"Circus" is the sixth studio album by American singer Britney Spears, released on December 2, 2008, to coincide with her 27th birthday. The album marked a departure from the "darker and more urban" themes of her previous album Blackout (2007), with Spears wanting Circus to be "a little bit lighter." Much of the album was recorded between March and September 2008, following her highly publicized personal struggles in 2007 and her subsequent involuntary placement under a conservatorship earlier that year.
As executive producers, Larry Rudolph and Teresa LaBarbera Whites enlisted several of Spears' past collaborators, including Max Martin, Bloodshy & Avant, Guy Sigsworth, and Danja. They also brought in new producers, such as Dr. Luke, Benny Blanco, and Claude Kelly. The result was a pop and dance-driven album with themes revolving around fame, infidelity, and infatuation.
Circus was widely seen as Spears' comeback album and received generally positive reviews from music critics. While the production was praised, the lyrical content and Spears' vocal performance garnered mixed opinions. The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, with first-week sales of 505,000 copies, marking Spears' fifth number-one album. It was later certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and by September 2009, it had sold over four million copies worldwide. At the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards, Circus’s lead single "Womanizer" was nominated for Best Dance Recording.
The album produced four singles. "Womanizer" debuted at number 96 on the Billboard Hot 100 and jumped to number one in its second week, setting a record for the largest leap to the top spot at that time. It became Spears' best-selling single in the US since her debut with "...Baby One More Time" (1998). The album's title track, "Circus," debuted at number three on the Hot 100, making it Spears' first album since ...Baby One More Time (1999) to have two top-ten singles. The subsequent singles "If U Seek Amy" and "Radar" reached numbers 19 and 88 on the Hot 100, respectively.
To further promote Circus, Spears embarked on The Circus Starring Britney Spears world tour in 2009. The album's success was seen as a significant step in Spears' return to the mainstream after a turbulent period in her personal life.
