Seven years later, those lyrics seem much more relevant as the once-bubbly Brit struggles with a panoply of personal problems and a stalled career. The world is left wondering: What was responsible for this breakdown, and can it be fixed? "You have a woman whose life is in extraordinary disarray.

She's had two recent children, a divorce, a stressful lifestyle," says Drew "Dr. Drew" Pinsky, an addiction specialist and personality on the Discovery Health Channel. "I don't know what the status of her friend relationships is; she seems to have none.

" Is her loneliness killing her, as she sang in her 1998 breakout single " Baby One More Time"? Will she end up a bitter, washed-up star a la Baby Jane, psychologically torturing her spritely sis Jamie-Lynn? Let's recap Britney's recent bizarre behavior.

It's not readily apparent when the meltdown began. But things have been visibly shaky since 2004, when she infamously wed Kevin Federline. She had two babies, Sean Preston and Jayden James, in 2005 and 2006, respectively, and filed for divorce in November.

After that, things got worse. She spiraled into drug addiction and started hanging out with Paris Hilton, exposing her lady parts, vomiting and making a scene wherever she went. Then she checked herself in and out of rehab twice, and has repeatedly shown up, frantic, at Federline's doorstep, where she's been turned away because he's worried about how seeing their mom in such a state will affect their children.

But perhaps the most shocking and telling moment was when she shaved her head in the middle of last month. "The astonishing thing is," Pinsky said, "here she is, demanding to shave her hair off impulsively in someone's closed barber shop, and the owner of the shop is like, 'Britney, you're having a bad day, think about it' -- and the bodyguard stepped in front of the owner and said, 'She can do whatever she wants; it's her body.' That's emblematic of what's going on with this poor woman.

" Psychologist Cooper Lawrence, a regular guest on CNN and host of her own radio show, agrees that Spears' status is only hurting her. "It gives her a sense of entitlement she doesn't need right now," Lawrence says. "She needs humility to get through whatever she's getting through.

She's never been one for humility. It's not part of the whole structure of stardom." And Britney has been a star for much of her life, living a sheltered, pampered existence where everyone on the payroll puffs her up.

"She didn't go through the normal developmental milestones the rest of us go through at different ages; she was forced into a life that was not congruous with her development," Lawrence says. "We know now as psychologists that the frontal lobe is not fully developed till your early 20s. She's at that age where her brain is catching up to her life.

The fact that all this went on prior to 25 is no shock." Could Brit's premature stardom be part of the problem? She was being groomed for celebrity before she was 10, having auditioned for "The New Mickey Mouse Club" at age 8 and appearing on "Star Search" at 11.

She was featured on "The New Mickey Mouse Club" from ages 11 to 13. "There's nothing to suggest that being a young star or child star by itself is what predisposes (one) to these issues," says Pinsky, who treats several major stars. After all, if that were the core cause, wouldn't we see the same problems arising with fellow former Mouseketeers Christina Aguilera and Timberlake?

Olivia C. Grosser, author of the new book "Britney Spears: Prodigal Daughter," available at oliviapublishing.com, has an idea why Spears' contemporaries haven't collapsed.

"I think Christina has been regarded as the 'second fiddle' to Britney all along, so has consistently tried to improve her standing. This in turn means she has had room to manipulate her image, to reinvent herself from vamp to classy sophisticate. It has gained her an awful lot of respect and what I call 'late-onset recognition.

' Christina is now in her mid-twenties and better able to navigate and control her life and career. I don't think she had a parent or manager controlling her in the way Spears' did," she says. "As for Justin Timberlake, I think he has shrewdly invested and diversified his talents.

He has branched out from music into fine-dining and other areas. He has constantly evolved, whereas Britney hasn't. Poor Spears got stuck in a moment she thought would last forever, whereas Aguilera and Timberlake know they have to roll with the punches to enjoy longevity in their careers.

They have crafted their careers, unlike Britney, who was entirely manufactured and perhaps never allowed to be who she wanted to become." This suggests there could be more at play than stress, early stardom and substance abuse. Pinsky and Lawrence both say Spears may suffer from an organic mental condition like bipolar disorder.

"There might have been something there for a long time that's undiagnosed. It took a while for it to dawn on people (that something could be mentally wrong) because they're not intellectually savvy when it comes to psychological problems," Lawrence says. "Britney doesn't need rehab; she needs a therapist.

She's been going to Alcoholics Anonymous, which is the most ridiculous thing in the world. They're treating her as an alcoholic who has the same problems as every other alcoholic who's sitting in the room with her. She's Britney Spears.

So the anonymous part's already gone; what's the point?" "When you find the person you've been poking fun at is mentally unstable, there's this guilt that comes after you've made fun of them," says Liz Shaffer-Wishner, 23, a Louisville resident who works for AmeriCorp Vista. But Shaffer-Wishner doesn't see a bright future for the star.

"She can't stop her own decline. She's going to be the next Anna Nicole Smith. She's going to run herself into the ground.

" "I was crazy about her before she shaved her head. Now she looks like a little boy," says James Burrell, 39, an insurance agent who lives in downtown Louisville. He doesn't think she's genuinely unstable, just that her current life circumstances have dragged her down.

"I think she's just stressed out all the attention she gets from the paparazzi. The average person couldn't deal with it." Louisville residents Mary Jent, 30, a mental health-care worker, and Kassie Alfred, 27, a nursing student, said they were never big fans, but they've been following Spears' story.

"She went from an idol to a bad after-school special," Jent says. "I think she's just in a rough patch, or a fuzzy patch. No matter how crazy I get, I'm not shaving my head.

" "The demographic her music is aimed towards wouldn't understand what she's going through, and can't feel sympathy or empathy," Alfred says. Still, they feel she'll survive somehow. "People come back from worse," Jent says.

The experts also agree that with some serious self-reflection and a commitment to treatment, Britney Spears may yet rise from this epic fall. And most surprisingly, Federline, who almost everyone had pegged as the deadbeat troublemaker in the saga, has stepped up to the plate when it comes to caring for Sean and Jayden and dealing with Britney. "Kevin Federline is suddenly looking like a good guy," Pinsky says.

"He's setting down boundaries appropriately, he's creating leverage and motivation for her to stay in treatment." If K-Fed can come out smelling like roses, Brit can surely re-emerge smarter and stronger.