amie Lynn Spears was sitting in a car, surrounded by screaming fans, when it finally hit her. Of course, she knew her sister Britney was successful – she had seen her swap family singalongs for pop stardom – but this was next-level. “Something clicked in my head on that car ride,” she recalls, “like, my sister is famous: Mariah Carey famous. She’d created so much power for herself. At that moment I knew I wanted it, too.” From her home in Louisiana, the 29-year-old recounts her own journey to a slightly more modest stardom: from the young child on the road with Britney to being cast, at the age of 13, as the lead in Nickelodeon’s teen series Zoey 101. Despite Britney’s towering fame, Jamie Lynn says she wasn’t jealous. “I always looked at her with pride, and she was my biggest cheerleader guiding me in an honest way.” When, in her early teens, music producers wanted a piece of this Spears sibling, Jamie Lynn turned the offers down. “I thought I was too young to create an album then,” she says. “I embraced having characters to play while I figured out what my own story was.” But in 2007, aged 16, Jamie Lynn was forced to grow up quickly. Just as Zoey 101 was ending, she announced her pregnancy. “I’d been thinking about the next steps in my career,” she says, “but right then nothing else mattered except telling my family I was pregnant. I had to step aside; it was survival mode.” Her engagement to the baby’s father, her childhood sweetheart, was quickly organised. A year later, they split. After six years out of the spotlight, she finally had something musically meaningful to say. In 2014 she released her first EP, The Journey, a quaint country record featuring the self-explanatory Shotgun Wedding. “I needed to find a way to provide for the child,” she says. “When I felt safe enough, I was able to write and release it.” Spears talks about her sister with reverence, but troubles within the family are widely known. Britney recently challenged the conservatorship that sees her personal and professional life managed by their dad. I am told Jamie Lynn can’t talk about the #freebritney movement and tense wrangling for legal reasons (after we speak, the court ruled against Britney); instead, I ask how she’s been coping. “It’s hard,” she says carefully. “It makes me really sad because I love my family. All I can do is look for the good, not the bad. You can’t open that can of worms publicly.” She pauses: “I don’t think it’s fair to anyone.” Today, though, she’s promoting the release of the Zoey 101 theme tune, a gift to fans after Covid delayed a planned reboot of the show. “I can leave 2020 knowing we’ve given them something to look forward to in 2021. This year, couldn’t we all do with something positive?”