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The first timeBritney Jean Spearsever left America was to go to Stockholm in 1998.
With it, the hardest-working, most successful teenage superstar of the 1990s would have a debut album.
It wasnt the reactive album conception were accustomed to now.
Spearss debut was a bunch of songs shed recorded before her opening statement changed the course of popular music.
That single and title track moved the earth with its first bars.
There is no second … Baby One More Time on the record.
Nobody in a pre-social-media era demanded logical intent from their overnight superstars.
The foundation is listenable and enjoyable, yet questionable, flawed, bizarre, and epically over the top.
Spears had a voice that was bigger than her life story so far.
It was not the voice of an innocent small-town girl.
…Baby One More Time could be sung by a 15-year-old or a 40-year-old.
Spearss voice was perhaps a problem.
You may ask again: What planet did this come from?
The charming bamboozlement of Soda Pop notwithstanding, silliness is not Spearss legacy.
Pain, solitude, gut-wrenching rejection this is where she lives.
Not to shade her performance on Soda Pop.
Artists like Billie Eilish are decidedlynotrecording a Soda Pop at the moment.
More confusing than Soda Pop, however, is her presentation.
The consistent message of Spearss story arc has been the innocent-until-proven-otherwise mantra.
Her albums material conflicted with her physical presentation.
What she did with her body and what she said via her mouth were worlds apart.
For example, contrastthe album-cover artwithher firstRolling Stonecover.
Oh to be a fly-on-the-wall during the decision-making process about which Teletubby was going to work best.
Then theres single Born to Make You Happy, which is emo-level tortured.
I dont know how to live without your love, she sings on the piano-driven hit.
And yet she burns with the desire of a thousand Jackie Collins novels.
It made sense that this was Spearss oeuvre.
She would reveal on TV appearances that she was a student of Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston.
She was eager to be considered a singer-songwriter.
There are hints at her own inspirations too.
Stepping into the future was the song, Email My Heart whichRolling Stonecalled pure spam.
Turns out Spears would have the last laugh considering the intimacy of our online discourse two decades later.
We live in an age where pop is supposedly controlled byus, not them.
This album does not sound like supply meeting demand.
Nobody would have streamed most of…Baby One More Timeif it came out now.
And yet its her biggest seller to date.
Producing five hit singles, it made her the Antichrist among critics and purveyors of real music.
It was a different time.
