It was kind of funny.
I think she might have had a dog in the picture as well.
Almost like Dorothy from Kansas.
Britney Spears Baby One More Time video screen grab Credit: Britney Spears Vevo.
Barry Weiss:She was wearing a black cocktail dress and high heels.
She sang live for us: Whitney Houston ballads, Mariah Carey, Toni Braxton.
She really was a good singer.
She was like, 15 years old.
And we kind of thought,Wow, this is really left of center.
There’s no female pop artist out there right now.
One of the calculations there was, Clive Calder was notoriously cheap, and Whitney Houston was notoriously expensive.
Star secured, the Jive team needed, well, music.
Barry Weiss:There weren’t many U.S. mainstream pop producers that could do young artists.
Britney Spears Baby One More Time video screen grab Credit: Britney Spears Vevo.
The pop at the time was very right down the middle.
But we were looking for edgier, younger-sounding records.
We had an A&R office at Jive in Hilversum, outside Amsterdam.
Martin Dodd was our A&R guy, and the Max Martin and Cheiron connection.
She was all dressed up.
She thought I was a 50-year-old producer from the old school.
I had really long hair at the time I looked like Ozzy Osbourne.
It was pretty obvious that she had something, even though she was very quiet and very shy.
Martin went home to Sweden and cranked out a song.
But it wasn’t Britney’s… yet.
Max Martin*:I write on the Dictaphone.
I came up with the melody first.
I wrote the chorus; you just hum it in.
Thanks to [my co-producer, Rami Yacoub], that song sounds the way it does.
He is much more urban and R&B than me.
I’m more of a melody man.
So he’s a big reason that the song turned out the way that it did.
It really represented [that] whole generation, not them.
But Max was not down with that…
When the song came into us, we thought, let’s cut this with Britney.
Let’s send her to Stockholm.
The magic that worked with the Backstreet Boys, why wouldn’t it work again for Britney Spears?
Jive sent Britney to Sweden to record her debut album.
Britney Spears*:I didn’t know what to expect.
It was my first time overseas.
They had six songs, [and] I had a week.
Max Martin*:She was very well prepared.
We just kept on recording.
We tried a couple of different styles.
After a while, I could hear her stomach growl in the microphone.
I asked if she was hungry.
We’d been going for eight hours.
She said, “No, I’m fine.”
I said, “Let’s take a break,” and she had three burgers.
He would sing the different harmony parts himself, too.
Max has an amazing voice, and very few people have ever actually heard that demo.
So Britney ended up sounding exactly like Max.
If Max Martin is John Hughes, he found his Molly Ringwald.
His muse-vehicle for his particular brand of writing.
it’s possible for you to’t picture it being sung by anybody else.
We thought it was really weird at first.
It was not the way Max wrote it.
We thought it could be a really good opening salvo for her.
NaNa Hedin:The magic is the attitude.
There was just one problem: the chorus.
Specifically: the “hit me.”
Everybody thought it was some sort of weird allusion to domestic violence or something.
But what it really was was the Swedes using English not exactly correctly.
But at that point, Max’s English wasn’t that great.
So it came out sounding a little bit weird in English.
That’s it."
Barry Weiss:I actually changed the lyric.
With a lead single locked in, it was time to shoot a video.
Barry Weiss:I went immediately to Nigel Dick, the video director.
“She’s an unknown girl.
She’s 16 years old.
It’s candy-floss pop.”
I just thought the song was really, really good.
Barry Weiss:Her idea was the wholeGreasething, dancing in the hallway.
She gave the kernel of the idea to Nigel, and he came up with the rest.
So I swallowed my pride.
Nigel Dick:[Shooting] was very easy.
There was no real drama.
As far as I knew, she was just a schoolgirl from the South.
[But] she was very relaxed in front of the camera.
She was very, very drilled with her dance routine.
Every article of clothing in the video was purchased at K-Mart and cost less than $17.
And I was very dubious about this idea.
But I was overruled.
And this has always been the question with Britney: Does sheknowwhat she’s doing?
It was very much on the edge of what was acceptable then.
How can I explain this?
It’s exhilarating just to be something that you’re not.
And people tend to believe it.
Nigel Dick:I was kind of aware that some people might feel that that was exploitative.
Here she comes in, little kid, no makeup.
you’re able to tell how young she is.
But very wise, already.
They had just gotten the final edit of the video [on] VHS.
Vanessa Grigoriadis:When I was reportingthis article, a lot of people said Britneywantedto be sexy.
And she wanted to push the boundaries.
I think that it’s impossible to know if it’s actually true.
But when I was younger, I looked up to people, but I never wanted to be them.
I always had my own identity.
I’m an entertainer when I’m on stage…and they need to explain that to their kids.
That’s not my job to do that.
“…Baby One More Time” was released on October 23, 1998.
It debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 less than a month later and spent 32 weeks on the charts.
The video came out pretty simultaneous with the song.
It was just an absolute explosion… By November it was just a worldwide phenomenon.
John Ivey:We felt like it was a hit.
And obviously it became a big monster hit.
Chris Molanphy:I’m sure if you were 40 and wanted to call TRL, you could.
But no one over 20 was calling TRL.
So it was this mainline, hooked to your veins, of what teenagers were most obsessed with.
And Britney arrivedjustas this is beginning.
It could not have been more perfect for the era of TRL.
John Ivey:Britney had the second level.
People saw this video and thought,what is this girl?Because everybody latched onto this immediately.
It wasn’t very long after that,she was onRolling Stone.
Barry Weiss:What it was like was worldwide domination.
John Ivey:It would be in the top percentile of singles in the past 25 years.
Because it broke her as an artist and what she became.
It’s the song that made her Britney Spears.
John Seabrook:It was instrumental in putting Cheiron and Max and Sweden on the map.
Barry Weiss:I mean look, was she involved with writing those songs?
Max Martin is a genius, okay?
He tailor-made those records for her.
But she would never have had the career without her vision.
She has this innate ability to move the media.
And people, Mandy Moore is an actress.
John Ivey:There were a thousand Britney Spears wannabes.
Otherwise, I’m sorry, but you’re engaging in a double standard.
John Seabrook:I think the melody is eternal, or at least, transcends its late ’90s period.
Can I say that?
Can I sing along with that?
Barry Weiss:It sounds as good now as it did then.
It hasn’t weathered or dated.
John Ivey:There’s some songs that just have a timeless feel.
That’s what’s ingrained into your mind as what she is.
And the thing is, when you look at her, she still looks the same.
I mean, she’s older, but you still see the same kid there…
When you look at Brit, you still see her.
You still see the same girl.
1 Hits**Froma 2001 interview withEntertainment Weekly
