The Unholy Trinity: Lou Taylor, Sports & Entertainment
During the #FreeBritney movement Lou Taylor became known as the evil architect of Britney Spears’ conservatorship. Yet, looming in the fog of Lou’s myth are unexplored facts of her rise in Hollywood.
This is Part 1 in the Chronicle of Lou Taylor. Lou was Britney Spears’ business manager throughout the conservatorship. Here you can read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 & Part 7.
"The Bible teaches about ethics and doing what is right." Taylor said. "There is no reason why business should operate any differently." - The Palm Beach Post, April 10, 1997
Lou Taylor played a key role in establishing Britney Spears’ conservatorship and maintaining the shroud of secrecy that allowed it to escape scrutiny for 13 years. My goal is that people with varying levels of knowledge will gain a deeper understanding of how Team CONservatorship carried out such a blatant public injustice. The fact is, Lou couldn’t do it alone via her company Tri Star Sports and Entertainment.
Mainstream news has framed Lou Taylor as supremely litigious and powerful. The press doesn’t contextualize who Lou really is or what powerful friends got her there. We can only understand her position within the matrix of power in the sports and entertainment industry if we zoom out. From a bird’s-eye view, we can see that her influence originates from the center stage of American power. Lou may be the poster child for the business of Britney Spears, but when we peel away the layers, we can see the wall of the fortress that protects her.
Beyond the Spears family, Lou became the satanic face (aka “Lucifer”) within the #FreeBritney movement due to Britney’s unjust conservatorship. Lou is partly responsible because she sent cease and desist letters to concerned fans and filed an outrageous defamation lawsuit against a #FreeBritney advocate for parody websites. Lou billed Britney’s estate for some of those legal fees and other dubious charges such as hiring Black Box to spy on #FreeBritney advocates and buying ads in trade publications promoting her services. The numerous documentaries made about Britney were initially extremely cautious in mentioning Lou Taylor but have lately become more willing to state a few basic facts. To this day, there has been no thorough exposé of Lou Taylor.
Who really is Team CON?
Every day I am in absolute disbelief about how little the public understands about how this happened to Britney. This is by design, but nonetheless frustrating as hell. The evidence of Lou Taylor’s complicity in this reprehensible conservatorship is glaringly obvious. Lou seems to have desperately wanted to be a player in Hollywood, which led her to be a perfect patsy from the beginning. Lou was extremely sloppy—any true mastermind wouldn’t have left so many indicators of their complicity. The business of Britney is a billion-dollar industry. Why don’t we ever talk about the corporations involved in Britney, Inc.?
A business front is a person or business whose true ownership remains in the shadows to avoid exposure and accountability. In Britney’s case, the general public only imagines her family and Lou Taylor as the guilty parties. This isn’t to say they are not guilty, but the extent of the identified conspirers always reaches a character limit. In conjunction with our established front people (the Spears family & Lou Taylor), the mainstream cover story uses two dominant systems of oppression: classism and ableism.
The dominant narrative outside the Britney fandom is that this is an isolated case of injustice and/or was necessary to “save” her; Britney’s family is low class and did this to her only for money. Yet, a lot of powerful people and institutions had to knowingly sign off on everything to make the CON work. At the same time, by isolating Britney within the frame of “mental illness” it:
Disaggregates Britney’s abusive conservatorship in isolation from the systemic fraud, exploitation and corruption in the sports and entertainment industries.
Weaponizes the entrenched ableism/saneism in U.S. culture to mask the fundamental need for a thorough investigation now. This perpetuation of stigmatizing discourse further harms people at the intersection of other -isms. (ex. people with disabilities are more likely to be poor, non-white etc.).
Allows for wild and distracting conspiracies to proliferate.
A Theory about a CONspiracy vs. Conspiracy Theories
The conservatorship of Britney Spears was a conspiracy. There is a BIG difference between a theory about a conspiracy and conspiracy theories. The current viral theories around Britney vary from the absolutely ridiculous to the absolutely pointless. It is unclear if the proliferation of these conspiracy theories is done “for the lolz”, as a strategic distraction, monetization, or a lack of capacity for analytical thinking.
Many people are genuinely concerned for a variety of reasons. Every day, people painstakingly dissecting her Instagram videos for evidence of AI, deep fakes, body doubles, and cries for help. While much discussed, almost no one believes she is dead or a clone. Furthermore, there is voluminous research on how the current people around her are handlers/bad actors and she is still not free because of a court-ordered care plan. The mainstream tabloid media perpetuates these theories and concerns, often quoting anonymous insiders.
Simultaneously, the prestige media overwhelmingly ignores the dangerous calls for vigilantism as these theories have become a viral phenomenon. Conspiracies can take a life of their own because they essentially become a participatory game that blurs the boundary between the real and the imaginary. We need to talk about why people flock to these theories because of the information vacuum left by the mainstream media. For decades the consolidation of media has both created an insatiable appetite for hot takes while failing to provide nuance and historical context to current events. Even in the mainstream coverage of Lou Taylor, 99% of the reporting deferred to Lou’s litigious nature to the extent that we are left asking: “Is the media afraid of facts?”.
If so, then this is a dangerous precedent in an ostensibly free and open society.
Ms. Louise M. Sawyer
Louise M. Sawyer was born October 30, 1965, in New York to her parents Donald and Betty Sawyer. Lou graduated from Roth High School in 1984, which is located in Henrietta, NY. Lou married Robert Taylor on June 17, 1989.
Robert is from Rochester, New York and his parents are Robert and Donna Taylor. According to Robert, he met Lou while working at an “engineering firm” shortly after he graduated from college, and they soon married. In 1990, they moved to Florida for his job, and this is when she started working in the entertainment industry. Prior to working in the entertainment industry she was an accountant for Arthur Andersen despite having no college degree.
In 2000, they moved to Tennessee so Robert could be a full time pastor at the newly founded Calvary Chapel, Brentwood. Calvary Chapel is a particular strain of fundamentalist evangelical Christianity, which includes the belief in the bible being the literal word of god. It is unclear when the Taylors became a part of the Calvary Chapel, but it extends to their home town as Robert’s brother’s funeral service was held at the Calvary Chapel of Rochester.
“I have an interesting role in the marketplace because I work in the sports and entertainment industry. I know high-profile professionals who've come out of lifestyles of drunkenness, promiscuity, the whole thing. They can't put themselves back into that kind of environment because of the temptation it creates. The Holy Spirit imparts wisdom about how to handle certain invitations and opportunities. At times that may mean not even putting yourself into a specific situation. I believe the difference is if you as a believer truly have a call. I've always felt called to minister to people others don't normally get to. And I know a big part of that means hanging out with people who don't know God yet. I thrive in those situations.”
- Lou Taylor in Today’s Christian Women, March 2007
Lou’s Involvement with the Establishment of the Conservatorship
By the mid-2000s, Lou had ingratiated herself with Britney’s family members but had a relativity nonexistent presence in Hollywood. In January 2008, Lou Taylor rocketed into the national consciousness by appearing on Good Morning America as the “Spears Family Spokesperson”.
The New York Times stated that it is unclear how Jamie Spears and Lou Taylor met. I have a number of plausible theories, although explicating them is beyond the scope of this article. There are many outstanding factoids about the Spears family in the mid-2000s that are very strange and have not been explained.
Case in point: Why were Jamie Spears and Jason Alexander neighbors in 2006 in Studio City, CA, years after Britney’s marriage to Jason was annulled? Jamie Spears' Spears Management, Inc. paperwork lists Tri Star as its principal executive office. Moreover, who was assisting Jason Alexander to launching his new business JAA Entertainment?
For much of the #FreeBritney movement, Lou’s involvement was recognized only after she became involved with the Spears family. Yet, Lou did not even have a Los Angeles office until 2008. Lou has been adamant she was not involved in Britney’s business affairs until after the conservatorship began. As time progressed, it became very apparent that Lou was involved in the establishment of the conservatorship. This is where she was extremely sloppy if she ever intended to claim innocence:
She was photographed at Britney’s house.
She was photographed at the hospital while Britney was involuntarily held.
She wrote emails to Jamie’s attorneys strategizing the judge selection for the conservatorship.
She made a $40,000 loan to Jamie Spears before the conservatorship, which is almost the exact same amount as the lawyers charged pre-conservatorship. Although those fees were waived by the attorneys, they billed Britney’s estate hundreds of thousands of dollars in the same year after the conservatorship was instituted.
Yet, Lou Taylor ensured that an in-person interview she did was published in her local Tennessee paper right when the conservatorship began. The article was published the same day Britney told a Los Angeles judge she did not want her father to be the conservator, while the lawyer Britney chose was summarily ejected from the courtroom.
“Our conduct alone speaks volumes. The most challenging part of my job is knowing if I don’t grow weary in the process of doing good, I will definitely reap a harvest”.
- Lou Taylor, Brentwood Life, February 4, 2008
What’s up with Lou Taylor these days?
The power of Britney’s talent and celebrity have propelled Lou Taylor to the high-profile career that she enjoys today. This is evidenced by the numerous industry awards she has been given following her acquisition of Britney as a client, with most of these awards coming from leading entertainment publications owned by Penske Media. For a while, it seemed Lou Taylor had been “canceled” by the mainstream industry as her public appearances and awards dwindled around 2020.
However, in recent years, Lou Taylor appears to have remained unscathed. She continues to serve on the Black Music Action Coalition’s Executive Leadership Council and is a mentor for Live Nation’s Femme It Forward program.
There are several high-profile scandals surrounding Lou Taylor these days. Lou Taylor and/or Tri Star is facing a number of lawsuits, including an ex-employee alleging she was fired in retaliation for requesting disability accommodations, and others related to the mass casualty event at the Astroworld festival. Astroworld, a concert featuring Lou’s client Travis Scott, resulted in the deaths of 10 people and injuries to hundreds more. Many other people and entities are also being sued for the tragedy, including Live Nation, Travis Scott, Drake and Apple Music.
Despite the scale of the tragedy, there remain many unanswered questions about how it occurred, with little public information available regarding the ongoing investigation. Monopolies don't have to be the best at what they do because they don't have to compete. They are de facto dictatorships of entire industries, answerable only to money.
It is clear that the power players in the industry have not distanced themselves from the infamous Lou Taylor. Lou is still working with the Kardashians, was invited to the 2023 Grammys, and is a part of Live Nation’s mentorship program. It is likely in Live Nation’s interest to protect Lou, in light of the $750 million lawsuit they are facing for Astroworld.
Live Nation also has a vested interest in protecting others involved in the CON. Britney’s former manager, Larry Rudolph, established a new company with Live Nation one month before her conservatorship ended. Larry merged Larry Rudolph Management with Live Nation in 2010, which was the same year Live Nation merged with Ticketmaster.
Britney’s case illustrates the dangerous consequences of corporate consolidation, where cronyism supersedes human rights, human lives and the freedom of the press. Given everything I know, I believe the only way to achieve accountability is for regular people to maximize their power by speaking up and uniting. This is why I landed on #BreakUpTicketmaster as an objective of my #JusticeForBritney activism.
(An interesting side note: In 2019 Travis Scott settled a copyright claim made by DJ Paul, who happened to be represented by Britney’s attorney Mathew Rosengart.)
In an old article Lou details how “Britney Has a Clear Vision for Her Billion Dollar Empire”:
“Britney has built her team more like that of a corporate structure,” says Taylor. “I think Britney truly conceives of herself as a corporate executive officer, and the organic desire she has for any sort of brand ideas or sponsorship, show ideas, music ideas, all really start at the top with her. I think that’s probably the thing that most people don’t understand about how she operates.”
- Lou Taylor in Variety, August 28, 2014
I am sincerely hopeful that Britney will one day be free from all aspects of her conservatorship. Many advocates are tired of Britney being treated as a sideshow and object of curiosity. The systemic abuse in her conservatorship is not unique but rather symptomatic of the long-standing systemic inequities in the sports and entertainment industries. However, I am even more hopeful that the ongoing public scrutiny of the major players in this situation, like Lou Taylor, will help create a more just and equitable industry for everyone.
Who actually are the shareholders of that billion-dollar empire, Britney, Inc.?
Continue to Part 2 of the Chronicle of Lou Taylor:
Unreal this barn witch . I’m on tenterhooks
Great post and thanks for breaking this down