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Billboard Bits serves up the best bite-sized nuggets of music news and gossip.

Britney in the Studio with Will.i.am, Collaborating with Ke$ha?

Along with producers Dr. Luke and Max Martin, Britney Spears announced on Twitter yesterday she was working with the Black Eyed Peas‘ Will.i.am on her forthcoming seventh album, “Femme Fatale.” Spears implied the collaboration is producing solid results, tweeting, “You guys are gonna love this one.” Spears is also reportedly collaborating with Ke$ha, who penned a new dance tune for Spears titled “Till The World Ends” that may appear on the album. ( @britneyspears, Just Jared)

Keri Hilson and The Roots To Perform at Grammy After-Pary

Keri Hilson and the Roots are scheduled to perform along with DJ Wayne and members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra at the 2011 Grammy Celebration, the Recording Academy’s official Grammy Awards after-party on Sunday (Feb. 13). The 5000-guest event will take place at the Los Angeles Convention Center right after the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards.

Christina Aguilera Offered National Anthem Do-Over

After Christina Aguilera‘s botched National Anthem at the Super Bowl, minor-league baseball team the Brooklyn Cyclones have extended her an opportunity for redemption. The Class A farm team for the New York Mets invited Aguilera to perform the Star Spangled Banner before one of their home games this summer.”When a player makes a mistake, they usually don’t get a shot at redemption,” said Cyclones general manager Steve Cohen in a statement. “But with a singer, that’s a different story.” ( ESPN)

Cee Lo Green To Perform With Puppets At Grammys

When Cee Lo Green takes the stage at Feb. 13’s 53rd Annual Grammy Awards to perform his hit song “F— You,” he will be joined not only

Getting booked to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a major event is an honor for any artist. Many will try anything — whether it’s fiddling with the arrangement or striving for the glory notes that only five-octave powerhouses like Whitney Houston could hit — to put their own memorable stamp on the national anthem.

But not everyone — in fact, almost no one — reaches a level of true greatness. After all, it’s a pretty difficult tune to sing, what with its gymnastic melody that forces vocalists to swing dangerously back and forth between their high and low registers as well as a final line that audiences have come to expect be belted out high and mightily. Factor in the borderline excessive wordiness (Rockets red glare? Bombs bursting? Seriously, couldn’t we have toned down the alliteration a little?) and the fact that screwing it up risks offending an entire nation, and you’ve got yourself a song that is, be it by accident or design, the ultimate make-or-break test for performers everywhere.

Nerve-inducing as it is, however, you’d think that singers would have learned by now to stop booking public National Anthem gigs unless they were absolutely positive they had what it takes to do the song justice. Alas, artists of all genders, genres and generations (Okay, maybe alliteration is kind of fun) have stood up in front of the world time and time again and butchered our country’s theme song — including some talented folks that you’d never expect.

With that in mind, cover your heart and hold your ears as Billboard brings you the 11 worst national anthem performances ever.

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Britney tells the full amazing story of the roller-coaster life of one of the world’s most popular stars. Travel with bestselling author Sean Smith as he paints a picture of the real Britney Spears – a little church-going Southern girl described by her tutor at Disney as ‘the sweetest, most wholesome, most innocent person that you’d ever want to meet’, who became a desperately unhappy victim of fame.

Britney Spears was a child star on Broadway at ten, with Disney at eleven, a number one recording artist at seventeen and a multi-millionairess before her eighteenth birthday. But that success counted for nothing as she faced the agony of a marriage break-up that left her battling for custody of her two sons. Her eventual breakdown was seen by millions around the world. Few could forget the sight of a distressed Britney strapped to an ambulance trolley on her way to a psychiatric unit.

But, incredibly it was not the last we heard of Britney and, phoenix-like, she recovered to produce a US number one single and album and headline a sell-out world tour. Using a series of exclusive interviews, Sean Smith reveals a complex yet genuinely nice young woman who at last seems to be winning.

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“Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake were made for each other. They were the teen dream couple; the Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney for a celebrity-obsessed generation. If not the king and queen of pop, they were certainly the prince and princess. Without exception, those that knew them as skinny youngsters say that there was always something special between them.

If their romance was a Hollywood script, a variation of When Harry Met Sally, then the first show-stopping scene would have been their duet on The Mickey Mouse Club when they sang an exhilarating version of ‘I Feel For You’ to each other. It made the hairs on the back of the neck stand up. Tony Lucca, now a solo artist, still recalls watching them perform it at the dress rehearsal before