Authors on Tap: Jeff Weiss, Tal Rosenberg, Meaghan Garvey, Andrew Barber

Please join us in store on Thursday, July 24th at 7:00pm to help celebrate Jeff Weiss's new book, Waiting for Britney Spears. Jeff will be in conversation with Tal Rosenberg, Meaghan Garvey, and Andrew Barber!

About Waiting for Britney Spears:

Named a Most Anticipated Book by People, Vulture, A.V. Club and OurCulture

"Like a J.D. Salinger novel rolled in Hunter S. Thompson's hallucinogen dust." —Ann Powers, author of Travelling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell

"[Waiting for Britney Spears] transformed and transported me." ―Hanif Abdurraqib, author of There's Always This Year

A frenetic, gonzo account of Britney Spears’s historic rise and equally tragic fall told by an iconoclastic music journalist. America, 2003: A country at war, its shiny veneer beginning to crack. Von Dutch and The Simple Life dominate. And on the cover of every magazine, a twenty-one-year-old pop star named Britney Spears. Tracking her every move for a third-tier gossip rag in Los Angeles was an unknown young writer taking whatever job he could while pursuing his distant literary dreams. He'd instead become an eyewitness to the slow tragedy of a changing nation, represented in spirit by “the coy it-girl at the end of history.”

Years later, after finally establishing himself as a celebrated journalist, Jeff Weiss presents Waiting for Britney Spears, a gonzo, nostalgic, and “allegedly true” recounting of his years as a tabloid spy in the lurid underbelly of Los Angeles. Weiss follows America’s sweetheart through Vegas superclubs and Malibu car chases, annulled marriages and soul-crushing legal battles, all the way to Britney’s infamous 2007 VMA performance. As Weiss lives through the chaos leading to Britney’s conservatorship, he observes, with peerless style, cringe-inducing fashion waves, destructive celebrity surveillance, and a country whose decline is embodied by the devastating downturn of its former golden child.

With the narrative flair that established him as a singular chronicler of modern pop culture, Weiss goes for broke in Waiting for Britney Spears, a descent into a neon hall of mirrors reflecting our obsession with fame, morality, and the mystery of what really happened to the last great pop star.

About the authors:

Jeff Weiss is a Los Angeles-based cultural critic, music journalist, and editor. He is the editor-in-chief and founder of POW MAG, an independent culture website dedicated to in-depth music coverage. Weiss’ writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, GQ, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Wax Poetics, and The Washington Post, and has been anthologized in Da Capo Best Music Writing. Over the years, he has profiled a wide range of cultural figures, from Kendrick Lamar and André 3000 to the Beat Generation poets and Paul Thomas Anderson. In 2018, Weiss led a boycott against LA Weekly after its controversial change in ownership, demonstrating his commitment to journalistic integrity and community values. He is one of the founding editors of the independent and L.A. focused publication theLAnd. In recognition of his impact on music journalism, Rolling Stone named him one of the “Top 50 Innovators Shaping Rap’s Next 50 Years” in 2023. Weiss also hosts The Truth Hurts podcast, co-organized the rap club night Don’t Come to LA, runs the POW Recordings label, and runs a radio show on Dublab. He is the author of the new book, Waiting for Britney Spears: A True Story, Allegedly, a deep dive into the pop star’s rise and fall, released in June 2025 by MCD x FSG.

Tal Rosenberg is a writer, editor, music programmer, and aspiring voice actor. He used to be an editor at the Reader and has most recently written for Chicago, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Pitchfork.

Meaghan Garvey is a writer from Chicago. Her work appears in Pitchfork, Billboard, County Highway, and in her newsletter Scary Cool Sad Goodbye.

Andrew Barber is the owner/creator of Fake Shore Drive, a Chicago-based media, management, record label and events company founded in 2007. Andrew is also a playlist curator for Apple Music, published music journalist, artist manager, brand and record label consultant and media personality. His radio show 'The Drive' airs weekly on SiriusXM's Shade 45 channel.

About this event:

This is a free, in person event and registration is required. People can register for free through the link below. Jeff will be happy to sign copies of his book after the event! Can't make it to the event? Signed copies will be available in store and online and we ship nationally!