New York, NY – Pop superstar Britney Spears achieves another benchmark with her current album, Femme Fatale. This week, Spears’ seventh album – which spawned the No. 1 hit “Hold It Against Me” and the Top 5 smash “Till The World Ends”- is certified platinum by the RIAA. This latest news brings Britney’s U.S. albums certifications to the 32 million sales mark.

The certification comes as tickets for her highly anticipated all female Femme Fatale Tour with special guest Nicki Minaj, Jessie and the Toy Boys and Nervo go on sale April 30th. The tour kicks off on June 16th in Sacramento.

Spears’ impressive reach goes beyond the U.S. as fans world wide are embracing her latest project. Femme Fatale has also achieved platinum status in Canada and is gold-certified in the UK, France, Mexico, Czech Republic, Brazil, Korea & Singapore. The current single, “Till The World Ends” is in the Top 10 on iTunes charts in Canada, Mexico, Australia, France, Spain and Denmark and the song ranks in the Top 20 on radio airplay charts across Europe.

With the release of the critically-acclaimed Femme Fatale, Britney has earned more distinctions and set new records: she is the only woman to have six albums debut at No.1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart; she and Mariah Carey are the only artists to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart with more than one song; Britney’s one of only seven artists- and just three women- with Hot 100 No. 1’s in three decades; Femme Fatale is one of the Top 10 longest running trending topics on Twitter.

A songwriter on Britney Spears’ new album Femme Fatale has jumped to defend the pop superstar against criticism suggesting she didn’t write any of the lyrics.

The Toxic hitmaker has been a part of the songwriting process for at least one track on each of her last five discs, contributing the most to her 2003 project In the Zone, including her Madonna duet, Me Against the Music.

Spears is not credited as a writer on any of the tunes from her seventh studio album, prompting some detractors to take aim at the singer for relying on the talents of others to produce hits for her.

But collaborator Heather Bright, who co-wrote Femme Fatale’s Trouble for Me, insists few pop stars actually come up with their own lyrics and Spears should be applauded for not forcing her songwriters into giving her credit just so she can take a cut of the royalties.

In a post on her blog, Bright writes, “I would just like to address one thing! The media is talking trash about how Britney didn’t write any of the songs on her album … HELLO! Wake up everybody! NONE OF THESE ARTISTS WRITE THEIR OWN SONGS!!!!!! (there are a few exceptions … lady gaga, will.i.am/BEP, chris brown is starting to write a lot of his own stuff…)

“Anyway… Britney could have come to me, like all these other A-list artists, and said … ‘Hey, you wanna be on my album? I’m gonna need writing credit for that song AND part of your publishing (royalties) even though I didn’t write anything! And then I’m gonna go on tour and gross $150 million in ticket sales and not give you any of that, even though I’m performing your song!’ I could rattle off a laundry list of artists who I’ve had that conversation with!”

And Bright has nothing but praise for Spears and her creative team.

She adds, “Britney’s one of the few artists I’ve worked with who didn’t try to take something that wasn’t hers. In my experience, from a business standpoint, her entire team is nothing less than a bonafide class act!”

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