VENTURA, Calif. — Britney Spears pleaded guilty through her lawyer Monday to a lesser charge that will allow her to avoid jail time after California prosecutors accused her of driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs.

The 44-year-old pop star, who recently completed a stint at a rehabilitation facility, didn’t appear in Ventura County court. But her lawyer, Michael A. Goldstein, pleaded guilty on her behalf to what’s commonly called a “wet reckless.” That allowed her to be sentenced to one day in jail that the judge said she served when she was booked, one year of probation, a required DUI class and state-mandated fines.

The plea offer was standard for defendants with no DUI history, no crash or injury on the road, and a low blood-alcohol level, the county district attorney’s office said. And it’s especially common for defendants who have shown motivation to address their problems and seek treatment, as Spears did when she voluntarily checked in to a substance abuse treatment center last month.

“I don’t think anybody’s happy about pleading guilty to anything, but under the circumstances, to get this behind her, I think everybody is pleased with the result,” Goldstein said after the hearing. “We appreciate the district attorney recognizing the positive steps that Britney is taking to help herself.”

Goldstein said Spears returned home after recently completing her rehab stint, and that reports that she left early were “absolutely false.” Asked what’s next for her, he replied, “I don’t know, I’m sure a lot.”

During the brief hearing, Spears received summary probation, which is informal and doesn’t involve mandatory meetings with a probation officer. She temporarily yielded her Fourth Amendment search and seizure rights if she is pulled over, meaning she must automatically yield to searches and sobriety tests. At Goldstein’s request, the judge ruled this would not apply to her home.

District Attorney Erik Nasarenko said after the hearing that Spears had taken “full responsibility,” but he emphasized that DUI is a “serious crime” and said it was essential that she follow the requirements agreed to in court, which include continued substance abuse treatment, weekly visits with a therapist and monthly visits with a psychiatrist.

“We do not want Miss Spears to reoffend,” Nasarenko said.

She was charged Thursday with one misdemeanor DUI count, which meant she was not required to appear in court for her arraignment. But her representatives hadn’t said whether she would appear, and the hearing drew an unusually heavy media turnout for Ventura, a seaside city of about 110,000 people roughly 70 miles northwest of downtown LA.

After her March 4 arrest, a representative called her actions inexcusable and said that ideally, the arrest would lead to overdue change in her life.

She was pulled over for driving her black BMW quickly and erratically on U.S. 101, the California Highway Patrol said. She appeared to be impaired, took a series of field sobriety tests, was arrested and was taken to jail, the CHP said.

Authorities said in the criminal complaint that Spears had alcohol and drugs in her system, but they didn’t specify which drugs or list her blood alcohol content.

Spears grew to superstardom in the 1990s and 2000s with hits including “Toxic,” “Gimme More” and “I’m a Slave 4 U.” Most of her nine studio albums have been certified platinum, with two diamond titles: 1999’s “ … Baby One More Time” and 2000s “Oops! … I Did It Again.”

She became a tabloid obsession in the early 2000s and a source of intense public scrutiny as she battled mental illness and paparazzi fought to document the details of her private life.

In 2008, Spears was placed under a court-ordered conservatorship, run primarily by her father and his lawyers, that would control her personal and financial decisions for well over a decade. It was dissolved in 2021.

Since then, she has married, divorced and released a bestselling memoir, “The Woman in Me.”

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DETROIT — “Kill it kid.”

That's the message Jack White left for Olivia Rodrigo in her “Saturday Night Live” dressing room ahead of her doing double duty as host and musical guest on last weekend’s show.

Rodrigo told the story of the note and how she found it during an appearance on “The Tonight Show” on Thursday.

“I love Jack White. He's like my hero,” Rodrigo, 23, said of the Detroit-born musician. “He’s the coolest guy ever. Wonderful person. Always stands up for what’s right.”

Rodrigo said the two were chatting by phone this week and he told her he left her a message in her dressing room when he was on the show last month, playing musical guest alongside host Jack Black.

“He sent me a text and he’s like, ‘look up.’ Like, ‘keep your head up. You’re gonna find something,’” Rodrigo said.

Video footage then showed Rodrigo searching her “SNL” dressing room for White’s secret message, which she finally found taped to the ceiling of her closet.

The message, which came with several flowers attached, read simply, “Kill it kid,” and was signed “Jack White.”

“Isn’t that sweet? Isn’t that sweet?” Rodrigo said. “That’s, like, my little good luck charm.”

White and Rodrigo’s mutual appreciation dates back to 2022 when the pair met up at White’s Third Man Records in Nashville, Tennessee.

“I had the chance to meet a talented singer and musician today named @OliviaRodrigo, she's very cool, very real and very much a lover of music,” White wrote in an Instagram post at the time. “She’s also introducing another set of youth to the love of vinyl records as well. Respect.”

Rodrigo echoed the sentiment at the time in a since-deleted Instagram post, writing, “Got to meet my hero of all heroes today. Still crying.” (Rodrigo’s Instagram history was recently wiped as part of the promotional cycle for her new album, “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love,” which is due out June 12.)

Rodrigo then paid homage to White by playing during his induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2025. At the ceremony, she performed the White Stripes’ hit “We’re Going to Be Friends” alongside Feist.

Saturday’s “SNL” marked Rodrigo’s third appearance on the show, and her first time as host.

She previously appeared as a musical guest in May 2021 with host Keegan-Michael Key, and again in 2023 with host Adam Driver.

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From beyond the museum walls Monday, works of art moved and took shape as the glitterati of guests from Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman to Venus Williams fashionably ascended the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s steps and exhibited their creative interpretations of this year’s dress code, “Fashion is art.”

The question of whether fashion is art has long been topic of conversation for fashion insiders, and this first Monday in May the dress code is leaving nothing up for debate.

The dress code for the starry fundraising event calls for guests to “express their relationship to fashion as an embodied art form.”

Fashion has long drawn inspiration from works of art, leaving guests with no shortage of artistic references to show off.

Archival fashion looks have become a red carpet phenomenon with fashion savvy stars wanting to get their hands on some of the rarer pieces of fashion history.

Designer Elsa Schiaparelli famously collaborated in 1937 with Spanish artist Salvador Dalí to design a white silk dress with a lobster printed on the front. Years later, Yves Saint Laurent would design shift dresses filled with Piet Mondrian’s blocks of color in 1965, and more recently, Marc Jacobs collaborated with artist Takashi Murakami in 2002 to add his designs to Louis Vuitton.

Monday’s carpet is also a chance for celebrities to deliver their own performance art.

The late designer Alexander McQueen was heavily regarded by fashion insiders as an artist. He closed his Spring 1999 show with a piece of performance art when machines sprayed Shalom Harlow’s white dress with black and yellow spray paint as she posed on a rotating turntable.

Past Gala dress codes have honored designers and pulled from literature. Last year, the art of tailoring was center stage with the dress code “Tailored for you.” The high-profile event raises money for the museum’s Costume Institute, and each year the dress code for the gala takes cues from the Costume Institute’s spring exhibition.

On display this Spring, the “Costume Art” exhibit will “examine the centrality of the dressed body.”

The relationship between fashion and art has not always been embraced. Art historian and author Nancy Hall-Duncan writes in her book, “Art X Fashion: Fashion Inspired by Art” that in the 19th century, art was perceived as classical and fashion was frivolous.

When Yves Saint Laurent held the Met’s first fashion exhibit in 1983, the exhibit was met with heavy criticism. Since then, the museum has held countless fashion exhibits throughout the years with museums around the world following suit. The Louvre put on its first fashion exhibition “Louvre couture” last year.

The dress code set by Met Gala co-chief Anna Wintour and the Met’s Costume Institute curator, Andrew Bolton, is the final seal of approval that fashion is art, Hall-Duncan told the Associated Press.

“Isn’t that a giant step?” she said. “It will indeed change perceptions.”

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From combined wire services