and yet it’s actually fascinating in several ways: it’s arguably the greatest resume you would find of how pop music sounded in between 2008 and 2013, it’s a great bridge between the impersonal heavily-polished Femme Fatale and the serviceable and engaging Glory, which saw Britney leading the way on how everything would sound from the start.
It’s quite ironic how the album’s naming (taking a cue from Janet Jackson’s Damita Jo, her actual middle name) plays against it, as self-titled releases (unless they are debut albums) are associated with being in control of your output or reinventions (pop examples includes Paramore as their first release as a trio, Beyoncé to fit the minimalistic sounds and Janet Jackson’s janet. to showcase independence from the Jackson family) and unless you’re Led Zeppelin, Peter Gabriel or Weezer, the idea of having a second eponymous release usually means that audiences should expect to experience the performer in a never-seen before way. 2001’s Britney was the album that give a meaning to the phrase “I’m not that innocent” spurred in her previous effort, with lyrics talking about womanhood and sexuality being complemented with R&B vibes and rock/hip-hop elements. Britney Jean, when compared to Femme Fatale, is way behind the difference between Britney and Oops!... I Did It Again, which in retrospective is even worse as the relative freshness and reinvention of Glory leaves the ‘openness’ and ‘variety’ of BJ in shambles.
One of the album’s biggest mistakes is in its sequencing: the first three tracks are the obvious highlights, the next three are basically DOA EDM songs, the next four are the most “adventurous” musically speaking and the bonus tracks are all about God. Taking out some of the ‘pure club’ anthems could theoretically create an album more deserving of its ‘personal’ label, going full Spinal Tap and amp up the production values to do something crazier might have given us something that was at least digestible in a single listening.
The album, as it is, is not perfect, but it’s far from the dumpster fire more people called it, including some of the most interesting Britney songwriting in years (or even her career) and some tracks that are already started to show signs of cult classic. The only positive thing most people seems to agree with is how short it is: with the alternative mix of Perfume included, BJ is ‘only’ 50 minutes long (the standard edition is just 36 minutes long), which is something most performers (even today) seems to struggle with.
Also, she didn’t came to play games with the art cover and aesthetics this era, the album cover and the booklet is her most gorgeous to date, with the former having her most flattering front picture of any of her albums and the neon typography creating a very pleasing contrast with her elegant black-and-white imagery (in the deluxe edition) or the elegantly, milky pastel coloring of the standard edition.

THERE CAN BE 100 LISTENERS IN THE ROOM AND 99 LEAVE BUT ONE... - BRITNEY JEAN THE DAY IT DEBUTED

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Britney and her team gave up quite easily on Britney Jean and, honestly, they shouldn’t be blamed: the offer to have a Vegas Residency with a salary of $15 million dollars per year seems like the kind of offer a pop star and mother of two with enough money already for several timelines would accept, with the album itself being more of an afterthought.
Britney was originally slated to remain on the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino for two years but ultimately extended her run for another two years, before finally touring overseas (without an album attached to the performances) during 2017 and 2018.
Because of the lack of promotion, Britney Jean underperformed when compared to Miss Spears’ previous releases, with estimated worldwide sales (as of April 2018) being close to 1.3 million copies, less than a third of Femme Fatale’s sales.
Truth be told, BJ flopped hard… HOWEVER, not everything would have turned out that terrible (not even in a million years it would have sold as much a FF but at least the downfall could have been smaller) with some actual promotion and interest from Brit herself.

SOME REACHING… I MEAN… THE SIGNIFICANCE OF BRITNEY JEAN

BJ is, in my opinion, a compilation of the era, the resume of “in the previous episode of” that you get on serialized TV shows, a farewell to the bombastic era of synth-heavy EDM club anthems with gratuitous drops and interchangeable lyrics. During the genre’s opus, some performers tried to bend this sound (and their equivalents) to their benefit, either mixing it with their style or playing with the boundaries of the sound: it could be a Taylor Swift doing a We Are Never Getting Back Together to get a broad crossover hit, a Lady Gaga mixing multiple genres to create a sonically complex pastiche called Born This Way, or even straight-up jumping almost seamlessly from rap/R&B to club bangers like Nicki Minaj did in Roman Reloaded. Britney in Britney Jean did almost the opposite of that.
Britney Jean is, in some ways, a time capsule of the era in its rawest and purest form (some might differ and replace those buzzwords with generic and bland), with the average user being able to trace mostly any track to a style, influence, sub-genre or even performer. Listening to BJ is like watching a 70s movie in VHS in an old, square TV, basically an unintentional period piece that reflects the volatile, bombastic and extravagant style of those golden years of 2008-2013, which, within the mindset of Britney Jean sounds kinda tired and bland, surprising no one when that branch of pop went back into obscurity and irrelevance almost as fast as grunge music did when Kurt Cobain died.
Britney Jean came up in a time of transition of popular music, with streaming showing the kind of power it had on the charts and more subdued, minimalistic music taking the world by storm. Popular music, as you might already noticed, evolved into a slower, more melodic, calculated, numb, almost anticlimatic entity which was more fitting with our current social and political climate. To paraphrase Todd in the Shadows: 2013 had a hit literally called Happy and 2018 had both a hit called SAD! and another called Happier with a video about a dog that dies.
In terms of Britneyology (both the study of Britney Spears and the religion dedicated to her persona), BJ is also a glimpse into Britney the full-fledged artist. Britney has never been the kind of performer that gets heavily involved into her music, with Britney’s role being generally limited to the choice of songs, sequencing, development of sounds and themes with her assigned team of writers and producers, and performing of course; sometimes Britney gets involved into the heavier portions of her music (the classic Everytime is a great example of it) but most of the time she remains quite anonymous, with her voice and choice being overwritten by the men on charge, something that became quite apparent during and after the Dark Ages (2004-2008) with the cancelling of the legendary Original Doll, her lack of songwriting credits in both Blackout and Circus, and her much-criticized anonymity in Femme Fatale.
BJ was Britney deciding who does want to work with, what does she wants to sing and even how to equilibrate her musical and visual persona. Britney has always being in control of how is she portrayed on official media, most famously rejecting an animated concept for the video of …Baby One More Time in favor of a Lolita-inspired take on catholic school girls, and then the slow process from jailbait to grownup woman. During the post-production of the Work Bitch video, she clashed with director Ben Mor over the kind of content the video should show, as she was a mother in her 30s now instead of an unreachable male gaze fantasy.
With BJ, the Legendary Miss Britney Spears showed us how much she has changed since that controversial 2003/2004 period (the last time she was that involved with an album) in which she received the Kiss of Death from Madonna, suffered her infamous accident and, of course, married twice in a calendar year. This new Britney was a much-different person, and her voice deserved to be heard, and even if the results weren’t the greatest, it was a step into the right director for Britney to get what she always wanted: being a full-fledged artist capable of taking her own decisions and learning from her mistakes.

POP AFTER BRITNEY JEAN

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Coincidentally in 2014 most of the ambassadors of the dominant pop sound of the early 10s were either taking a musical break, flopping or changing lanes, so that year paved the way for the transition of what do we define as popular music, with the winners of the evolution race being trap (Fetty Wap’s Trap Queen), meme music from awful people (Bobby Shmurda’s Hot Nathans) or untalented losers (T-Wayne’s Nasty Freestyle, Silentó’s Watch Me), trop pop (OMI’s Cheerleader, Justin Bieber’s entire Purpose era) or whatever outlier track dared to pass through those filters.
What happened afterwards is a horror story most of popheads tells in fire camps a la Are You Afraid of the Dark?

BRITNEY AFTER BRITNEY JEAN

Glory , the follow-up Britney Jean, received very positives reviews and was considered a strong return-to-form for Britney, and even if it wasn’t as successful as her label might have wanted, the truth is that, at the end of the day, whatever Britney decides to do next (and considering the direction she seems to be taking) it can be as underwhelming as Britney Jean.
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1. October 31, 2019: The House votes to formalize its impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump's dealings with Ukraine.
2. August 10, 2019: Sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is found dead in his Manhattan jail cell where he was awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
3. August 7, 2019: The bodies of Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky are found in Manitoba, Canada. Police suspect the friends went on a killing spree across the country, and had been searching for them for 20 days.
4. July 7, 2019: The US women's national soccer team wins the World Cup for a fourth time in a row.
5. April 18, 2019: A redacted version of the special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and the Trump campaign's possible collusion is released to the public.
6. March 15, 2019: Fifty people are killed and another 50 are injured in attacks on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.
7. March 12, 2019: Federal prosecutors in Boston charge at least 50 people in the "Varsity Blues" scandal, accusing many of them of using bribes to get their students into college. Among the defendants are actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman.
8. March 2019: Governments around the world banned the Boeing 737 Max from their airspaces after two crashes in 5 months killed 346 people.
9. January 10, 2019: Jayme Closs, a 13-year-old Wisconsin girl who went missing three months prior, escapes from a rural home where she was being held captive by her parent's killer. He later pleads guilty to the crimes.
10. October 2, 2018: Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi is murdered inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul.
11. September 27, 2016: More than 20 million people tune in to watch the confirmation hearing of Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
12. July 10, 2018: 12 Thai boys and their soccer coach are rescued from a flooded cave after more than two weeks stuck in the cavern.
13. June 24, 2018: Saudi Arabia lifts its ban on allowing women to drive.
14. May 19, 2018: Millions around the world tune in to watch Britain's Prince Harry marry American actress Meghan Markle at Windsor Castle.
15. April 24, 2018: DNA submitted to an ancestry database helps investigators catch who they believe to be the "Golden State Killer", a murderer and rapist who tormented the Bay Area in the 1970s and '80s.
16. April 6-June 20, 2018: Under its "zero tolerance" immigration policy, the Trump administration separates thousands of children from their migrant parents at the border, causing widespread outrage on a national level.
17. April 13, 2018: The US, Britain, and France conduct air strikes against Syria in response to President Bashar al-Assad's suspected use of chemical weapons on citizens in a civil war gripping the country.
18. March 24, 2018: Hundreds of thousands take part in the March For Our Lives in Washington, D.C., organized by survivors of the Parkland shooting to call for gun control reform.
19. February 14, 2018: Seventeen students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, are killed, and another 17 are injured, in a horrific shooting.
20. February 4, 2018: The Philadelphia Eagles beat the New England Patriots to win their first-ever Super Bowl and stun viewers with a now-classic trick play.
21. February 9-25, 2018: The Winter Olympics are held in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
22. January 14, 2018: A teen girl escapes from her family home in southern California and calls police to rescue the rest of her 12 siblings from their abusive parents.
23. November 21, 2017: Dramatic video emerges showing a North Korean soldier defecting to South Korea while being shot at.
24. November 15, 2017: The San Juan, an Argentine navy submarine, goes missing. It was found at the bottom of the ocean almost a year later, with all 44 crew dead from an explosion that happened in the vessel.
25. October 12, 2017: Trump announces that the Pakistani military has rescued Canadian-American couple Joshua Boyle and Caitlan Coleman and their children from the Haqqani network.
26. October 1, 2017: Fifty-eight people are killed and more than 850 are injured after a gunman opens fire on a Las Vegas music festival from a 32nd floor room in the Mandalay Bay casino.
27. October 2017: Famous men are culled in the #MeToo movement.
28. July 8, 2017: The New York Times publishes a report on how members of Trump's campaign — including his son Donald Jr. — met with Russian agents in Trump Tower in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election.
29. June 1, 2017: Trump announces his intention to pull the US out of the Paris climate accord.
30. May 22, 2017: Twenty-two people leaving an Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena are killed in a terrorist bombing. Another 50 people were injured.
31. April 19, 2017: Former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez dies by suicide in prison, where he was serving a life sentence for the June 2013 murder of Odin Lloyd.
32. February 26, 2017: "La La Land" is mistakenly announced as the Best Picture winner at the Oscars, instead of "Moonlight."
33. January 28, 2017: Serena Williams beats her sister Venus to win the Australian Open, while secretly eight weeks pregnant with her first child.
34. January 21, 2017: Hundreds of thousands of people gather in Washington, D.C. and cities around the world to take part in the Women's March, protesting Trump's election.
35. January 20, 2017: Donald Trump is sworn in as the nation's 45th president.
36. November 8, 2016: Donald Trump is elected president, defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton in a landmark upset.
37. November 3, 2016: The Chicago Cubs break the Billy Goat curse and win their first World Series in 108 years.
38. October 8, 2016: The Washington Post publishes a video from a 2005 interview between "Access Hollywood" host Billy Bush and Donald Trump, in which the latter said he can grab women "by the p---y" because he's a star.
39. October 7, 2016: The Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security issue a joint statement warning that the Russians are trying to interfere in the presidential election.
40. September 12, 2016: The Indianapolis Star publishes a report detailing how USA Gymnastics failed to report sexual abuse committed by Michigan State University physician Dr. Larry Nassar.
41. September 15, 2016: Angelina Jolie files for divorce from husband Brad Pitt.
42. August 26, 2016: San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sits on the bench during the national anthem, saying "I have to take a stand for people that are oppressed."
43. August 5-21, 2016: The 2016 summer Olympics are held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
44. July 7, 2016: Five Dallas police officers are killed while working at a Black Lives Matter rally. Authorities killed the gunman with a bomb delivered by a robot.
45. June 24, 2016: Britain votes to leave the European Union.
46. June 12, 2016: A gunman opens fire inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 and injuring 53.
47. June 2, 2016: Brock Turner, a former Stanford swim team member, is sentenced to just six months in jail for sexually assaulting an inebriated woman outside a campus fraternity.
48. April 21, 2016: Music legend Prince is found dead in the elevator of his Minnesota estate. An autopsy would later find that the singer died of an overdose of the opioid fentanyl.
49. April 3, 2016: A group of news outlets around the world publish stories based on the Panama Papers, a leak of 11.5 million documents from a Panamanian law firm, showing the shady ways wealthy people use offshore accounts.
50. December 18, 2015: "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" is released, earning more than $2 billion at the box office worldwide.
51. November 13-14, 2015: Terror attacks strike Paris for a second time in a year, resulting in the deaths of 130 people and nearly 500 wounded.
52. August 26, 2015: WDBJ reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward are shot dead while filming a live TV segment in Virginia.
53. August 21, 2015: Three American men, including two active military members, thwart a terrorist attack on a French train.
54. July 20, 2015: Diplomatic ties between the United States and Cuba are restored, decades after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution.
55. July 11, 2015: Drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman escapes for a second time from his cell at a Mexican high-security prison.
56. June 26, 2015: The Supreme Court issues a 5-4 ruling that gay marriage is legal, legalizing same-sex unions nationwide.
57. June 16, 2015: New York City real estate mogul Donald Trump announces his candidacy for president with a speech at Trump Tower calling Mexican immigrants "rapists."
58. June 6, 2015: Joyce Mitchell, a worker at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, helps two convicted murderers escape.
59. June 6, 2015: American Pharoah wins the Belmont Stakes, becoming the first horse in 37 years to earn the Triple Crown of American horse racing.
60. May 2015: An outbreak of the Zika virus spreads to Brazil, and eventually moves its way up into Central America and the Caribbean.
61. March 24, 2015: Germanwings Flight 4U 9525 crashes in the Alps, killing all 150 people on board.
62. February 1, 2015: The New England Patriots win Super Bowl XLIX thanks to an interception with just seconds left in the game.
63. January 7-9, 2015: Paris is the target of multiple terror attacks that leave 17 people dead.
64. November 24, 2014: Hackers breach the network of Sony Pictures Entertainment and release embarrassing information against the company.
65. September 4, 2014: Comedian Joan Rivers dies while undergoing plastic surgery to her throat.
66. August 9, 2014: Unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown is shot dead by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, causing several days of riots in the community and fueling the Black Lives Matter movement.
67. August 19, 2014: American photojournalist James Foley is beheaded in a video recorded by ISIS, marking the beginning of the terrorist group's rise to power.
68. August 11, 2014: Beloved actor and comedian Robin Williams is found dead from a suicide at his home in California.
69. May 31, 2014: The US government agrees to release five Taliban commanders in exchange for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had gone missing from a base in Afghanistan five years prior.
70. May 24, 2014: Rapper Kanye West marries reality star Kim Kardashian in a lavish wedding in Florence, Italy.
71. May 5, 2014: TMZ obtains footage showing Beyoncé getting between her husband and sister when the two come to blows while riding in an elevator after the Met Gala.
72. March 23, 2014: The World Health Organization reports that there has been an outbreak of Ebola in Guinea, the start of the largest outbreak of the virus in history.
73. April 2014: The Flint water crisis begins as the Michigan city tries to cut costs by getting their water from the Flint River instead of getting it from Detroit.
74. March 25, 2014: Actress Gwyneth Paltrow announces her separation from her Coldplay frontman husband Chris Martin on her blog Goop, saying they have decided to "consciously uncouple".
75. March 8, 2014: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 mysteriously vanishes off radar while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board.
76. March 2014: Russia invades Ukraine and annexes the Crimea, after Ukraine's pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, is toppled in anti-government protests.
77. February 18, 2014: A 39-year-old Jimmy Fallon starts his tenure as host of "The Tonight Show".
78. February 2, 2014: Academy Award-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman dies at the age of 46 from a drug overdose.
79. February 1, 2014: Dylan Farrow writes an essay describing how her father, director Woody Allen, molested her as a child. Allen was never charged and denies the allegation.
80. December 5, 2013: Nelson Mandela, South Africa's trailblazing first black president, dies at the age of 25.
81. July 22, 2013: Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, gives birth to a baby boy named Prince George, who becomes third in line to the British throne, behind his father and grandfather.
82. July 13, 2013: The Black Lives Matter movement begins after George Zimmerman is acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges in the shooting death of black teen Trayvon Martin.
83. July 7, 2013: Scottish tennis player Andy Murray becomes the first British man to win Wimbledon since Fred Perry in 1936.
84. July 6, 2013: "Glee" star Cory Monteith is found dead in a Vancouver, British Columbia, hotel room after succumbing to a drug and alcohol overdose.
85. June 6, 2013: The Guardian and the Washington Post publish stories based on information leaked to them by government contractor Edward Snowden.
86. May 6, 2013: Three women who had been missing for about a decade are rescued from the Cleveland, Ohio, home of Ariel Castro.
87. May 16, 2013: The now-defunct news site Gawker publishes a video showing Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack.
88. April 15, 2013: Two pressure cooker bombs explode at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 250 others.
89. March 13, 2013: Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio is elected pope, becoming the first South American to lead the Roman Catholic Church. He assumes the name Pope Francis.
90. February 28, 2013: Basketball legend Dennis Rodman travels to North Korea and meets leader Kim Jong-un, becoming the first American to meet the new leader since he assumed office two years prior.
91. December 14, 2012: A mentally-disturbed shooter kills 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, before killing himself.
92. November 9, 2012: Gen. David Petraeus resigns as director of the CIA after the FBI uncovers the fact that he shared classified information with his mistress and biographer, Paula Broadwell.
93. November 6, 2012: Voters in Colorado and Washington vote to legalize recreational marijuana, becoming the first states in the US to do so.
94. October 29, 2012: Superstorm Sandy causes widespread death and damage, especially in the Northeastern US.
95. October 22, 2012: After being accused of conducting an elaborate doping scheme, American cyclist Lance Armstrong is stripped of his seven Tour de France medals and banned from cycling competitions for life.
96. September 11, 2012: US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans are killed after a mob storms the US mission in Benghazi, Libya.
97. July 20, 2012: A shooter opens fire at a midnight showing of "The Dark Knight," in Aurora, Colorado, killing 12 people and injuring dozens of others.
98. November 7, 2011: Michael Jackson's doctor, Conrad Murray, is found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in connection to the late singer's overdose death.
99. October 20, 2011: Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is captured and killed by revolutionaries, bringing an end to his 42-year regime.
100. October 3, 2011: American Amanda Knox, 24, is freed from an Italian prison after her conviction in the 2009 murder of her British roommate is overthrown.
101. September 17, 2011: The Occupy Wall Street movement begins with about 1,000 people protesting in downtown Manhattan's Zuccotti Park.
102. July 23, 2011: Grammy Award-winning singer Amy Winehouse, 27, is found dead at her home in north London.
103. July 22, 2011: A right-wing Christian extremist kills 77 people — most of them children — in attacks on Oslo, Norway, and the nearby island of Utoya.
104. July 7, 2011: Rupert Murdoch's News of the World tabloid shutters after it was revealed that staffers hacked into the phones of prominent figures like Prince William to mine for stories.
105. May 14, 2011: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, is pulled off a Paris-bound flight in New York and charged with sexually assaulting a hotel maid.
106. May 1, 2011: President Barack Obama addresses the nation to announce the death of terrorist Osama bin Laden, after a successful Navy SEAL raid on the 9/11 mastermind's compound in Pakistan.
107. April 29, 2011: 3 billion people tune in to watch Britain's Prince William marry college sweetheart Kate Middleton in a ceremony at Westminster Cathedral in London
108. March 11, 2011: An earthquake in Japan causes the second-worst nuclear accident in history.
109. March 2011: Civil war breaks out in Syria after military defectors create the Free Syrian Army, to combat those loyal to President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
110. February 11, 2011: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigns under pressure from revolutionaries, giving up the seat he had held for three decades.
111. January 28, 2011: "Two and a Half Men" star Charlie Sheen enters rehab, a day after the actor was rushed from his home to the hospital for abdominal and chest pains, according to CBS Los Angeles.
112. December 17, 2010: The suicide of a Tunisian street vendor serves as a catalyst for the Arab Spring.
113. December 8, 2010: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange turns himself in to British police after Swedish authorities put out a warrant for his arrest in connection to a rape accusation.
114. October 13, 2010: 33 miners are rescued after spending 69 days trapped in a Chilean copper mine.
115. June 27, 2010: The FBI arrests 10 Russian spies caught living deep undercover in the United States.
116. May 2, 2010: The European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund sign off on a €110 million bailout of Greece, to save the EU country from default.
117. April 20, 2010: An explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico causes the biggest marine oil spill in history.
118. April 14, 2010: An eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano causes an ash cloud to spread across Europe, grounding flights in the region.
119. January 12, 2010: Hundreds of thousands of people are killed after a 11117.0-magnitude earthquake strikes the island nation of Haiti.

Link to article

1. October 31, 2019: The House votes to formalize its impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump's dealings with Ukraine.
2. August 10, 2019: Sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is found dead in his Manhattan jail cell where he was awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
3. August 7, 2019: The bodies of Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky are found in Manitoba, Canada. Police suspect the friends went on a killing spree across the country, and had been searching for them for 20 days.
4. July 7, 2019: The US women's national soccer team wins the World Cup for a fourth time in a row.
5. April 18, 2019: A redacted version of the special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and the Trump campaign's possible collusion is released to the public.
6. March 15, 2019: Fifty people are killed and another 50 are injured in attacks on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.
7. March 12, 2019: Federal prosecutors in Boston charge at least 50 people in the "Varsity Blues" scandal, accusing many of them of using bribes to get their students into college. Among the defendants are actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman.
8. March 2019: Governments around the world banned the Boeing 737 Max from their airspaces after two crashes in 5 months killed 346 people.
9. January 10, 2019: Jayme Closs, a 13-year-old Wisconsin girl who went missing three months prior, escapes from a rural home where she was being held captive by her parent's killer. He later pleads guilty to the crimes.
10. October 2, 2018: Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi is murdered inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul.
11. September 27, 2018: More than 20 million people tune in to watch the confirmation hearing of Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
12. July 10, 2018: 12 Thai boys and their soccer coach are rescued from a flooded cave after more than two weeks stuck in the cavern.
13. June 24, 2018: Saudi Arabia lifts its ban on allowing women to drive.
14. May 19, 2018: Millions around the world tune in to watch Britain's Prince Harry marry American actress Meghan Markle at Windsor Castle.
15. April 24, 2018: DNA submitted to an ancestry database helps investigators catch who they believe to be the "Golden State Killer", a murderer and rapist who tormented the Bay Area in the 1970s and '80s.
16. April 6-June 20, 2018: Under its "zero tolerance" immigration policy, the Trump administration separates thousands of children from their migrant parents at the border, causing widespread outrage on a national level.
17. April 13, 2018: The US, Britain, and France conduct air strikes against Syria in response to President Bashar al-Assad's suspected use of chemical weapons on citizens in a civil war gripping the country.
18. March 24, 2018: Hundreds of thousands take part in the March For Our Lives in Washington, D.C., organized by survivors of the Parkland shooting to call for gun control reform.
19. February 14, 2018: Seventeen students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, are killed, and another 17 are injured, in a horrific shooting.
20. February 4, 2018: The Philadelphia Eagles beat the New England Patriots to win their first-ever Super Bowl and stun viewers with a now-classic trick play.
21. February 9-25, 2018: The Winter Olympics are held in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
22. January 14, 2018: A teen girl escapes from her family home in southern California and calls police to rescue the rest of her 12 siblings from their abusive parents.
23. November 21, 2017: Dramatic video emerges showing a North Korean soldier defecting to South Korea while being shot at.
24. November 15, 2017: The San Juan, an Argentine navy submarine, goes missing. It was found at the bottom of the ocean almost a year later, with all 44 crew dead from an explosion that happened in the vessel.
25. October 12, 2017: Trump announces that the Pakistani military has rescued Canadian-American couple Joshua Boyle and Caitlan Coleman and their children from the Haqqani network.
26. October 1, 2017: Fifty-eight people are killed and more than 850 are injured after a gunman opens fire on a Las Vegas music festival from a 32nd floor room in the Mandalay Bay casino.
27. October 2017: Famous men are culled in the #MeToo movement.
28. July 8, 2017: The New York Times publishes a report on how members of Trump's campaign — including his son Donald Jr. — met with Russian agents in Trump Tower in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election.
29. June 1, 2017: Trump announces his intention to pull the US out of the Paris climate accord.
30. May 22, 2017: Twenty-two people leaving an Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena are killed in a terrorist bombing. Another 50 people were injured.
31. April 19, 2017: Former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez dies by suicide in prison, where he was serving a life sentence for the June 2013 murder of Odin Lloyd.
32. February 26, 2017: "La La Land" is mistakenly announced as the Best Picture winner at the Oscars, instead of "Moonlight."
33. January 28, 2017: Serena Williams beats her sister Venus to win the Australian Open, while secretly eight weeks pregnant with her first child.
34. January 21, 2017: Hundreds of thousands of people gather in Washington, D.C. and cities around the world to take part in the Women's March, protesting Trump's election.
35. January 20, 2017: Donald Trump is sworn in as the nation's 45th president.
36. November 8, 2016: Donald Trump is elected president, defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton in a landmark upset.
37. November 3, 2016: The Chicago Cubs break the Billy Goat curse and win their first World Series in 108 years.
38. October 8, 2016: The Washington Post publishes a video from a 2005 interview between "Access Hollywood" host Billy Bush and Donald Trump, in which the latter said he can grab women "by the p---y" because he's a star.
39. October 7, 2016: The Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security issue a joint statement warning that the Russians are trying to interfere in the presidential election.
40. September 12, 2016: The Indianapolis Star publishes a report detailing how USA Gymnastics failed to report sexual abuse committed by Michigan State University physician Dr. Larry Nassar.
41. September 15, 2016: Angelina Jolie files for divorce from husband Brad Pitt.
42. August 26, 2016: San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sits on the bench during the national anthem, saying "I have to take a stand for people that are oppressed."
43. August 5-21, 2016: The 2016 summer Olympics are held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
44. July 7, 2016: Five Dallas police officers are killed while working at a Black Lives Matter rally. Authorities killed the gunman with a bomb delivered by a robot.
45. June 24, 2016: Britain votes to leave the European Union.
46. June 12, 2016: A gunman opens fire inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 and injuring 53.
47. June 2, 2016: Brock Turner, a former Stanford swim team member, is sentenced to just six months in jail for sexually assaulting an inebriated woman outside a campus fraternity.
48. April 21, 2016: Music legend Prince is found dead in the elevator of his Minnesota estate. An autopsy would later find that the singer died of an overdose of the opioid fentanyl.
49. April 3, 2016: A group of news outlets around the world publish stories based on the Panama Papers, a leak of 11.5 million documents from a Panamanian law firm, showing the shady ways wealthy people use offshore accounts.
50. December 18, 2015: "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" is released, earning more than $2 billion at the box office worldwide.
51. November 13-14, 2015: Terror attacks strike Paris for a second time in a year, resulting in the deaths of 130 people and nearly 500 wounded.
52. August 26, 2015: WDBJ reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward are shot dead while filming a live TV segment in Virginia.
53. August 21, 2015: Three American men, including two active military members, thwart a terrorist attack on a French train.
54. July 20, 2015: Diplomatic ties between the United States and Cuba are restored, decades after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution.
55. July 11, 2015: Drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman escapes for a second time from his cell at a Mexican high-security prison.
56. June 26, 2015: The Supreme Court issues a 5-4 ruling that gay marriage is legal, legalizing same-sex unions nationwide.
57. June 16, 2015: New York City real estate mogul Donald Trump announces his candidacy for president with a speech at Trump Tower calling Mexican immigrants "rapists."
58. June 6, 2015: Joyce Mitchell, a worker at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, helps two convicted murderers escape.
59. June 6, 2015: American Pharoah wins the Belmont Stakes, becoming the first horse in 37 years to earn the Triple Crown of American horse racing.
60. May 2015: An outbreak of the Zika virus spreads to Brazil, and eventually moves its way up into Central America and the Caribbean.
61. March 24, 2015: Germanwings Flight 4U 9525 crashes in the Alps, killing all 150 people on board.
62. February 1, 2015: The New England Patriots win Super Bowl XLIX thanks to an interception with just seconds left in the game.
63. January 7-9, 2015: Paris is the target of multiple terror attacks that leave 17 people dead.
64. November 24, 2014: Hackers breach the network of Sony Pictures Entertainment and release embarrassing information against the company.
65. September 4, 2014: Comedian Joan Rivers dies while undergoing plastic surgery to her throat.
66. August 9, 2014: Unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown is shot dead by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, causing several days of riots in the community and fueling the Black Lives Matter movement.
67. August 19, 2014: American photojournalist James Foley is beheaded in a video recorded by ISIS, marking the beginning of the terrorist group's rise to power.
68. August 11, 2014: Beloved actor and comedian Robin Williams is found dead from a suicide at his home in California.
69. May 31, 2014: The US government agrees to release five Taliban commanders in exchange for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had gone missing from a base in Afghanistan five years prior.
70. May 24, 2014: Rapper Kanye West marries reality star Kim Kardashian in a lavish wedding in Florence, Italy.
71. May 5, 2014: TMZ obtains footage showing Beyoncé getting between her husband and sister when the two come to blows while riding in an elevator after the Met Gala.
72. March 23, 2014: The World Health Organization reports that there has been an outbreak of Ebola in Guinea, the start of the largest outbreak of the virus in history.
73. April 2014: The Flint water crisis begins as the Michigan city tries to cut costs by getting their water from the Flint River instead of getting it from Detroit.
74. March 25, 2014: Actress Gwyneth Paltrow announces her separation from her Coldplay frontman husband Chris Martin on her blog Goop, saying they have decided to "consciously uncouple".
75. March 8, 2014: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 mysteriously vanishes off radar while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board.
76. March 2014: Russia invades Ukraine and annexes the Crimea, after Ukraine's pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, is toppled in anti-government protests.
77. February 18, 2014: A 39-year-old Jimmy Fallon starts his tenure as host of "The Tonight Show".
78. February 2, 2014: Academy Award-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman dies at the age of 46 from a drug overdose.
79. February 1, 2014: Dylan Farrow writes an essay describing how her father, director Woody Allen, molested her as a child. Allen was never charged and denies the allegation.
80. December 5, 2013: Nelson Mandela, South Africa's trailblazing first black president, dies at the age of 25.
81. July 22, 2013: Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, gives birth to a baby boy named Prince George, who becomes third in line to the British throne, behind his father and grandfather.
82. July 13, 2013: The Black Lives Matter movement begins after George Zimmerman is acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges in the shooting death of black teen Trayvon Martin.
83. July 7, 2013: Scottish tennis player Andy Murray becomes the first British man to win Wimbledon since Fred Perry in 1936.
84. July 6, 2013: "Glee" star Cory Monteith is found dead in a Vancouver, British Columbia, hotel room after succumbing to a drug and alcohol overdose.
85. June 6, 2013: The Guardian and the Washington Post publish stories based on information leaked to them by government contractor Edward Snowden.
86. May 6, 2013: Three women who had been missing for about a decade are rescued from the Cleveland, Ohio, home of Ariel Castro.
87. May 16, 2013: The now-defunct news site Gawker publishes a video showing Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack.
88. April 15, 2013: Two pressure cooker bombs explode at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 250 others.
89. March 13, 2013: Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio is elected pope, becoming the first South American to lead the Roman Catholic Church. He assumes the name Pope Francis.
90. February 28, 2013: Basketball legend Dennis Rodman travels to North Korea and meets leader Kim Jong-un, becoming the first American to meet the new leader since he assumed office two years prior.
91. December 14, 2012: A mentally-disturbed shooter kills 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, before killing himself.
92. November 9, 2012: Gen. David Petraeus resigns as director of the CIA after the FBI uncovers the fact that he shared classified information with his mistress and biographer, Paula Broadwell.
93. November 6, 2012: Voters in Colorado and Washington vote to legalize recreational marijuana, becoming the first states in the US to do so.
94. October 29, 2012: Superstorm Sandy causes widespread death and damage, especially in the Northeastern US.
95. October 22, 2012: After being accused of conducting an elaborate doping scheme, American cyclist Lance Armstrong is stripped of his seven Tour de France medals and banned from cycling competitions for life.
96. September 11, 2012: US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans are killed after a mob storms the US mission in Benghazi, Libya.
97. July 20, 2012: A shooter opens fire at a midnight showing of "The Dark Knight," in Aurora, Colorado, killing 12 people and injuring dozens of others.
98. November 7, 2011: Michael Jackson's doctor, Conrad Murray, is found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in connection to the late singer's overdose death.
99. October 20, 2011: Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is captured and killed by revolutionaries, bringing an end to his 42-year regime.
100. October 3, 2011: American Amanda Knox, 24, is freed from an Italian prison after her conviction in the 2009 murder of her British roommate is overthrown.
101. September 17, 2011: The Occupy Wall Street movement begins with about 1,000 people protesting in downtown Manhattan's Zuccotti Park.
102. July 23, 2011: Grammy Award-winning singer Amy Winehouse, 27, is found dead at her home in north London.
103. July 22, 2011: A right-wing Christian extremist kills 77 people — most of them children — in attacks on Oslo, Norway, and the nearby island of Utoya.
104. July 7, 2011: Rupert Murdoch's News of the World tabloid shutters after it was revealed that staffers hacked into the phones of prominent figures like Prince William to mine for stories.
105. May 14, 2011: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, is pulled off a Paris-bound flight in New York and charged with sexually assaulting a hotel maid.
106. May 1, 2011: President Barack Obama addresses the nation to announce the death of terrorist Osama bin Laden, after a successful Navy SEAL raid on the 9/11 mastermind's compound in Pakistan.
107. April 29, 2011: 3 billion people tune in to watch Britain's Prince William marry college sweetheart Kate Middleton in a ceremony at Westminster Cathedral in London
108. March 11, 2011: An earthquake in Japan causes the second-worst nuclear accident in history.
109. March 2011: Civil war breaks out in Syria after military defectors create the Free Syrian Army, to combat those loyal to President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
110. February 11, 2011: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigns under pressure from revolutionaries, giving up the seat he had held for three decades.
111. January 28, 2011: "Two and a Half Men" star Charlie Sheen enters rehab, a day after the actor was rushed from his home to the hospital for abdominal and chest pains, according to CBS Los Angeles.
112. December 17, 2010: The suicide of a Tunisian street vendor serves as a catalyst for the Arab Spring.
113. December 8, 2010: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange turns himself in to British police after Swedish authorities put out a warrant for his arrest in connection to a rape accusation.
114. October 13, 2010: 33 miners are rescued after spending 69 days trapped in a Chilean copper mine.
115. June 27, 2010: The FBI arrests 10 Russian spies caught living deep undercover in the United States.
116. May 2, 2010: The European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund sign off on a €110 million bailout of Greece, to save the EU country from default.
117. April 20, 2010: An explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico causes the biggest marine oil spill in history.
118. April 14, 2010: An eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano causes an ash cloud to spread across Europe, grounding flights in the region.
119. January 12, 2010: Hundreds of thousands of people are killed after a 11117.0-magnitude earthquake strikes the island nation of Haiti.

Link to article

Today, I heard about recent efforts by Disney against the gambling industry. I thought you guys would be interested in hearing about it, as it also heavily involves Star Wars...and particularly, Disney's plans in 2019 for Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, and the Star Wars hotel, at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.
It also involves Disney's existing, popular offering "Star Wars Day at Sea", and other Star Wars-related plans for its cruises in 2019, which is parly based out of the Port of Miami in Miami, Florida, and Port Canaveral (Orlando, Florida).
The tl;dnr of it is as such: (broken down into smaller sections)

• Before Disney purchased Lucasfilm, Lucasfilm had allowed the construction and use of character-themed slot machines, and other gambling aspects, as related to the Star Wars brand. This was presumably done for Lucasfilm to make money off of licensing fees and royalties.
  
• Disney, after buying Lucasfilm in 2012, "phased out" (re: banned) Star Wars and Marvel slot machines at casinos, and online gambling games, after being "exposed" as [now] owning them by New York Times reporters Lizette Alvarez and Michael Snyder. They have done so to protect their "family-friendly" brand, of which they now consider Star Wars to be a part of.
  
• Casino owners and online vendors were against the move, saying it would hurt their businesses by taking away some of their slot machines / online gambling games.
  
• Casino owners in Florida, seeking to expand their business(es), formed pro-gambling-growth groups, designed to try and stimulate local economies and businesses by building new casinos across the state. This would presumably include in tourism-heavy areas, such as Orlando (of which Walt Disney World is a major feature) and Miami (which is a major port for Disney Cruise Lines).
  
• Disney has now collaborated with the Seminole Tribe of Florida, the latter of which is a major gambling monolith and owns the Hard Rock franchise, to try and pass law to change current Florida rules. The change would make it harder for people to build and open new casinos in, and around, their properties (including Disney's currently-in-production Star Wars Orlando theme park, Galaxy's Edge) by making it so that 60% of state voters would have to vote "Yes" on gambling and casino expansion in the future.
  
• Disney has spent an estimated $17.5 million, in conjunction with the Seminole Tribe, since 2015 to combat gambling expansion in Florida. (Source) Disney donated $5 million to anti-gambling expansion efforts in April 2018, which the Seminole Tribe matched. (Source)
  
• Disney also donated $400,000 to support the campaign of Florida governor candidate Adam Putnam, who supports Disney's anti-gambling expansion stance.
  
• Disney has invested an estimated $1 billion in the construction of Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge. As the theme park is doing something never before done - building a land around an entirely new environment within the franchise, rather than an existing one - they are taking a huge financial risk. Their anti-gambling expansion efforts are also related to protecting their financial interests in Galaxy's Edge, as well as their planned Star Wars hotel and resort.
  

The Walt Disney Company is one of the most successful media conglomerate companies in the world. Just about everyone has heard of the Disney theme parks stationed in Florida, California, and abroad. Just about everyone has seen classic Disney films like Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast. Not everyone knows about Disney's relationship with the gambling industry, however, and it is a noteworthy one.
Over the years, Disney has acquired the rights to several major entertainment companies and their licensed characters. In 2009, Disney bought the Marvel Entertainment company, creator of the famed Marvel comic books and a slew of popular superhero characters. In 2012, it purchased all rights to LucasFilm, the parent company that created the Star Wars brand.
Disney announced its plans to phase out all Star Wars and Marvel-themed casino slot machines in the United States last fall. The multimillion dollar company has the power to do this, because it now owns all rights to these brands.
According to a Disney spokeswoman, the character-themed slot phase-out is not a new decision. As part of Marvel's “integration” with Disney, she said the decision was made several years ago to let the machines gradually fade out through attrition. Only a few Marvel license agreements remain at this point, and they are set to expire within the next several years. Star Wars-themed slots will also trickle away, but it will take a few more years for that process to complete.
[...] Disney wields a certain amount of power over casinos, both on land and online, because of these acquisitions. Instead of promoting Star Wars and Marvel characters via slot machines, the company prefers to use their likenesses in movies that serve to perpetuate the Disney brand.
As the owner of LucasFilm, Disney has another trilogy of Star Wars films currently in the works. [...] Fans can expect to see Disney continue to advance their brands through avenues other than the gaming industry.
Disney has made its opinion of the gambling industry known in Florida: It does not support the addition of more resort casinos to that area. Not only does Disney plan to phase out Marvel and Star Wars-themed slot machines, it also hopes to prevent the development of new casino resorts in the state.
As it stands today, Orlando's Walt Disney World is the top tourist attraction on the globe. Over 50 million people visit the entertainment resort every year and partake of theme parks like Magic Kingdom, Epcot, and Hollywood Studios. From a business standpoint, it makes sense that Disney would not want another tourist draw infringing on its potential customer base in the Orlando area.
Disney denies that self-interest is its main motivation for opposing new casinos. Andrea Finger, a spokeswoman for the company, said the corporation opposes casino expansion for “many reasons.” One of the primary reasons is the fact that Florida is a “family friendly” vacation spot; adding more casinos to the landscape would tarnish that. Finger lauded Florida's efforts in “research, innovation, and entrepreneurship” and indicated that adding more casino resorts would create an “inconsistent” atmosphere in the state.
Finger made no statement suggesting that Disney is protecting its own interests by objecting to more casinos. This inference has been made, however, by critics based on the connection between Disney and its Marvel and Star Wars slot machines that recently came to light.
Critics also cite the fact that increased Florida casinos might steal valuable convention contracts from the Mickey Mouse company. At this point, Disney hosts approximately 700,000 square feet of convention space in its Florida resorts.
Disney's ownership of Marvel and LucasFilm slot machines was brought to the public's attention by New York Times reporters Lizette Alvarez and Michael Snyder. Critics immediately began shouting hypocrisy at the fact that Disney, a vocal gambling opponent, owns and profits from character-themed casino slot machines.
The Times reporters asked Disney whether its ownership of the slots “undercut” its casino gambling stance. A spokeswoman responded that the company's affiliation with the casinos was only temporary, and that it would take a few years for current slot machine contracts to expire.
[...] When Marvel and Star Wars-themed slots do eventually disappear from casinos, their absence will be a blow to the gaming industry. Casino patrons are drawn to the colorful games touting Spider Man, Darth Vader, and other exciting Hollywood characters. Until the machines are completely phased out, the characters will continue to entertain casino patrons both online and on land.
The online gaming industry will definitely be affected by Disney's prohibition. The Spider Man Slot game, for example, is an enticing game for online gamblers that was introduced in 2012. Other Marvel-themed online slots include Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3, the Fantastic Four, Captain America, Thor, and Wolverine Slots. The eventual loss of these games will leave a gaping hole in customers' palette of gaming choices.
[Possibly in response to Disney's decision], a group called the Associated Industries of Florida launched a new pro-casino campaign. This group is lobbying for more casinos in the area as a means of promoting jobs and stimulating the local economy. Analysts expect the battle between Disney and pro-casino lobbyists to become more heated as politicians compete for voter support in the upcoming election. (Source)
[However, Orlando isn't the only city that Disney is engaging in anti-casino efforts with.] The biggest challenger standing between [the city of] Miami and casinos is a mouse.
Walt Disney World, the giant resort near Orlando whose four theme parks draw more than 45 million visitors a year, has made preventing "destination" casinos a top priority. And few, if any, businesses carry as much weight in Florida as Disney, which employs more than 60,000 workers, generates nearly $600 million a year in tax revenue — and doled out more than $2 million to political candidates and causes during the past election cycle.
Some analysts say Disney — and, by extension, Orlando's entire tourism industry — has good reason to be wary of casinos. Though adult-oriented resorts in South Florida are unlikely to appeal to Disney's core audience of families with young children, they could siphon away travelers in narrower segments that are also important to the resort, from South Americans to conventions to weddings.
"Disney has lots of little pockets or niches that they're really good at getting market share in. And it adds up," said Duncan Dickson, a professor at the University of Central Florida's Rosen College of Hospitality Management. "Disney doesn't want another Las Vegas anywhere close to them. Who needs the competition?"
[Case in point, Disney also has Disney Cruise Lines, based in both Miami and Port Canaveral (Orlando).] Disney Cruise Line has revealed it will extend its popular "Star Wars Day at Sea" program through 2019, with the addition of nine cruises -- each of which will include a Star Wars-themed sea day, complete with special programming and restaurant menus. Family-friendly activities include Star Wars character meet-and-greets, movie nights (featuring new releases), Star Wars trivia, and a Jedi training show, where kids can learn lightsaber skills and battle Darth Vader.
Throughout the day, restaurants and bars also will serve themed foods and cocktails. The sea day will end with a fireworks show and deck party, hosted by Star Wars heroes and villains. All cruises span seven nights and depart from Port Canaveral (Orlando), Florida. (Source)
[...] Disney has always opposed efforts to expand gambling, [citing it as being againts its "family-friendly" image].
The Walt Disney Co., one of the most brand-protective companies on the planet, does not want to jeopardize its kid-friendly reputation by any association whatsoever with casinos and the taboo images they often conjure. The company's cruise line is the only major operator to sail ships without onboard casinos, which are typically one of the biggest generators of on-board spending.
"We've studied this issue carefully and remain opposed for many reasons," said Disney spokesman Mike Griffin, "including the fact that it is inconsistent with Florida's brand as a family-friendly destination, and with the efforts we've long supported to diversify Florida's economy through research, innovation, and entrepreneurship."
The legislation to be considered in Tallahassee would authorize three "destination" casinos in Miami-Dade and Broward counties. Each would boast a luxury hotel, shops, restaurants, convention space and casinos with every major game, from blackjack to roulette and craps. Any company awarded a casino license would have to spend at least $2 billion building the facility.
Las Vegas Sands and Wynn Resorts, both based in Las Vegas, and Genting, a Malaysian-based resort developer, are among the companies expected to seek licenses. Genting has already spent more than $300 million to buy bay-front property in downtown Miami and has announced plans for a $3.8 billion resort.
All have promised they will create thousands of jobs in South Florida, making the deal attractive to lawmakers hoping to lower the state's 10.6 percent unemployment rate.
Analysts say anyone that invests that much capital to build a resort also will have to spend lavishly to market the property. At a minimum, that will force Disney to ramp up its own spending on advertising, eroding its profit margins.
"Anytime you've got to fight and compete with more marketing dollars, which you know these folks have in abundance, it makes Disney's job that much harder to battle against," said Vicki Johnson, a tourism-marketing expert in Orlando.
More specifically, casinos could prove attractive draws in key markets for Disney. Executives at Genting, for instance, have said they would market heavily in Latin America.
Latin America — particularly Brazil, its biggest country — has become one of Disney World's most valuable markets in recent years. This summer, even as overall attendance at the resort was about flat with a year ago, Disney officials said traffic from Brazil was up by a double-digit percentage.
Though Disney doesn't disclose exact attendance numbers, national data show that visitation from Brazil is up 27% to more than 833,000 so far this year. And though Miami is the most popular destination for South American travelers, Orlando is growing more rapidly.
Disney says its business from Brazil is predominantly family-leisure travel, the group least likely to be swayed by casinos. But some industry followers say lavish resorts, when combined with the boutique shopping already in Miami, might be enough to peel away some of that business, especially Brazilians with older children or none at all.
"All of a sudden, it really cuts into their [Disney's] South American markets," Johnson said.
Group meetings and conventions business is also a growing profit center for Disney, which has nearly 470,000 square feet of meeting space spread among its hotels. It also routinely picks up lucrative private parties and other business tied to shows using Orange County's massive, publicly owned convention center.
Finally, allowing casinos in South Florida could lead to pressure to build more in other parts of the state. Already, some hoteliers in Orlando — led by Harris Rosen, owner of three major convention hotels — have made rumblings about bringing casinos to Central Florida. And officials at Port Canaveral — Disney Cruise Line's home port — are interested in casinos, too.
"Once they get their foot in the door, what's next? Orange County is going to say, 'Well, if it's legal in Dade County, why isn't it legal here?' " said Dickson, the UCF professor.
Disney has worked to enlist broader business groups to fight the casino legislation, most notably the Florida Chamber of Commerce, even though more than half of the businesses represented on the chamber's board of directors say they are neutral on the issue.
And the opposition from Disney has put casino boosters on the defensive during the past few days.
"Florida's identity cannot be changed because one casino or two destination resorts open in Miami-Dade County," said state Rep. Erik Fresen, R-Miami, who is sponsoring the casino legislation in the Florida House of Representatives.
"Florida will always be the Sunshine State," he added. "The dominant trademark of Florida will always be Disney World. I don't think they have anything to worry about when it comes to that." (Source)
There have been multiple attempts to garner support in the state legislature for non-Native American casinos and other forms of gambling expansion in the state. Currently, the Seminoles control the ability of Florida to expand full-fledged casinos per their current compact. And the power of the Seminoles in the state is substantial.
In order to change current law, there must be a constitutional amendment backed by the voters of Florida. There is one such opportunity on the ballot for the November 6, 2018 election.
The Casino Gambling Initiative, if approved, would give voters the exclusive right to authorize casinos going forward, casinos being comprised of card games, slot machines, and other casino-style games. All ballot measures in the future would then require a citizen-initiated process by which a number of signatures of registered voters must be obtained for ballot consideration.
Currently, however, the Seminoles reserve the exclusive right to offer blackjack, craps, and roulette in Florida, which would present a problem that would have to be addressed. The agreement with the Seminoles was signed by Governor Rick Scott in 2015, and is effective for 20 years.
While this may end up in a legal fight, poker rooms are not an exclusive right of the tribe, and would not be an issue.
If Amendment 3 passes in November by 60% or more of the popular vote, a new day may begin for casinos in Florida. This will also drastically increase the opportunity for poker rooms throughout the state. (Source)
The US Supreme Court repealed the longstanding federal sports betting ban known as PASPA (Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act). The landmark decision allows states to dictate their own sports wagering laws.
That means sports betting could be coming to Florida casinos, should the legislature pass market regulations. But Republican gubernatorial candidate Adam Putnam said this week that if he’s elected, he would oppose such legislation.
[Putnam also echoes Disney's reasoning.]
“I’ve always been one who has said we don’t need to expand the footprint of gambling in Florida,” Putnam declared at a campaign stop. “It’s not who we are as a state. We’re a family-friendly vacation destination. We’re a small business-oriented state.”
“If I lived in the middle of the desert in Nevada, [like Las Vegas], maybe I would grasp onto whatever straw or life raft somebody threw me,” he continued. “But we live in Florida, and we’ve got unlimited opportunities, and we don’t need to sell our state short.” (Source)
Earlier this year, Disney also gave $400,000 to Florida Grown, a committee supporting Putnam's gubernatorial bid.
[...] Disney officials would not agree to an interview, but in a statement, Jacquee Wahler, vice president of Walt Disney World Resorts, wrote, “We support candidates who understand issues important to our company, and demonstrate strong support for business and tourism in Florida.” (Source)
[Meanwhile, Disney is busy constructing what it hopes will be its next big moneymaker: Galaxy's Edge, a Star Wars-themed land in Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World in Orlando. Disney also plans to construct a Star Wars-themed hotel and resort adjacent to Galaxy's Edge.]
The ongoing success of high-profile films, like the Marvel and Star Wars franchises, can play a big role in the theme parks ability to tap into new characters and storylines for rides and shows.
Experts have said the success in theme park rides today are built on characters and properties that resonate with visitors outside the park. Thus new lands themed after popular franchises have proven to be a boon — like Disney's Star Wars and Frozen attractions, and Universal Orlando Resort's success with the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.
[So far this year], the theme parks division for the quarter saw a 13% increase in revenue to $4.87 billion, up from $4.29 billion for the same time last year. The division also saw a 13% increase in revenue for the first six months of the year to $10.03 billion, up from $8.85 billion for the year-ago period.
According to the earnings report:
"Results included a benefit from a shift in the timing of the Easter holiday relative to our fiscal periods. The current quarter included one week of the Easter holiday, whereas the entire Easter holiday fell in the third quarter of the prior year. Higher operating income at our domestic parks and resorts was primarily due to increased guest spending, attendance growth at Walt Disney World Resort and higher sponsorship revenue, partially offset by increased costs.
Guest spending growth was due to increases in average ticket prices, average daily hotel room rates and food, beverage and merchandise spending. The increase in costs was primarily due to labor and other cost inflation, an increase in depreciation associated with new attractions and higher technology spending." (Source)
[Driving this growth are Disney's planned new additions, including Galaxy's Edge, which is currently under construction ("labor costs").]
Disney’s new Star Wars land won’t open until next year, but it is not too early to declare that Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge will be the most ambitious theme park land ever built.
The numbers alone might justify the claim. At 14 acres each, Disney’s twin Star Wars lands will be the largest the company has built at the Disneyland and Walt Disney World resorts. Disney has not confirmed a budget for Galaxy’s Edge, but the project is believed widely within the industry to be costing at least one billion dollars. (Source)

Rapid City Journal (RCJ) - January 21st Edition
1965–1970: Early career Influenced by early-rock-and-roll and rhythm-and-blues artists, including groups such as The Beatles, The Drifters and The Four Seasons, he favored tightly-structured pop melodies and down-to-earth, unpretentious songwriting.[20]
After seeing The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, Joel decided to pursue a career in music. In an interview he said of the group's impact, "That one performance changed my life … Up to that moment I'd never considered playing rock as a career. And when I saw four guys who didn't look like they'd come out of the Hollywood star mill, who played their own songs and instruments, and especially because you could see this look in John Lennon's face – and he looked like he was always saying: 'F--- you!' – I said: 'I know these guys, I can relate to these guys, I am these guys.' This is what I'm going to do – play in a rock band'."[21]
Joel joined the Echoes,[22] a group that specialized in British Invasion covers. The Echoes began recording in 1965. Joel (then 16) also played piano on several records released through Kama Sutra Productions and on recordings produced by Shadow Morton. Joel played on a demo version of "Leader of the Pack", which would become a major hit for the Shangri-Las.[23] Joel states that in 1964 he played on a recording of the Shangri-Las' "Remember (Walking in the Sand)" but he is unaware of whether he played on the demo or master version;[24] The released single included a co-producer credit for Artie Ripp,[25] who later was the first to sign and produce Joel as a solo artist after Michael Lang, who had given Joel a monetary advance, passed Joel along to Ripp to focus his attentions elsewhere instead.[26]
In late 1965, the Echoes changed their name to the Emeralds and then to the Lost Souls. Joel left the band in 1967 to join the Hassles, a Long Island group that had signed with United Artists Records.[27] Over the next year and a half they released four singles and two albums (The Hassles and Hour of the Wolf). All were commercial failures. Joel and drummer Jon Small left the Hassles in 1969 to form the duo Attila, releasing an eponymous debut album in July 1970. The duo disbanded the following October when Joel began an affair with Small's wife, Elizabeth, whom Joel eventually married.[28]
1970–1974: Cold Spring Harbor and Piano Man Joel signed a contract with the record company Family Productions (owned by Artie Ripp but backed by Gulf + Western[29]), with which he recorded his first solo album, Cold Spring Harbor (a reference to Cold Spring Harbor, New York, a town on Long Island). Ripp states that he spent $450,000 developing Joel;[29] nevertheless, the album was mastered at the wrong speed and as a result, the album was a technical and commercial disappointment.[30]
The popular songs "She's Got a Way" and "Everybody Loves You Now" were originally released on this album, but went largely unnoticed until being released as live performances on Songs in the Attic (1981). Columbia released a remastered version of Cold Spring Harbor in 1983.
Joel began his Cold Spring Harbor tour in the fall of 1971, touring with his band (Rhys Clark on drums, Al Hertzberg on guitar, and Larry Russell on bass guitar) throughout the U.S. and Puerto Rico, opening for groups such as the J. Geils Band, The Beach Boys, Badfinger, and Taj Mahal. Joel's performance at the Puerto Rican Mar Y Sol Pop Festival was especially well-received; and although recorded, Joel refused to have it published on the Mar Y Sol compilation album Mar Y Sol: The First International Puerto Rico Pop Festival. Nevertheless, interest in his music grew.[31]
During the spring of 1972, the Philadelphia radio station WMMR-FM began playing a concert recording of "Captain Jack", which became an underground hit on the East Coast. Herb Gordon, a Columbia Records executive, heard Joel's music and introduced him to the company. Joel signed a recording contract with Columbia in 1972 and moved to Los Angeles; he lived there for the next three years.[1][32] For six months he worked at The Executive Room piano bar on Wilshire Boulevard as "Bill Martin". During that time, he composed his signature hit "Piano Man" about the bar's patrons.[33]
Despite Joel's new contract, he was still legally bound to Family Productions. Artie Ripp sold Joel's first contract to Columbia. Walter Yetnikoff, the president of CBS/Columbia Records at the time, bought back the rights to Joel's songs in the late 1970s, giving the rights to Joel as a birthday gift.[34][35] Yetnikoff notes in the documentary film The Last Play at Shea that he had to threaten Ripp to close the deal.
Joel's first album with Columbia was Piano Man, released in 1973. Despite modest sales, Piano Man's title track became his signature song, ending nearly every concert. That year Joel's touring band changed. Guitarist Al Hertzberg was replaced by Don Evans, and bassist Larry Russell by Patrick McDonald, himself replaced in late 1974 by Doug Stegmeyer, who would stay with Joel until 1989. Rhys Clark returned as drummer and Tom Whitehorse as banjoist and pedal steel player; Johnny Almond joined as saxophonist and keyboardist. The band toured the US and Canada extensively, appearing on popular music shows. Joel's songwriting began attracting more attention; in 1974 Helen Reddy recorded "You're My Home" (Piano Man).
1974–1977: Streetlife Serenade and Turnstiles In 1974, Joel recorded his second Columbia album in Los Angeles, Streetlife Serenade. His manager at the time was Jon Troy, an old friend from the New York neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant; Troy would soon be replaced by Joel's wife Elizabeth.[36] Streetlife Serenade contains references to suburbia and the inner city. It is perhaps best known for "The Entertainer", a No. 34 hit in the US. Upset that "Piano Man" had been significantly cut for radio play, Joel wrote "The Entertainer" as a sarcastic response: "If you're gonna have a hit, you gotta make it fit, so they cut it down to 3:05." Although Streetlife Serenade is often considered[by whom?] one of Joel's weaker albums (Joel dislikes it himself), it contains the notable songs "Los Angelenos" and "Root Beer Rag", an instrumental that was a staple of his live set in the 1970s.
In late 1975, Joel played piano and organ on several tracks on Bo Diddley's The 20th Anniversary of Rock 'n' Roll all-star album.
Disenchanted with Los Angeles, Joel returned to New York City in 1975 and recorded Turnstiles, the first album he recorded with the group of hand-picked musicians who became the Billy Joel Band. Produced by James William Guercio (then Chicago's producer), Turnstiles was first recorded at Caribou Ranch with members of Elton John's band. Dissatisfied with the result, Joel re-recorded the songs and produced the album himself.
"Say Goodbye to Hollywood" was a minor hit; Ronnie Spector recorded a cover as did Nigel Olsson, then drummer with Elton John. In a 2008 radio interview, Joel said that he no longer performs the song because singing it in its high original key "shreds" his vocal cords; however, he did finally play it live for the first time since 1982 when he sang it at the Hollywood Bowl in May 2014. Though never released as a single, "New York State of Mind" became one of Joel's best-known songs; Barbra Streisand and Tony Bennett have each recorded covers (Bennett's a duet with Joel on Playing with My Friends: Bennett Sings the Blues). Other notable songs from the album include "Summer, Highland Falls", "Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)", "Say Goodbye to Hollywood", (a live version of which became a Top 40 hit), and "Prelude/Angry Young Man", a concert mainstay.
1977–1979: The Stranger and 52nd Street Columbia Records introduced Joel to Phil Ramone, who would produce all of Joel's studio albums from The Stranger (1977) to The Bridge (1986). The Stranger was an enormous commercial success, yielding four Top-25 hits on the Billboard charts: "Just the Way You Are" (#3), "Movin' Out" (#17), "Only the Good Die Young" (#24), and "She's Always a Woman" (#17). Joel's first Top Ten album, The Stranger was certified multi-platinum and reached number two on the charts, outselling Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge over Troubled Water,[37] Columbia's previous best-selling album. The Stranger also featured "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant", an album-oriented rock classic, which has become one of his best-known songs.
The Stranger song "Just the Way You Are" — written for Joel's first wife, Elizabeth Weber[38] — was inspired by a dream[39] and won Grammy awards for Record of the Year and Song of the Year.[40] On tour in Paris, Joel learned the news late at night in his hotel room.[22] Rolling Stone ranked The Stranger the 70th greatest album of all time.[41]
Expectations were high for Joel's next album, 52nd Street, which he released in 1978, naming it after Manhattan's famous 52nd Street, which, at the time of its release, served as the world headquarters of CBS/ Columbia. The album sold over seven million copies, propelled to number one on the charts by the following hits: "My Life" (#3); followed successes from the album were "Big Shot" (#14), and "Honesty" (#24). A cover of "My Life" (sung by Gary Bennett) became the theme song for a new television sitcom, Bosom Buddies, which featured actor Tom Hanks in one of his earliest roles. 52nd Street won Grammy awards for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male and Album of the Year.
In 1979, Joel also traveled to Havana, Cuba, to participate in the historic Havana Jam festival that took place between March 2–4, alongside Rita Coolidge, Kris Kristofferson, Stephen Stills, the CBS Jazz All-Stars, the Trio of Doom, Fania All-Stars, Billy Swan, Bonnie Bramlett, Mike Finnegan, Weather Report, and an array of Cuban artists such as Irakere, Pacho Alonso, Tata Güines and Orquesta Aragón.[42] His performance is captured in Ernesto Juan Castellanos's documentary Havana Jam '79.
1979–1983: Glass Houses and The Nylon Curtain The success of his piano-driven ballads like "Just the Way You Are", "She's Always a Woman", and "Honesty" led some critics to label Joel a "balladeer" and "soft rocker". Joel thought these labels were unfair and insulting, and with Glass Houses, he tried to record an album that proved that he could rock harder than his critics gave him credit for, occasionally imitating and referring to the style of new wave rock music that was starting to become popular at the time. On the front cover of the album, Joel is pictured in a leather jacket, about to throw a rock at a glass house (referring to the adage that "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones").
Glass Houses spent six weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard chart and yielded such hits as "You May Be Right" (used as the theme song, covered by Southside Johnny, for the CBS mid-1990s sitcom Dave's World) (#7, May 1980), "Don't Ask Me Why" (#19, September 1980), "Sometimes a Fantasy" (#36, November 1980) and "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me", which became Joel's first Billboard number-one single (for two weeks) in July 1980. "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" spent 11 weeks in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 and was the 7th biggest hit of 1980 according to American Top 40.
Glass Houses won the Grammy for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male. It would also win the American Music Award for Favorite Album, Pop/Rock category. The album's closing song, "Through The Long Night" (B-side of the "It's Still Rock & Roll to Me" single), was a lullaby that featured Joel harmonizing with himself in a song he says was inspired by The Beatles' "Yes It Is".[31] In a recorded Masterclass at the University of Pennsylvania, Joel later recollected that he had written to the Beatles asking them how to get started in the music industry. In response, he received a pamphlet about Beatles merchandise. This later led to the idea of Joel conducting Q&A sessions around the world answering questions that people had about the music industry.[43]
His next release, Songs in the Attic, was composed of live performances of less well-known songs from the beginning of his career. It was recorded during larger US arenas and intimate night club shows in June and July 1980. This release introduced many fans, who discovered Joel when The Stranger became a smash in 1977, to many of his earlier compositions. The album reached No. 8 on the Billboard chart and produced two hit singles: "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" (#17), and "She's Got a Way" (#23). It sold over 3 million copies. Though not as successful as some of his previous albums, the album was still considered a success by Joel.[31]
The next wave of Joel's career commenced with the recording of his next studio album, The Nylon Curtain. With The Nylon Curtain, Joel became more ambitious with his songwriting, trying his hand at writing topical songs like "Allentown" and "Goodnight Saigon". Joel has stated that he wanted the album to communicate his feelings about the American Dream and how changes in American politics during the Reagan years meant that "all of a sudden you weren't going to be able to inherit [the kind of life] your old man had."[44] He also tried to be more ambitious in his use of the recording studio. Joel said that he wanted to "create a sonic masterpiece" on The Nylon Curtain. So he spent more time in the studio, crafting the sound of the album, than he had on any previous album.[44] Production of The Nylon Curtain began in the fall of 1981. However, production was temporarily delayed when Joel was involved in a serious motorcycle accident on Long Island on April 15, 1982, severely injuring his hands. Still, Joel quickly recovered from his injuries, and the album only ended up being delayed by a few months.[45]
In 1982, he embarked on a brief tour in support of the album. From one of the final shows of the tour, Joel made his first video special, Live from Long Island, which was recorded at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, New York on December 30, 1982. It was originally broadcast on HBO in 1983 before it became available on VHS.
The Nylon Curtain went to No. 7 on the charts, partially due to heavy airplay on MTV for the videos to the singles "Allentown" and "Pressure". "Allentown" spent six weeks at a peak position of No. 17 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it one of the most-played radio songs of 1982, pushing it into 1983's year-end Top 70, and making it the most successful song from The Nylon Curtain album, besting "Pressure" which peaked at No. 20 (where it resided for three weeks) and "Goodnight Saigon" which reached No. 56 on U.S. charts.[46]
1983–1988: An Innocent Man and The Bridge Joel's next album moved away from the serious themes of The Nylon Curtain and struck a much lighter tone. The album An Innocent Man was Joel's tribute to R&B and doo wop music of the 1950s and 1960s and resulted in Joel's second Billboard number-one hit, "Tell Her About It", which was the first single off the album in the summer of 1983. The album itself reached No. 4 on the charts and No. 2 in UK. It also boasted six top-30 singles, the most of any album in Joel's catalog. The album was well received by critics, with Stephen Thomas Erlewine, senior editor for AllMusic, describing Joel as being "in top form as a craftsman throughout the record, effortlessly spinning out infectious, memorable melodies in a variety of styles."[47]
At the time that the album was released, WCBS-FM began playing "Uptown Girl" both in regular rotation and on the Doo Wop Live.[48][49] The song became a worldwide hit upon its release. The music video of the song, originally written about then girlfriend Elle MacPherson, featured future wife Christie Brinkley as a high society girl, whose car pulls into the gas station where Joel's character is working. At the end of the video, Joel's "grease monkey" character drives off with his "uptown girl" on the back of a motorcycle. When Brinkley went to visit Joel after being asked to star in the video, the first thing Joel said to her upon opening his door was "I don't dance". Brinkley had to walk him through the basic steps he does in the video. Their work together on this video shoot sparked a relationship between the two which would later lead to their marriage in 1985.[50]
In December, the title song, "An Innocent Man", was released as a single and it peaked at No. 10 in the U.S. and No. 8 in the UK, early in 1984. That March, "The Longest Time" was released as a single, peaking at No. 14 on the Hot 100 and No. 1 on the Adult Contemporary chart. That summer, "Leave a Tender Moment Alone" was released and it hit No. 27 while "Keeping the Faith" peaked at No. 18 in January 1985. In the video for "Keeping the Faith", Christie Brinkley also plays the "redhead girl in a Chevrolet". An Innocent Man was also nominated for the Album of the Year Grammy, but lost to Michael Jackson's Thriller.
Joel participated in the USA For Africa We Are The World project in 1985, capping off a series of successful singles.
Following the success of An Innocent Man, Joel was asked about releasing an album of his most successful singles. This was not the first time this topic had come up, but Joel had initially considered "Greatest Hits" albums as marking the end of one's career. This time he agreed, and Greatest Hits Vol. 1 and 2 was released as a four-sided album and two-CD set, with the songs in the order in which they were released. The new songs "You're Only Human (Second Wind)" and "The Night Is Still Young" were recorded and released as singles to support the album; both reached the top 40, peaking at No. 9 and No. 34, respectively. Greatest Hits was highly successful and it has since been certified double diamond by the RIAA, with over 11.5 million copies (23 million units) sold. It is one of the best-selling albums in American music history, according to the RIAA.
Coinciding with the Greatest Hits album release, Joel released a two-volume Video Album that was a compilation of the promotional videos he had recorded from 1977 to the present time. Along with videos for the new singles off the Greatest Hits album, Joel also recorded a video for his first hit, "Piano Man", for this project.
Though it broke into the top ten, Joel's next album, The Bridge (1986), did not achieve the level of success of his previous albums, but it yielded the hits "A Matter of Trust" and "Modern Woman" from the film Ruthless People, a dark comedy from the directors of Airplane! (both #10). In a departure from his "piano man" persona, Joel is shown in the video playing a Gibson Les Paul. The ballad "This is the Time" also charted, peaking at No. 18.
On November 18, 1986, an extended version of the song "Big Man on Mulberry Street" was used on a Season 3 episode of Moonlighting. The episode itself was also titled "Big Man on Mulberry Street".
The Bridge was Joel's last album to carry the Family Productions logo, after which he severed his ties with Artie Ripp. Joel has also stated in many interviews, most recently in a 2008 interview in Performing Songwriter magazine, that he does not think The Bridge is a good album.
In October 1986, Joel and his handlers started planning a trip to the Soviet Union. He became one of the first American rock acts to play there since the Berlin Wall went up, a fact not lost on history buff Joel.[51] There were live performances at indoor arenas in Moscow, Leningrad and Tbilisi. Joel, his family (including young daughter Alexa), and his full touring band made the trip in August 1987. The entourage was filmed for television and video to offset the cost of the trip, and the concerts were simulcast on radio around the world. Joel's Russian tour was the first live rock radio broadcast in Soviet history.[52]
Most of that audience took a long while to warm up to Joel's energetic show, something that had never happened in other countries he had performed in. According to Joel, each time the fans were hit with the bright lights, anybody who seemed to be enjoying themselves froze. In addition, people who were "overreacting" were removed by security.[53] It was during this concert that Joel, enraged by the bright lights, flipped his electric piano and snapped a microphone stand while continuing to sing the current part of the set.[54] He later apologized for that incident.
The album КОНЦЕРТ (Russian for "Concert") was released in October 1987. Singer Pete Hewlett was brought in to hit the high notes on his most vocally challenging songs, like "An Innocent Man". Joel also did versions of The Beatles' classic "Back in the U.S.S.R." and Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are a-Changin". It has been estimated that Joel lost more than $1 million of his own money on the trip and concerts, but he has said the goodwill he was shown there was well worth it.[31]
1988–1993: Storm Front and River of Dreams The recording of the album Storm Front, which commenced in 1988, coincided with major changes in Joel's career and inaugurated a period of serious upheaval in his business affairs. In August 1989, just before the album was released, Joel dismissed his manager (and former brother-in-law) Frank Weber after an audit revealed major discrepancies in Weber's accounting. Joel subsequently sued Weber for $90 million, claiming fraud and breach of fiduciary duty and in January 1990 he was awarded $2 million in a partial judgment against Weber; in April, the court dismissed a $30 million countersuit filed by Weber.[55]
The first single for the album, "We Didn't Start the Fire", was released in September 1989 and it became Joel's third and – to date – most-recent US number-one hit, spending two weeks at the top. Storm Front was released in October, and it eventually became Joel's first number-one album since Glass Houses, nine years earlier. Storm Front was Joel's first album since Turnstiles to be recorded without Phil Ramone as producer. For this album, he wanted a new sound, and worked with Mick Jones of Foreigner fame. Joel is also credited as one of the keyboard players on Jones' 1988 self-titled solo album, and is featured in the official video for Jones' single "Just Wanna Hold"; Joel can be seen playing the piano while his then-wife Christie Brinkley joins him and kisses him. Joel also revamped his backing band, dismissing everyone but drummer Liberty DeVitto, guitarist David Brown, and saxophone player Mark Rivera, and bringing in new faces, including multi-instrumentalist Crystal Taliefero.
Storm Front's second single, "I Go to Extremes" reached No. 6 in early 1990. The album was also notable for its song "Leningrad", written after Joel met a clown in the Soviet city of that name during his tour in 1987, and "The Downeaster Alexa", written to underscore the plight of fishermen on Long Island who are barely able to make ends meet. Another well-known single from the album is the ballad "And So It Goes" (#37 in late 1990). The song was originally written in 1983, around the time Joel was writing songs for An Innocent Man; but "And So It Goes" did not fit that album's retro theme, so it was held back until Storm Front. Joel said in a 1996 Masterclass session in Pittsburgh that Storm Front was a turbulent album and that "And So It Goes", as the last song on the album, portrayed the calm and tranquility that often follows a violent thunderstorm.
In the summer of 1992, Joel filed another $90 million lawsuit against his former lawyer Allen Grubman, alleging a wide range of offenses including fraud, breach of fiduciary responsibility, malpractice and breach of contract[56] but the case was eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.[57]
In 1992, Joel inducted the R&B duo Sam & Dave into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. That year, Joel also started work on River of Dreams, finishing the album in early 1993. Its cover art was a colorful painting by Christie Brinkley that was a series of scenes from each of the songs on the album. The eponymous first single was the last top 10 hit Joel has penned to date, reaching No. 3 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart and ranking at No. 21 on the 1993 year-end Hot 100 chart. In addition to the title track, the album includes the hits "All About Soul" (with Color Me Badd on backing vocals) and "Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)", written for his daughter, Alexa. A radio remix version of "All About Soul" can be found on The Essential Billy Joel (2001), and a demo version appears on My Lives (2005).
The song "The Great Wall of China" was written about his ex-manager Frank Weber and was a regular in the setlist for Joel's 2006 tour. "2000 Years" was prominent in the millennium concert at Madison Square Garden, December 31, 1999, and "Famous Last Words" closed the book on Joel's pop songwriting for more than a decade.
1993–present: Touring Beginning in 1994, Joel toured extensively with Elton John on a series of "Face to Face" tours, making them the longest running and most successful concert tandem in pop music history.[58] During these shows, the two have played their own songs, each other's songs and performed duets. They grossed over US$46 million in just 24 dates in their sold out[59] 2003 tour. Joel and John resumed the Face to Face tour in March 2009[59] and it ended again, at least for the time being, in March 2010 in Albany, New York, at the Times Union Center. In February 2010, Joel denied rumors in the trade press that he canceled a summer 2010 leg of the tour, claiming there were never any dates booked and that he intended to take the year off.[60] Joel told Rolling Stone magazine: "We'll probably pick it up again. It's always fun playing with him."[61]
Joel performing in 2007 in Florida On August 25, 1994, Joel and second wife Christie Brinkley divorced, but they remained friends.
1997's "To Make You Feel My Love" and "Hey Girl" both charted from Joel's Greatest Hits Volume III album. Joel wrote and recorded the song "Shameless" that was later covered by Garth Brooks and reached No. 1 on Billboard's country charts. Joel performed with Brooks during his Central Park concert in 1997. To add onto his achievements Joel was inducted into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame in 1999. Ray Charles made the induction speech and mentioned the duet Joel wrote for the two of them, "Baby Grand" (a track on Joel's album The Bridge released in 1986).
On December 31, 1999, Joel performed at New York's Madison Square Garden. At the time, Joel said that it would be his last tour and possibly his last concert. Two of his performances from that night, "We Didn't Start the Fire" and "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" were filmed and featured that night as part of ABC's special New Year's Y2K coverage. The concert (dubbed The Night of the 2000 Years) ran for close to four hours and was later released as 2000 Years: The Millennium Concert.
In 2001, Joel released Fantasies & Delusions, a collection of classical piano pieces. All were composed by Joel and performed by Hyung-ki Joo. Joel often uses bits of these songs as interludes in live performances, and some of them are part of the score for the hit show Movin' Out. The album topped the classical charts at No. 1. Joel performed "New York State of Mind" live on September 21, 2001, as part of the America: A Tribute to Heroes benefit concert, and on October 20, 2001, along with "Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)", at the Concert for New York City in Madison Square Garden. That night, he also performed "Your Song" with Elton John.
In 2003, Joel inducted The Righteous Brothers into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, noting that his song "Until the Night" from the album 52nd Street was a tribute to the duo.
In 2005, Columbia released a box set, My Lives, which is largely a compilation of demos, b-sides, live/alternate versions and even a few Top 40 hits. The compilation also includes the Umixit software, in which people can remix "Zanzibar" and a live version of "I Go to Extremes" with their PC. Also, a DVD of a show from the River of Dreams tour is included.
Billy Joel with his band performing in California On January 7, 2006, Joel began a tour across the U.S. Having not written, or at least released, any new songs in 13 years, he featured a sampling of songs from throughout his career, including major hits as well as obscure tunes like "Zanzibar" and "All for Leyna". His tour included an unprecedented 12 sold-out concerts over several months at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The singer's stint of 12 shows at Madison Square Garden broke a previous record set by New Jersey native Bruce Springsteen, who played 10 sold-out shows at the same arena. The record earned Joel the first retired number (12) in the arena owned by a non-athlete. This honor has also been given to Joel at the Wells Fargo Center (Philadelphia) (formerly the Wachovia Center) in Philadelphia where a banner in the colors of the Philadelphia Flyers is hung honoring Joel's 46 Philadelphia sold-out shows. He also had a banner raised in his honor for being the highest grossing act in the history of the Times Union Center (formerly the Knickerbocker Arena and Pepsi Arena) in Albany, New York. This honor was given to him as part of the April 17, 2007, show he did there. On June 13, 2006, Columbia released 12 Gardens Live, a double album containing 32 live recordings from a collection of the 12 different shows at Madison Square Garden during Joel's 2006 tour.
Joel visited the United Kingdom and Ireland for the first time in many years as part of the European leg of his 2006 tour. On July 31, 2006, he performed a free concert in Rome, with the Colosseum as the backdrop.[62]
Joel toured South Africa, Australia, Japan, and Hawaii in late 2006, and subsequently toured the Southeastern U.S. in February and March 2007 before hitting the Midwest in the spring of 2007. On January 3 of that year, news was leaked to the New York Post that Billy had recorded a new song with lyrics—this being the first new song with lyrics he'd written in almost 14 years.[63] The song, titled "All My Life", was Joel's newest single (with second track "You're My Home", live from Madison Square Garden 2006 tour) and was released into stores on February 27, 2007.[64] On February 4, Joel sang the national anthem for Super Bowl XLI, becoming the first to sing the national anthem twice at a Super Bowl. and on April 17, 2007, Joel was honored in Albany, New York, for his ninth concert at the Times Union Center. He is now holding the highest box office attendance of any artist to play at the arena. A banner was raised in his honor marking this achievement.
On December 1, 2007, Joel premiered his new song "Christmas in Fallujah".[65] The song was performed by Cass Dillon, a new Long Island based musician, as Joel felt it should be sung by someone in a soldier's age range (though he himself has played the song occasionally in concert.) The track was dedicated to servicemen based in Iraq. Joel wrote it in September 2007 after reading numerous letters sent to him from American soldiers in Iraq. "Christmas in Fallujah" is only the second pop/rock song released by Joel since 1993's River of Dreams. Proceeds from the song benefited the Homes For Our Troops foundation.
Joel with Mike DelGuidice in 2016 On January 26, 2008, Joel performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra celebrating the 151st anniversary of the Academy of Music. Joel premiered his new classical piece titled, "Waltz No. 2 (Steinway Hall)" arranged by Brad Ellis. He also played many of his less well-known pieces, with full orchestral backing arranged by Mr. Ellis, including the rarely performed Nylon Curtain songs "Scandinavian Skies" and "Where's the Orchestra?".
On March 10, 2008, Joel inducted his friend John Mellencamp into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in a ceremony at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City.
Joel's staying power as a touring act continues to the present day. He sold out 10 concerts at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Connecticut from May to July 2008. The casino honored him with a banner displaying his name and the number 10 to hang in the arena. On June 19, 2008, he played a concert at the grand re-opening of Caesars Windsor (formerly Casino Windsor) in Windsor, Ontario, Canada to an invite-only crowd for Casino VIPs. His mood was light, and joke-filled, even introducing himself as "Billy Joel's dad" and stating "you guys overpaid to see a fat bald guy". He also admitted that Canadian folk-pop musician Gordon Lightfoot was the musical inspiration for "She's Always A Woman".[66]
On July 16, 2008, and July 18, 2008, Joel played the final concerts at Shea Stadium before its demolition. His guests included Tony Bennett, Don Henley, John Mayer, John Mellencamp, Steven Tyler, Roger Daltrey, Garth Brooks, and Paul McCartney. The concerts were featured in the 2010 documentary film Last Play at Shea. The film was released on DVD on February 8, 2011. The CD and DVD of the show, Live at Shea Stadium were released on March 8, 2011.
On December 11, 2008, Joel recorded his own rendition of "Christmas in Fallujah" during a concert at Acer Arena in Sydney and released it as a live single in Australia only. It is the only official release of Joel performing "Christmas in Fallujah", as Cass Dillon sang on the 2007 studio recording and the handful of times the song was played live in 2007. Joel sang the song throughout his December 2008 tour of Australia.
On May 19, 2009, Joel's former drummer, Liberty DeVitto, filed a lawsuit in NYC claiming Joel and Sony Music owed DeVitto over 10 years of royalty payments. DeVitto had never been given songwriting or arranging credit on any of Joel's songs, but he claimed that he helped arrange some of them, including "Only the Good Die Young".[67] In April 2010, it was announced that Joel and DeVitto amicably resolved the lawsuit.[68]
2011 marked the 40th anniversary of the release of Joel's first album, Cold Spring Harbor. According to Joel's official website, to commemorate this anniversary, Columbia/Legacy Recordings originally planned "to celebrate the occasion with a definitive reissue project of newly restored and expanded Legacy editions of the complete Billy Joel catalog, newly curated collections of rarities from the vaults, previously unavailable studio tracks and live performances, home video releases and more", although this never fully came to fruition.[69] The album Piano Man was re-released in a two-disc Legacy edition in November 2011.[69]
In 2012, Joel signed an exclusive worldwide publishing agreement with Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), and its subsidiary Rondor Music International. Under the agreement, UMPG and Rondor replaced EMI Music Publishing in handling Joel's catalog outside the U.S. Additionally, the agreement marked the first time since Joel regained control of his publishing rights in the 1980s that he began to use an administrator to handle his catalog within the U.S. The agreement's focus is on increasing the use of Joel's music in movies, television programs, and commercials.[70]
On December 12, 2012, Joel performed as part of 12-12-12: The Concert for Sandy Relief at Madison Square Garden, a concert held for all the victims of Hurricane Sandy. He changed the lyrics to "Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)" to make it relate to all the damage caused by Sandy.
In May 2013, it was announced that Joel would hold his first ever indoor Irish concert at the O2 in Dublin on November 1. He subsequently announced his return to the UK for the first time in seven years to perform three dates in October and November. Joel played two arena dates in Manchester and Birmingham plus a very special show at London's Hammersmith Apollo. In October, Joel held a surprise concert on Long Island at The Paramount (Huntington, New York) to benefit Long Island Cares. The venue holds a capacity of 1,555 and sold out in five minutes. Joel headlined a solo arena concert in New York City for the first time since 2006 when he performed at Barclays Center in Brooklyn on December 31, 2013. In 2015, Joel performed 21 concerts (in addition to his Madison Square Garden residency) from January 7 to August 2 in various cities around the U.S. and Canada.
On December 3, 2013, it was announced that Joel would become a franchise of Madison Square Garden, playing one concert a month indefinitely, starting with a date on January 27, 2014.[71]
Joel performing at Madison Square Garden in 2016 On January 7, 2014, the Billy Joel in Concert tour began. Joel kicked off the 2014 New Year in the Amway Center (in Orlando, Florida) and performed several cover songs such as Elton John's "Your Song", Billy Preston's "You Are So Beautiful" (in tribute to Joe Cocker), The Beatles' "With a Little Help from My Friends", "Can't Buy Me Love", and "When I'm 64", Robert Burns' "Auld Lang Syne", and AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long" (with Brian Johnson). Rufus Wainwright joined Joel during the concert to sing "New York State of Mind".[72] Joel also performed an unusual set, including the song "Souvenir" (from 1974's Streetlife Serenade) and excluding "We Didn't Start the Fire".[73]
On August 4, 2015 Joel played the final concert at Nassau Coliseum before the arena underwent a $261 million renovation.[74]
On April 5, 2017 Joel played the first concert at the newly renovated Nassau Coliseum.
On June 24, 2017, he returned to Hicksville High School fifty years after his would-be graduating class received their diplomas,[75] to deliver the honorary commencement address. It was also the 25th anniversary of receiving his own diploma from the same High School.