“…Baby One More Time”

Famously, Britney told them to tie up the shirts.

Those three piano notes hit pop culture like a cannonball. …Baby One More Time introduced one of the most iconic artists of the turn of the century, and also one of the most insulted, exploited and mistreated. It seems kind of appropriate, in retrospect, that …Baby One More Time’s music video introduced Britney Spears as a sexed-up school girl, both complicit in and a victim of her own exploitation. At 17, she looked like she was on top of the world. Less than a decade later, she would be formally stripped of autonomy and placed under a conservatorship that would last until she was almost forty.¹

It’s hard to step back from what became of Britney and pop culture and the asteroid strike that was …Baby One More Time. Maybe that’s always what happens after something has that big an impact. There were certainly female artists on the Hot 100 in 1998: the Spice Girls were still around, Destiny’s Child was ascendant, and more “mature” stars like Faith Hill and Madonna were bringing out hits. Teenager LeAnn Rimes’s “How Do I Live” had come out just the year before. But no one out there was quite like Britney, marrying girl-next-door energy with just enough sexuality to underline that she was no longer in the Mickey Mouse Club.

I certainly can’t remember the first time I heard the song, and I bet you can’t either. It’s one of those perfectly crafted pop singles, with an absolutely irresistible hook and a building chorus that pulls you in. The song, Max Martin’s first in an incredible line of international hits, misused “hit me” in a way no one has before (or really since; that awkward English may have been key to the single’s success). In retrospect, the song feels like a surefire hit. But nothing in music is guaranteed, and …Baby One More Time was rejected by TLC and the Backstreet Boys before landing with Britney Spears, who had herself been rejected by three labels before Jive Records signed her.² The lyrics are standard “I want you back” stuff, nothing spectacular, but Britney’s vocals sell the yearning, and it’s sexy without being explicit. 

And then there was the video. The original concept was cartoony, but Spears pushed back, wanting something that better reflected both her age and the audience she wanted to court. Britney suggested the setting, the wardrobe, and wanted choreography, and she got what she wanted. Director Nigel Dick later said that the clothes all came from Kmart, and he was told no wardrobe items cost more than $17. (Spears’ cousin played her ex-boyfriend.) “The outfits looked kind of dorky,” Spears said, “so I was like, ‘Let’s tie up our shirts and be cute.'”

The song was a massive hit and paved the way for a whole new set of female solo artists, including Christina Aguilera, who was framed as a competitor but who really carved out her own niche with sexier singles like “Genie in a Bottle.” (And who, rather famously, kissed and made up with Britney at the VMAs, with a delighted Madonna and Missy Elliot sharing the stage.) The line of female artists continued on from there; you can draw a pretty direct line from Britney Spears to the fun-girl sexuality of Sabrina Carpenter or the romantic yearning of Chappell Roan. (It’s not so much that Britney proved the haters wrong as much as that male executives were almost never right about female solo artists.) There’s always rhetoric about who ‘the next Britney’ or Madonna will be, but in truth, Britney wasn’t “the next” anything. She was just who she was.

Unfortunately for Britney, things started going sour almost immediately. By the time Spears was on Rosie O’Donnell’s show, there were rumors about her not performing her own vocals. Tabloids speculated about her relationships and her virginity. It was ugly, and it didn’t get better. There’s been something of a cultural reckoning around the popular treatment of Britney Spears, especially as the #FreeBritney movement gained attention and the Framing Britney Spears documentary was released in 2021. It’s been somewhat vindicating and somewhat infuriating, to be honest. None of what had happened to Britney Spears was a secret. Millions of tabloids were sold from the Britney beat. TMZ probably paid a year’s worth of bills on her shaving her head. One of the most popular TV shows in the nation has a full episode calling out how Britney Spears was treated.³ If anyone tells you they didn’t know what was going on at the time, they are lying. No judgement but full judgement, as the kids too young to remember say.

One of the heartbreaking things in retrospect about Britney Spears’s debut is how much her input and autonomy made the song a hit, and how little input and autonomy she had by the end of her conservatorship. It’s easy to think of Spears as a victim (and she was), but I think it’s important to recognize that she was, and is, a lot more than that. She wasn’t just a performer and wasn’t a passive participant in her career; she helped shape her early image, and her instincts were dead on.

And even if Britney never releases another single, she can still be proud of her career, which spawned monster hits, a Vegas residency, and a cadre of devoted fans who still care about her to this day. No one did it like Britney, and no one will.

1. There has been a lot of speculation about Britney’s mental health, especially post-conservatorship, and I’m not going to do any of that here. I will say that losing control of your life in the way Britney did, for as long as she did, would be very hard on anyone’s mental health. I just hope she can live her best life. ↩︎
2. Labels were at the time convinced that there wouldn’t be another big female solo artist. Ha! ↩︎
3. I honestly think “Britney’s New Look” might be South Park’s finest moment. The bit at the end when the villagers recognize Miley Cyrus as their next target was distressingly prescient. ↩︎