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Britney Spears opens Billboard Music Awards with hit-heavy medley

Britney Spears opens the Billboard Music Awards on Sunday.
Britney Spears opens the Billboard Music Awards on Sunday.
(Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
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No, it wasn’t 2000 and former boyfriend Justin Timberlake wasn’t fawning from the front row. But when Britney Spears opened the annual Billboard Music Awards on Sunday in Las Vegas, she did so with a platinum confidence that suggested she’d time-traveled into the present.

The pop star’s big curtain-raiser, arriving a few years after her return-to-spotlight album “Britney Jean,” was, of course, a spectacle. She wore a red spangled bikini, thigh-high boots and a head-set microphone that suggested she might have to sing a few words to augment her obvious vocal track.

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Yes, she had help with the vocals, but that’s no surprise. This is the Billboard Music Awards, after all, and Britney was in dance mode. Nor was it news that she delivered a well-rehearsed medley of hits that rolled from her post-Mouseketeers beginnings through her reign as commercial pop powerhouse.

But Spears should be loose and comfortable up there. The artist is two years into a Vegas run of her show “Piece of Me.” Since late 2013, she’s been contracted to do 50 shows per year at Planet Hollywood.

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FOR THE RECORD

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9:42 a.m. May 23: An earlier version of this article incorrectly said Britney Spears is contracted to do 50 shows per year at the Hard Rock Cafe. The contract is for Planet Hollywood.

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As a result, Spears’ opening number was a far cry from her notoriously unpracticed gig during the 2007 VMAs. During “I’m a Slave 4 U,” she and well-toned dancers worked in lockstep while beats ran. From “Work Bitch” to a snippet of Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock N’ Roll,” which she sang while grinding on a huge prop guitar, to “Toxic,” the artist moved like it was 1999.

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In the audience, her inheritors and admirers, including Meghan Trainor, Demi Lovato and famous couple Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis, showed their respect with head-nodding and smiles. Others, such as Wiz Khalifa and the Weeknd, appeared a bit more skeptical. Onstage, Spears couldn’t seem to have cared less.

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