Britney Spears has denied reports by Page Six and the Sun claiming that the pop stars Charli XCX and Julia Michaels had been asked to write songs for a new album by the singer.

Rolling Stone additionally quoted a source claiming that “management and A&R are trying to get her excited for the music. As of right now, she’s not actively in recording but they’re getting [songs] done to present to her.”

Spears roundly denied the claims. “Just so we’re clear most of the news is trash !!!” she posted on Instagram. “They keep saying I’m turning to random people to do a new album … I will never return to the music industry !!!”

Instead, she said that she had written more than 20 songs for other artists over the past two years. “When I write I write for fun or I write for other people !!! […] I’m a ghostwriter and I honestly enjoy it that way !!!”

No songs written by Spears have seen release, leading to the possibility that the 42-year-old uses a pseudonym to write for others.

Spears has not released a full album since 2016’s Glory. In her recent memoir, The Woman in Me, she wrote that as a young woman, “music was my life and the conservatorship” – which controlled every aspect of her life from 2008-2021 – “was deadly for that”.

She wrote that despite a recent collaboration with one of her musical heroes, Elton John, “pushing forward in my music career is not my focus at the moment. It’s time for me not to be someone who other people want; it’s time to actually find myself.”

Nevertheless, following the publication of the memoir she told fans on Instagram that she “wrote a new song!!! Hate you to like me !!! No beef with anyone … just being a narcissist in a claimed, self-entitled way !!! It’s to accumulate interest by giving ego with my eyes closed because I hear important people do that these days.”

Spears’ Instagram post about her falsely rumoured new album – which captioned an image of Salome With the Head of John the Baptist – also kicked back at comments that her book was “released without my approval illegally”, related to a fan conspiracy that Spears remains under some vestige of the conservatorship.