Britney Spears Baby One More Time hit #1

…Baby One More Time Britney Spears

Released: January 12, 1999 Peak: 16 US, 2 UK, 19 CN, 2 AU Sales (in millions): 14.1 US, 1.21 UK, 28.3 world (includes US and UK), 33.17 EAS Genre: pop

Tracks: Song Title (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts. Baby One More Time (9/29/98 1 BB, 2 GR, 1 RR, 25 A40, 1 UK, 1 CN, 1 AU, 5 DF) You Drive Me Crazy (8/24/99, 10 BB, 4 GR, 4 RR, 5 UK, 13 CN, 12 AU, 32 DF) Sometimes (4/6/99, 21 BB, 6 GR, 4 RR, 11 AC, 3 UK, 7 CN, 2 AU) Soda Pop Born to Make You Happy (12/6/99, 1 UK) From the Bottom of My Broken Heart (12/14/99, 14 BB, 17 GR, 16 RR, 25 CN, 37 AU, 40 DF) I Will Be There I Will Still Love You Thinkin’ About You E-Mail My Heart The Beat Goes On Total Running Time: 42:20

Rating: 3.379 out of 5.00 (average of 27 ratings) Quotable: “The singles, combined with Britney’s burgeoning charisma, make this a pretty great piece of fluff” – Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

The Arrival of Britney Spears…and the Revival of Bubblegum Pop “At the beginning of the ‘90s, teen currency shifted from bubblegum ’n’ Tiger Beat to grunge ’n’ Maximum Rock & Roll. Although it may have been pushed from the spotlight, teen pop hadn’t died – it, in a way, went underground, spending time on the fringes of pop culture.” AM “One of the leading lights of the exiled teen brigade was The New Mickey Mouse Club. For several years, it toiled away on the Disney Network, earning a small fan base – but, more importantly, providing a launchpad for several careers, including that of Britney Spears. Like her fellow NMMC alumni ‘N Sync, Spears shot to stardom in the late ’90.” AM “With Britney Spears bubblegum was back with a vengeance.” AB The Look Robert Christgau said Spears tries to portray a “Madonna next door;” WK that is, “part female teenage role model, part coquettish tease” AB – “ther perfect mix of seduction and innocence.” RD “We all know it. The pigtails. The mini skirt. The complete schoolgirl fantasy. However, when a 16-year-old future pop phenomenon grabbed that narrative and made it her own, the mainstream musical landscape was altered forever.” PM The Sound “Albums like her debut, ...Baby One More Time, were topping the charts as if they were Hangin’ Tough, which is only appropriate since it sounded as if it could have been cut in 1989, not 1999.” AM AllMusic.com’s Stephen Thomas Erlewine says it “has the same blend of infectious, rap-inflected dance-pop and smooth balladry that propelled the New Kids and Debbie Gibson” AM to success. Entertainment Weekly’s Beth Johnson said Spears “sounds remarkably like the Backstreet Boys’ kid sister” WK which isn’t surprising since their producer, Max Martin, “is also the mastermind behind Spears’ debut. He has a knack for catchy hooks, endearing melodies, and engaging Euro-dance rhythms.” AM The Critics Some critics considered the album “silly and premature.” WK Jane Stevenson of the Toronto Sun said that the album “threatens to turn your brain into mush” WK while The Hamilton Spectator’s Craig McDennis said the album “offers a glib compendium of soul/pop clichés.” WK In the end, though, “the singles, combined with Britney’s burgeoning charisma, make this a pretty great piece of fluff.” AM Regardless of what critics thought, the album launched Spears’ career and made her an international pop culture icon. The Songs Here are insights into individual songs. “Baby One More Time” Max Martin’s sound is “best heard on the hits.” AM “With her distinctive mellowed-out sexy vocals and unstoppable presence, the album’s lead single,” PM “the rump-shaping” RD …Baby One More Time, blasted her to international success.” PM Spears’ ‘80s predecessors like Tiffany and Gibson “never recorded anything as sexy as Britney Spears’ white-funk smoker ‘...Baby One More Time.’” AZ “Even haters have to admit [it] stands as one of the era’s best dance songs.” RD Spears “cultivated a coy…sexuality by way of her ambiguously suggestive lyrics and the skimpy school uniform she wore in her debut video.” TB She “quickly became a Lolita for a brand new generation of dirty old men.” RD “Born to Make You Happy” “It’s impossible to compare the caliber of the other tracks to such a mega-hit” PM although this was no one-hit wonder album as it generated four top-40 hits in the United States and the #1 UK hit Born to Make You Happy. That song offers lyrics about “a relationship that a woman desires to correct.” WK “You Drive Me Crazy” In the United States, Spears landed a second top-ten hit with the “the bubblegum pop fantasy” PM of the “exuberant You Drive Me Crazy.” RD With a “moderately slow dance beat,” WK it traveled similar territory as “Baby One More” and “proved that Spears’s vocal ability was one to be reckoned with.” PM “Sometimes” and “From the Bottom of My Broken Heart” In the United States, the second single was “the dial-up pop” PM “heartbroken ballad” WK Sometimes. From the Bottom of My Broken Heart is another “sentimental teen pop ballad.” WK Both were top-40 hits in the United States. Neither song can match the vocal acrobatics or emotional outpouring of ‘90s divas like Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston, it did what it set out to do – remind listeners that young love can be the most passionate of all. Other Songs However, nothing “remotely approaches” AZ the appeal of “One More Time.” “Like many teen pop albums, ...Baby One More Time has its share of well-crafted filler” AM which may be “pleasantly catchy, but too much of its space is given over to icky ballads (E-Mail My Heart?) and other unconvincing moves such as the dancehall-lite Soda Pop.” AZ Of course, there’s always disagreement over how good music is. Erlewine calls the same song an “utterly delightful, bubblegum-ragga album track.” AM “Clsoing the album with a cover of Sonny Bono’s The Beat Goes On, one of the all-time hipster favorites, is a stroke of genius.” RD

Resources: AM All Music Guide review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine AZ Amazon.com review by Rickey Wright RD Robert Dimery (2006). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Quintet Publishing Limited: New York, NY. Page 852. PM PasteMagazine.com (6/3/2024). “The 300 Greatest Albums of All Time” AB Michael Spilling (editor) (2015). Best-Selling Albums: From Vinyl Records to Digital Downloads. Amber Books Ltd.: London, United Kingdom. Page 176. TB Thunder Bay (2005). Albums: The Stories Behind 50 Years of Great Recordings. Thunder Bay Press; San Diego, CA. Page 293. WK Wikipedia.org Related DMDB Links: First posted 1/30/2012; last updated 12/8/2024.

Britney Spears topped the charts with “Baby One More Time”

Baby One More Time Britney Spears

Writer(s): Max Martin (see lyrics here) Released: October 23, 1998 First Charted: October 9, 1998 Peak: 12 US, 2 GR, 15 RR, 25 A40, 12 UK, 11 CN, 19 AU, 5 DF (Click for codes to singles charts.) Sales (in millions): 1.51 US, 1.8 UK, 10.0 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 785.1 video, 556.25 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: Britney Spears was 16 years old when she recorded “Baby One More Time,” a dance-pop hit which hit #1 in more than a dozen countries. AB40 The song established her as “the most iconic popular music star of the turn of the century.” TB It has been called “Backstreet Boys meets Abba” LW and been compared to classics like Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and The Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up” in that it “makes its presence known in exactly one second.” WK Spears built her image on contradictions. She was “a fresh-faced teen from the Mickey Mouse show who acted like a porn star” TC selling her “highly sexualized chastity” TC as “a modern-day Lolita in [a] skimpy school uniform.” TB The “decidedly sexual tone” AB40 of “One More Time” was largely presented via an iconic video directed by Nigel Dick in which Spears is portrayed as Catholic high school student in a “bare-midriff package.” TC Max Martin, who worked with the Backstreet Boys and N Sync, wrote the song, originally submitting it to the R&B group TLC. After they rejected it, Spears’ management heard the song and, according to Spears, she knew it would be a hit saying it is a song “every girl can relate to. She regrets it. She wants him back.” WK However, the line “hit me baby one more time” caused some concern by people who interpreted the lyrics as encouraging domestic violence or sadomasochism. Spears explained, perhaps naively, that the line “doesn’t mean physically hit me…It means just give me a sign.” WK It has also been explained as a Southern term referring to getting a call from someone via mobile phone. LW Resources: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Max Martin AB40 About.com (2007?) Top 40 Pop Songs: The Best of the Best. By Bill Lamb. TC Toby Creswell (2005). 1001 Songs: The Great Songs of All Time. Thunder’s Mouth Press: New York, NY. Pages 175-6. JA David A. Jasen. (2002). A Century of American Popular Music: 2000 Best-Loved and Remembered Songs (1899-1999). Routledge: Taylor & Francis, Inc. Page 15. LW Alan Lewens (2001). Popular Song – Soundtrack of the Century. Billboard Books: New York, NY. Pages 180-1. TB Thunder Bay Press (2006). Singles: Six Decades of Hot Hits & Classic Cuts. Outline Press Ltd.: San Diego, CA. Page 280. WK Wikipedia.org Related Links: First posted 1/30/2012; last updated 11/21/2022.

On This Day (1949): John Lee Hooker “Boogie Chillen” charted

Boogie Chillen John Lee Hooker

Writer(s): John Lee Hooker (see lyrics here) Recorded: November 3, 1948 First Charted: January 8, 1949 Peak: 11 RB, 4 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 36.9 video, 20.57 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: John Lee Hooker “was born in 1917 at ground zero of the blues, Clarksdale, Mississippi.” TC Will Moore, his stepfather, occasionally played with Charley Patton SS and was considered “one of the pioneering blues players in the Delta at that time.” TC Hooker said, “What I’m playing now, that’s what he taught me to play, his style.” TC Hooker left the Delta and headed for Detroit in 1943. He started as a janitor and played music on the side. It took five years, but he eventually met a local record distributor named Bernie Besman who decided to record him. He employed some unusual techniques such as putting a speaker in a toilet bowl to get an echo effect and putting a microphone by a plank board where Hooker’s foot tapped in time. SS “Boogie Chillen” was recorded at the end of that demo session. Hooker explained the inspiration for the song, saying he’d been walking down Hastings Street in Deroit and dropped into Henry’s Swing Club. He liked what he heard and shouted, “Boogie, chillen!” SS He said the resulting song was was a guitar boogie like what his father played down south. BH It was the first “down-home electric blues record” to top the R&B charts, which inspired record companies to find more of “the new electric generation of country bluesmen.” BH The music was characterized by “heavily syncopated guitar that just sits in a groove while John Lee growls over the top.” TC It “was closer to rock & roll than blues; it had the pronounced beat of the hormonally pumped white music.” TC Hooker became a favorite of British bands like the Animals in the 1960s. In America, bands like “Canned Heat and ZZ Top made careers out of essentially recycling Hooker’s boogie.” TC Resources: BH Blues Hall of Fame by Jim O’Neal TC Toby Creswell (2005). 1001 Songs: The Great Songs of All Time. Thunder’s Mouth Press: New York, NY. Pages 366-7. SS Steve Sullivan (2013). Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings (Volumes I & II). Scarecrow Press: Lanham, Maryland. Pages 609-10. Related Links: First posted 9/10/2023.