“The world is watching,” Britney Spears’ court-appointed attorney Samuel D. Ingham III wrote in a Sept. 3-dated court filing that spoke to the growing attention around her conservatorship of 12 years. And the world really started watching when The New York Times Presents: Framing Britney Spears premiered on FX and Hulu last Friday, driving 1 million tweets about Spears and the #FreeBritney movement in the week since and putting Spears’ conservatorship, led by father Jamie Spears, in a whole new light.

Samantha Stark, the director and producer of Framing Britney Spears, found herself filming the 75-minute documentary in between two defining moments of Spears’ court case. After beginning filming in July, Spears asked the court a month later to not allow her father to return as the conservator of her person after he had stepped aside in 2019 due to health problems. The Aug. 18-dated court filing gave a rare insight into Spears’ wishes regarding the conservatorship that has controlled her life and finances since 2008. The last event Stark filmed for the documentary was the Nov. 10 court hearing, when the judge declined to suspend Jamie’s central role as conservator and the 39-year-old singer expressed her fear of her father, pausing her career worth roughly $60 million as long as he remains in charge of it.

Although Spears does not appear in Framing, Stark believes her recent social media post is “definitely referencing the documentary,” when she writes, “Each person has their story and their take on other people’s stories !!!! We all have so many different bright beautiful lives !!! Remember, no matter what we think we know about a person’s life it is nothing compared to the actual person living behind the lens.”

Billboard spoke with Stark over the phone about how she went about the “ethical dilemma” of filming a documentary about Spears without her direct input and who else gets a main spotlight reflecting right back at them.

After the documentary premiered, artists from Kacey Musgraves to Hayley Williams vocalized their support for Britney and the #FreeBritney movement and her boyfriend Sam Asghari spoke out against Jamie in a rare statement, and attorney Lisa MacCarley sent a letter to over 100 LA-based lawyers urging them to request the termination of Spears’ conservatorship. Did you anticipate having these kind of high-profile reactions once the doc was released?

Absolutely not. I think that the #FreeBritney people had been seen as conspiracy theorists and kind of belittled for so long. I didn’t really think that this would make a difference.

How did you observe the role of the #FreeBritney supporters within this movement and within your narrative? There was a big emphasis, even from one of the documents where Britney seems to acknowledge the #FreeBritney supporters, about the importance of their “informed support.”

At the beginning of filming, the original concept was to go back and look at this media coverage and confront people with it, so we could reckon with our own complicity and how we treated her and correct misinformation about her. I don’t think a lot of people know or didn’t know that she was in a conservatorship. And it kind of seems like nothing was really happening in the conservatorship for so long that we know of legally. We didn’t see any public court filings from Britney asking for anything to change that we know of. The fans that had been out there since the beginning, which I guess was around April 2019, they kind of had this idea that something was wrong. And they were kind of just testing the guts, but they didn’t have any confirmation. So a lot of people are like, “Why are you doing this if you don’t even know if Britney wants anything to change?” And then while we were filming, it was like all these filings started dropping, and it was such a surprise.

And one indicated that she wanted her father to be off of the conservatorship, and that was really a confirmation, like a validation for the #FreeBritney folks, because they were like, “We were right! At least we know she wants something to change.” …  So it’s the filing that [Ingham] wrote, but he says Britney appreciates the support of her well-informed fans. And I think the “well-informed” really hit with people. And it said, “The whole world is watching” on it. So it really put this front and center.

What went through your mind when you first saw Britney’s social media message about each person having their story and their take on other people’s stories?

It was very different for Britney’s Instagram and Twitter to post something like that at the same time. Usually she posts on Instagram, and then there are kind of promos every once in a while on Twitter. And also within minutes of that, this story with an anonymous source started going out that she’s making her own film with a female filmmaker. … I hope that Britney will share her story, because she deserves to be able to do whatever she wants. But it’s unclear whether an anonymous source is the one that would say something accurate.

Her former assistant and friend Felicia Culotta did agree to a rare sit-down interview for this doc. Where’s her head at when it comes to how Britney is currently doing?

She did not want to tell Britney’s story for her. The one thing she said is she knows one day she’ll tell her story “and then everything will fall into place,” which is interesting. Like nobody wants to tell me anything about what’s happening with Britney right now, because first of all, she’s her own person, and they don’t want to speculate. I have this ethical dilemma because we’re making a documentary where the main person isn’t participating. And I really don’t like that. And so what I wanted to do is try to make the film where nobody guesses what’s inside Britney’s head, because everybody wants to guess what’s inside Britney’s head. So I listened to what Felicia had to tell me, and she didn’t want to speculate on how Britney’s doing. She is still in touch with Britney and her family.

So why still tell this story when Spears is not contributing to it?

I asked myself that question a lot. But the results are clear and surprising when going back and reckoning with the way that media treated her. Our culture is the main character in the film also, because we’re looking at ourselves and how we enabled this or how it affected us. I’m close in age to Britney, and watching all this footage of her and how misogynistic it was, how they treated her, and thinking about myself watching that as a 16-year-old, that must have affected me. Because I’m watching someone who is like me being treated like that. And I think that a lot of people realized that when they were watching the film.

I think it sparked a lot of inward reflection from journalists about how we failed her. Looking back at pop culture history, people joke about 2007 as the year of Britney shaving her head and beating a car with an umbrella.

Exactly. And I think those two frames affected her and still affect her. When you ask, “What do you think of when you think of Britney Spears?” a lot of people say just that, like, “Oh, she shaved her head. She’s crazy.” And so we wanted to pull out and see what was behind those frames and correct the misinformation, tell the whole story. And I think we could still do that because it’s important to show. It’s like an important part of the narrative of how our culture treated her, to know that they were wrong in a lot of ways. And I mean, the conservatorship system is another reason. Through Britney’s story, we can put a spotlight on the conservatorship system… and really poke at it and see whether maybe there’s conflicts of interest or things that should change now that we treat mental health differently. So those are the two main reasons: media reckoning and spotlight on the conservatorship system.

It’s easy to show the misogynistic media scrutiny she faced from an early age with archival footage and media clippings. How were you able to get both attorneys, Vivian Lee Thoreen and Adam Streisand, to talk about Britney’s conservatorship in the doc when the court documents are sealed?

So we reached out to Vivian because we really wanted someone to explain conservatorships to us, and we wanted somebody who believed in the system to tell us why. And we knew she had worked on the case for three months in 2008, when Britney was getting her temporary conservatorship. So we were a little surprised when she agreed, but we were happy because we wanted her to explain. So she speaks in hypotheticals there. And we were surprised that soon after that interview, she rejoined Jamie’s legal team. And we asked her several times if she’d wanted to update us because now she knows different information, but she declined.

[Streisand] really wanted to come out and tell this story that he hadn’t really told that much. We had been talking to him a long time and trying to convince him to come on. And he kept saying, “I don’t know. I’ll think about it.” And then all these court filings started coming out about Britney wanting her dad to be removed. And I think that lit the fire under him because he was like, “Wait a minute, she told me that 12 years ago. What’s been happening in the rest of the 12 years?” So we were very surprised and pleased when he decided, “I’m gonna do this.”

Throughout the archival footage, viewers are being more and more exposed to the vitriol she faced in interviews by journalists and in shots by paparazzi. We keep seeing men consistently inspect Britney through this singular lens of her sexuality. What connection do you draw between this level of public scrutiny and her conservatorship under her father? 

The whole thing is about control. During this time that we saw her before she was put in the conservatorship, when you look at the footage, you mostly saw the pictures because the still photographs were selling. But we found a video of the one paparazzo who’s in the film, who was doing video. So he had actual video of what it looked like outside of that frame. And it looks like stalking. It looks like it should be illegal, if there are all these men, sometimes a couple women, but like 99% men who would literally stand in front of her and block her from going where she needed to go in order to take an image of her without her consent that they would profit off of. And that was so normal for a long time. She went through that for over a year.

I think now it’s really opposite in a way, where you rarely see her and we don’t know why. We don’t know if it’s her choice, and maybe she’s like, “I’m over you guys. I’m never talking to you again. Watch my Instagram.” That’s it. Or maybe she can’t say what she wants to say because of the conservatorship. There’s a lot of power that her conservators have over what she does, and there’s a very tight circle of people. So we don’t know what’s happening.

Was it a conscious decision to have the floral background in the interview shots? Is it connected to the pink rose soap she destroys at the end of the doc?

It’s a stylistic choice. I had those walls made specifically to do this. And one reason we pulled out to show you it was a set is that we’re constantly trying to play with what you think you know and what’s outside the frame. And we had to film outside because of COVID, so all of our interviews were outside. … And anybody who spends a lot of time on Britney’s Instagram knows that she loves roses and flowers. And also a lot of the videos are her exercising in this California green, big backyard area. I wanted it to be reflective of her Instagram, like the world of her Instagram. And I had all this stuff made and I started doing interviews and then Britney posted about the Rose Project.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Brittney Spencer remembers exactly how she felt last week when she watched the video of a drunk Morgan Wallen using a racial slur on TMZ.

“I wasn’t surprised,” says the young Black country artist, whose cover of the Highwomen’s “Crowded Table” gained attention last summer and earned her an offer to play with the band after the pandemic.“It really had nothing to do with Morgan, [but] it’s challenging for people of color to think of country music and not consider the racial landscape of the genre and the country industry at large. So, when a popular country artist says a racial slur that’s arguably the most obvious indicator of racism, it further drives home that narrative many people of color already have in mind.”

After the video was released on Feb. 2, the country music industry mobilized quickly. The next day, Wallen — whose album Dangerous: The Double Album was spending its third week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart — was dropped from virtually all country radio playlists; his record label and management company, Big Loud, posted on its Instagram account that it had decided to “suspend Morgan Wallen’s recording contract indefinitely”; WME had dropped him as a touring client, CMT had pulled all Wallen content from its platforms; and streaming services yanked him from editorial playlists. (On Wednesday, Wallen, who had been positioned as country next potential global star, issued a video apology, saying that he had begun meeting with Black leaders, had stopped drinking and, notably, asked his fans to stop defending his actions. Big Loud declined to comment on whether his contract was still suspended or what the suspension means).

It was a rapid reckoning unlike anything the country music industry had seen before. But was it enough? No, say many Black leaders and members of the country music community, who add Nashville needs to take this moment to reflect and act on impacting lasting change.

Though the Black Music Action Coalition (BMAC) praised the country music industry’s swift action dropping Wallen in a Feb. 5 statement, the advocacy organization formed last year to fight systemic racism in the music industry is among those saying Wallen’s actions are symptomatic of much bigger issues in Nashville that affect artist rosters, radio playlists and corporate offices.

“That was one tiny step in a very long journey that’s ahead,” BMAC board member Caron Veazey tells Billboard. “When we look at the ecosystem [in country music], Morgan says what he says [and then] he apologizes. But then we say, ‘Where’s the education around that?’… In order to change something so systemic, you have to have a huge pivot. You have to have people that are going to step out and say, ‘We’re not going to do this this way anymore.’”

More than a day of reckoning, the Wallen fallout was “a day of awakening,” said Shannon Sanders, BMI Nashville executive director, creative, on a panel Tuesday held by Nashville Music Equality (NME), an organization started last summer to address inequality in the Nashville music community. “As the [country music industry] awakens, it’s taking a look in the mirror… and is not liking what it sees.”

The quick condemnation of Wallen’s actions, says Sanders, who is Black, makes the statement that, “‘We realize this is wrong and detrimental to a whole group of people and let us stop and say we’re not in favor of that taking place.’” But, he says there is much work to be done.

Wallen’s comment comes at a time when bi-racial or Black artists Kane Brown, Jimmie Allen, Darius Rucker and Blanco Brown all have hits climbing the Country Airplay chart. But the genre remains — in artists, audience and executives—overwhelmingly white and male.

“I’m concerned about the future of the format,” says Leslie Fram, CMT’s senior vp music strategy. “We’re playing the same 10 songs over and over again. I don’t feel there’s any diversity… Any format is healthier when it’s balanced.”

The change has to come from the executive suites, says Charlane Oliver, co-founder and co-executive director of The Equity Alliance. “The industry- executives, A&R, marketing, radio, etcetera- needs to create a culture within the ranks of their companies that this type of language and behavior is not tolerated and will lead to swift ramifications. Culture is modeled and must come from the top down…. We must address the hidden discrimination and double standards embedded in the industry that makes saying the N-word OK because artists like Morgan Wallen are surrounded [and] insulated by whiteness and enablers whose salaries are paid by the artists’ lucrative careers.”

Since the incendiary video’s release, despite the music industry’s response, Wallen’s sales increased 231%. “This shouldn’t be overlooked or rewarded,” says Oliver, noting Black artists are, meanwhile, “systematically shut out of the country music industry by the same people who excuse and enable Morgan Wallen’s behavior.

Whereas country music has long relied on terrestrial radio to break stars and build careers, over the past several years the genre and its audience have been catching up with other musical styles on streaming with growth that now outpaces the overall music industry. That offers country the potential to expand its fan base and Wallen has been a clear benefactor with record-breaking streaming success on his 30-track Dangerous, which looks to be headed for its fifth week atop the Billboard 200 chart.

But there is also the hard truth that country music’s lack of inclusivity and diversity is not only morally wrong, but could lead to major hits economically and to country music’s reputation.

“Morgan Wallen’s comments were devastating to country music’s reputation because they reinforced the stereotype that country music is the soundtrack of racism,” says Beverly Keel, dean of Middle Tennessee State University’s College of Media and Entertainment and a co-founder of NME. “The national media coverage immediately made the leap from it being an isolated event by one person to being reflective of the entire genre. For instance, Good Morning America noted, ‘for years, the industry has fought the perception that its songs are meant only for white audiences.’”

“One ignorant guy took the rest of us down with him as quickly as that drunken slur came from his mouth,” says a leading Nashville industry executive. “It makes us all look really, really bad. And now while he sits on the sideline, the pressure is on the rest of us to advance the genre and to remind the world that not all country music artists, creators [and] executives are this way.”

“A lot of people are tired of seeing country music and the word ‘racism’ back-to-back on national news,” adds Fram. “It’s a little bit of an embarrassment. It’s time for change.”

Fram has been one of country music’s most outspoken executives when it comes to fighting for both racial and gender equality in country music through such programs as CMT’s Equal Play initiative — which instituted 50/50 play for female artists across CMT and CMT Music channels in 2020 — and CMT’s Next Women of Country, which supports and highlights young female artists across its platforms. Four of the 10 acts selected for the 2021 class are women of color, including Spencer.

On Feb. 24, Keel and MTSU are launching a pilot series of free Zoom conversations open to all college students of color. The goal is to inform the students of the many facets of country music, but also to introduce industry executives to Black students interested in internships and jobs with the goal to create greater diversity across all facets of the country music industry, Keel says.

Failing to be as inclusive as possible is just bad for the bottom line. Actions like Wallen’s “feel like you’re telling me you don’t even want my business,” Sanders tells Billboard. “You don’t want [Black people’s] money? Is that what you’re telling us? If that’s not what you’re telling us, show us. We want to know. We want to be invited to the party.”

Education is key, but “the undercurrent to all this is economics,” agreed YMCA Nashville/Middle Tennessee president and CEO Sharon Roberson on the NME panel, adding that the country music power brokers have to adopt a zero tolerance policy toward racism even if it initially hurts their pocketbook.  She asks, “When someone is your money maker, are you as willing to hold them accountable as the low-hanging fruit?”

Following the industry’s rebuke of Wallen, his airplay fell precipitously and it appears no stations have added him back–though that may slowly change following his apology. Across his entire catalog, from Feb. 5 through Feb. 9, Wallen only received 25–30 plays daily on the over 140 stations that report to Billboard’s County Airplay chart, according to MRC Data. That’s down from around 1,500 daily before the TMZ video posted. Nate Deaton, GM at KRTY San Jose, California, says his station got minimal complaints after dropping Wallen’s music. “We got a couple of very negative emails, but I don’t think they’re local. I think it was a generic, ‘let me find a country station and complain.’”

However, in the four days immediately following the news, Wallen’s daily streams exceeded any individual day in the week leading to the news. By Feb. 7, the streams had dropped back to normal lower levels. Walllen’s sales also surged enabling him to remain atop the Billboard 200 for a fourth consecutive week with Dangerous. One full week after the TMZ video went public, Wallen’s total album and song sales had increased 231%, according to initial reports by MRC Data. Album sales increased from 12,000 to 62,000, while song sales rose from 33,500 to 89,000.

While the activity may indicate some fans’ ongoing support of Wallen or simply their desire to make sure they could access his music, Keel says it does not mean the industry moved too quickly to ban him. “I wouldn’t say that [the industry] got ahead of its audience. I would say the majority of people believe that the use of that word is wrong, period, and agree with the decisions. It was a minority of people who decided to make a point by buying his music. There are always going to be supporters of bad things, but, fortunately, they are in the minority.”

During Tuesday’s panel, The Equity Alliance’s Oliver suggested that  Big Loud, donate any money made on his music since the TMZ video surfaced to charity. The label hasn’t responded publicly, however, Jason Isbell, whose song, “Cover Me Up,” Wallen remakes  on Dangerous, tweeted  Wednesday that he will donate “everything I’ve made so far from this album” to the NAACP’s Nashville chapter.

Other artists are also figuring out ways to be part of the solution. Maren Morris, Mickey Guyton (the only Black woman country artist signed to a major label) and Kelsea Ballerini were some of the first artists to condemn Wallen’s actions on Twitter. Morris tells Billboard, “I have to start with my own camp of people, bringing more Black songwriters into the rooms with me, looking at the people I employ. We all have our blind spots we need to check out.”

More broadly, she adds, “You’ve really got to get to the root of why we’ve enabled this behavior to go on…. We’ve got to call each other out. We can’t protect our own anymore. We have so much room to grow.”

As Spencer begins her country music career, she agrees. “We have to recognize the industry’s part in cultivating a culture that can produce a Morgan Wallen…or country music artists [taking] pictures with the Confederate flag. In this time, it is invaluable that the country music industry shows not just artists like me but also shows other parts of the country that we’re not still stuck in 1960.”

In addition to Big Loud, heads of the other leading record companies in Nashville– Universal Music Group Nashville, Sony Nashville, Warner Music Nashville and Big Machine Label Group — declined to comment or did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Country singer-songwriter Dwight Yoakam is suing his label Warner Music Group (WMG) for not handing back the rights to his early recordings.

Yoakam says that his demands to reclaim his ownership rights to songs on his 1984 chart-topping debut album Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc., including “Honky Tonk Man,” “Guitars, Cadillacs” and “It Won’t Hurt” as well as their corresponding music videos from WMG have either been denied or ignored, according to a 25-page complaint filed Tuesday in California federal court. Yoakam’s team claims that the singer’s basic right of being allowed to recapture his copyrights granted by the Copyright Act of 1976 are are being obstructed by WMG, “a corporation that has already made millions of dollars off of the works of Mr. Yoakam.”

Yoakam is demanding the court affirmatively rule that the songs should automatically return to him at the end of the right’s period termination. He is also seeking an excess of $1 million in damages against WMG.

“Having profited and benefited off of Mr. Yoakam for 35 years, [WMG] do not want their gravy train to end, and have therefore refused to acknowledge and accept Mr. Yoakam’s valid Notices of Termination served properly under Section 203 of the United States Copyright of 1976 in blatant disregard of Mr. Yoakam’s rights,” states the complaint.

The Copyright Act permits authors to terminate the grant of their copyright during a five-year window beginning five years from the end of 35 years from the date of execution of the grant; or, if the grant covers the right of publication of the work, the period begins at the end of 35 years from the date of publication of the work under the grant or at the end of forty years from the date of execution of the grant, whichever term ends earlier. This “second bite at the apple” is extremely valuable to authors, the complaint states, as it allows them to finally own their creations as well as financially benefit from the works, states the court papers.

Yoakam’s attorney Richard Busch says in the complaint that the singer’s managers and transactional counsel have had numerous phone calls over the past two years with WMG about Yoakam’s plan to recapture his rights and sent formal termination notices. Instead of handing back the rights, however, the complaint states that WMG responded by taking down works by Yoakam and informing his legal team that “we have not yet made a decision as to how to proceed” with the works contained in the termination notices, according to Yoakam’s complaint.

Busch said his client is “being irreparably injured every day” that WMG fails to recognize the validity of the notices. He said his client’s work is essentially being held hostage “paralyzing Mr. Yoakam from financially benefiting from his statutory right to terminate the transfer of his copyrights to WMG.” Busch argues in the complaint that “Yoakam’s works return to him by virtue of his statutory right ingrained in the Copyright Act, regardless of what the defendants “decide.”

WMG has not yet responded to a request for comment.