← Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
The Give Me a Sign Edition
01:11:49
How an introverted Swedish producer and a showbiz kid from Louisiana made the late 1990s’ most influential No. 1 hit
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- [00:00]
Chris Melanfen
You're listening ad free on Amazon Music. Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfy, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One? Series on today's show. Twenty years ago this month, a single from a former Mouseketeer made its debut on Billboard's Hot 100. Within two months, it would reach the top of the chart, and it would kick America's teen pop craze into overdrive.
- [00:52]
Britney Spears
I must confess I still believe still believe.
- [00:59]
Chris Melanfen
In the two decades since she donned a schoolgirl uniform and strutted into pop chart history, Britney Spears has been one of the most debated figures in American culture, held up as the avatar of fast food pop. But what is undisputed is that Baby One More Time is still a topic of fascination 20 years later. And with hindsight, Britney's chart breakthrough at the juncture of 1998 and 99 was both the culmination of decades of prior pop science. And the pivot point of millennial pop, helping to define what the hits would sound like in a new century.
- [01:48]
Britney Spears
Guess what? It's gonna be me.
- [01:54]
Chris Melanfen
That's because Baby, One More Time was not only a smash for Spears, but also an American chart breakthrough for the man who wrote it, a Swedish pop craftsman named Max Martin, who would go on to become the defining producer and songwriter of his generation. He and his Stockholm song factory would go on to craft hits that were praised.
- [02:20]
Britney Spears
Tell Me why, Ain't Nothing but a Bar.
- [02:24]
Chris Melanfen
Tell Me hits that were pilloried. And hits that were playlisted by millions. Both Max and Britney would go on to collaborate with other artists and other producers and songwriters. Some hits they issued apart from one another would be more acclaimed. And as the music business transformed from physical goods to the digital cloud, many of their 21st century hits would ultimately wind up more consumed. But the first collaboration between Britney Spears and Max Martin holds a singular place in their respective discographies. The moment they defined the zeitgeist, helped along by the launch of a new daily MTV after school countdown. Slash pep rally. Ladies and gentlemen, Britney Spears is here. It's like hanging out. Your video's like big time right now in trl. Well, thank you. I hope so. Have you been watching? Britney took over both of Billboard's flagship charts in the same week right at the start of the final year of the 1900s, rebooting the pop landscape in the countdown to Y2K. And that's where Your hit parade marches today, the week ending January 30, 1999, when Britney Spears reached the top of both the Hot 100 and the Billboard 200 album chart with a single and an album each titled Baby One More Time.
- [04:28]
Britney Spears
Hit me Baby One More Time.
- [04:34]
Chris Melanfen
Last month Entertainment Weekly magazine commemorated the 20th anniversary of Britney's breakthrough with an in depth article on the single about which reporter Jessica Goldstein wrote, quote, the song would go on to define early aughts pop music. Several people in the article reveal that Spears, contrary to stereotype, had greater input into how the song was rolled out to the public and she had remarkable self awareness for a then teenager. But some of the most interesting details about the making of this hit concern Max Martin and his ongoing attempts to perfect American sounding pop from his home base the Chiron Studios Song Factory in Stockholm. By his own admission, Martin leaned on other producers and performers to make his song sound more American and urban. This is totally understandable. As a man from Sweden, a country of 10 million people, less than half the population of the New York metropolitan area, Max Martin had only a secondhand understanding of R and B derived American pop. Of course, Sweden has a proud decades long history of sophisticated musical craftsmanship, but urban is not the first adjective you might reach for to describe Swedish pop.
- [06:13]
Britney Spears
Foreign.
- [06:20]
Chris Melanfen
We'll talk about the history of Scandinavian pop on the American charts after this. Sweden as a country places a high premium on musical instruction. As part of its world renowned web of state sponsored social programs, it offers first rate musical education in its schools. Which perhaps explains why this relatively sparsely populated country has punched above its weight in generating global pop hits. In 1974, in the Seaside town of Brighton in the United Kingdom, the annual Eurovision Song Contest was taking place and representing for Sweden that year would be a foursome who would not only go on to take the crown for their country, but go down in history as the most beloved, most famous Eurovision winner ever. That of course is ABBA. With Waterloo, Sweden's Eurovision winning song of 1974, it doubled as the debut single of the band. Right from the jump, ABBA were producing polished global pop. Waterloo topped charts in 10 countries across Europe plus South Africa and even reached number six in America in August of 1974. This began a streak of more than a half dozen top 40 hits for ABBA on the Hot 100 over the next three years, culminating in their first US number one single in April 1977. I suspect you've heard that one. Here's the thing about ABBA and America. Dancing Queen was their only Number one hit here. This wouldn't be remarkable except for the fact that across Europe ABBA scored multiple platinum studio albums and strings of number one hits. Some critics have theorized that ABBA's more modest success in the States was due to their grasp of English. The band's manager, Stig Anderson, wrote many of their early lyrics, although by the late seventies co bandleaders Benny Anderson and Bjorn Ulveus had improved their English enough to begin writing more of the words to their songs. In any case, this critique does not explain how in the UK ABBA scored 18 consecutive top 10 singles, including nine number one. If anything, abba's English is impressive considering it was their second language, one they had learned in grammar school. Which brings up another point about what has made Sweden such an outsized influence on global pop. Most Swedes are fluent in English. In the post war period, all Swedes have had mandatory education in the language starting as early as first grade. This is not to suggest that English fluency means lyrical grace. A theme we will see by the 1990s is that Anglophone lyrics by Swedish songwriters are memorable, even moving, but not always natural. They are not nonsensical in a doo wa ditty or womp baba lula way. But Swedish hitmakers certainly, since abba, by their own admission, tend to pick English words that fill the meter of the song more than they scan as prose. A more positive way to say this is for Swedish pop makers, the music always comes first, and for abba, the melodies were indelible. In the end, abba's strong but more limited US success was probably largely timing. When the group Split in the 80s, its members scored hits that did about as well or better on the Hot 100 as the 70s ABBA singles had done. Anna Fried Lingstad, aka Frida, scored a sizable 1982 hit with her Phil Collins collaboration with I Know There's Something Going On. And when ABBA co leaders Benny Anderson and Bjorn Oveis collaborated with West End and Broadway titan Tim Rice on the musical Chess, its lead single, Murray Head's One Night in Bangkok, reached number three in America. That ranks it as one of the three biggest hits Benny and Bjorn ever scored. Here, the masked vocals on the Chorus of Bangkok were very ABBA esque. Further supporting the idea that timing is everything was the fact that at the turn of the 90s, the Swedish duo Rock Set scored four Hot 100 number ones. Rockset's guitar first melodic pop was an easier sell on the American airwaves at the time, Starting with their 1989 number one, the Look. Roxette quickly followed the look with a pair of power ballad no ones, Listen to youo Heart and the Pretty Woman soundtrack smash It Must have Been Love. By the time of 1991's Joyride, Rocsette's hits were becoming ever more pastiche. Like Joyride features whistling and a notably absurd refrain by songwriter Per Gessel. A unique, oddly memorable lyric. Hello, you fool, I love you. Come on, join the joyrid that could only have been penned by someone whose second language is English. But when it comes to Swedes writing in English, Benny Bjorn and Per Gessel were Shakespearean wordsmiths compared with the man who was the prime mover in bringing Stockholm based popular to the global airwaves in the final years of the 20th century. No, not Max Martin, not yet. I'm talking about his mentor, the man responsible for producing this.
- [13:52]
Britney Spears
She leads a lonely life she leads a lonely life.
- [14:02]
Chris Melanfen
All that she Wants never would have been the global smash it became without the ears and raw pop instincts of the man born Doug Christer Voller, who renamed himself Denis Pop. He spelled Deniz, by the way, with a Z. Deniz developed his ear for hits as a DJ in Stockholm. He had a natural instinct for the songs and sounds that packed the dance floor. He particularly loved American funk and soul and British techno pop. The simpler the better. In 1992, Dennis had opened a pop production studio in Stockholm, a successor to the Swedish DJ collective he'd belonged to since the mid-1980s. He called his new facility Chiron Studios, named after Chiron, the centaur in Greek mythology who teaches chants and dances to Dionysus. Dennis conceived Cheiron not only as his studio and sonic playground, but as a producer collective where the savviest Swedish songsmiths could ply their trade. The song Dennis would eventually produce in 1992 was originally called Mr. Ace. He hated it at first, but the demo tape got stuck in his car stereo and he wound up listening to it non stop while driving around for weeks. Mr. Ace was written by a pair of young and hungry wannabe pop stars named Jonas Berggren and Ulf Ekberg. They would eventually rename themselves Joker and Buddha and their pop group, a foursome they established with Jonas's two sisters they would call Ace of Bass.
- [15:54]
Britney Spears
She's going to get you all that she wants is another baby she's gone tomorrow, boy all that she wants is another baby.
- [16:07]
Chris Melanfen
But it was Dennis Pop who told Joker and Buddha their song needed work. He told them to write a second verse, including the outlandish line, she's the hunter, you're the fox. According to New Yorker writer John Seabrook's book the Song Machine at Cheiron, Dennis took Joker and Buddha's ungainly demo and uncluttered it. He stripped the song down to its light reggae beat, the best skank Scandinavians could muster. All the better to hear the song's unwieldy lyrics, all in awkward English from It's a day for catching tan to it is a night for passion. Or how about the song's refrain, No, the woman in all that she Wants was not interested in producing more offspring. The another baby that the capricious protagonist of Joker and Buddha's song wanted was of course another lover. But the unwittingly idiomatic phrase only made the song catchier, more irresistible on the radio. All that she Wants topped charts across Europe in 1993 before finding its way to storied US music executive Clive Davis. He signed Ace of Bass to his pop chart dominating label Arista records. By late 1993, Ace of Bass hit reached number two on the Hot 100. It would have topped the chart. It knocked around the top three for nearly a dozen weeks right through January of 1994 if it hadn't gotten stuck behind a string of chart topping power ballads by the likes of Meatloaf, Janet Jackson and Mariah Carey. Indeed, what was remarkable about the American success of all that she Wants was that the charts of 1993 and 94 did not sound much like Ace of Bass's Swedish Europop. Whether it was the R B based torch balladry of singers like Carrie or Toni Braxton, the rustic grunge sound of Alice in Chains or Pearl Jam, Or the loping bass heavy gangster rap of Tupac and Snoop Dogg. But what Clive Davis and Dennis Pop had in common was an ear for commercial music so catchy it would overcome current radio Trends. In late 1993, as all that she Wants was climbing the charts, Clive Davis told Dennis he needed another bit of his magic. Davis wanted to reissue Ace of Bass's European debut album titled Happy Nation in the American market, but with a new title connected to a follow up single, something commercial and immediate. What Dennis brought back to Clive Davis sounded like this. To quote John seabrook, Ace of Bass's the Sign was a 3 minute 30 second sonic thrill ride of Swedish funk. Dennis Pop built it out of a double tracked rhythm that stacked beats on top of beats, a percolating mix that pinged irresistibly from the radio. It was Ace of Bass's second single in America and a smash, rising to number one on the Hot 100 in March of 1994. It was such a smash that it stayed there for a month, fell to number two for another month, then returned to number one for two more weeks. Its American album, also called the Sign, sold 7 million copies in 1994 alone. It is now certified nine times platinum in the U.S. it was the number one album of the year. Dennis Pop and his Cha Ron Studios had done the seemingly impossible. They dominated the year of grunge, gangsta and divas with pure Swedish Europ. This mini history of Ace of Bass, a group that would never match the blockbuster success of their debut, is important because the group helped make Cheiron and Sweden the base of operations for the pop renaissance that would overtake the radio in the final years of the 1990s. And Ace of Bass is key to the story for one more reason. By the time the group's follow up album, the bridge, emerged in 1995, Dennis Pop was beginning to partner more closely with other writers and producers in his Cheron stable. And he gave special attention to one young prodigy in particular. Well, my name is Dennis Popp. This here is Max Martin and we're one of the producer crews behind Ace of Bass on the new album done four new songs. The man born Carl Martin Sandberg in 1971 was renamed Max Martin by Dennis Pop himself. Dennis observed early on that the former metalhead, whose glam rock band It's Alive was briefly signed to Che Ron in the early 90s had an uncanny gift for melody writing. And unlike Dennis, Max Martin knew musical notation and theory. And he not only had skilled ears like Dennis, but but could also sight read and write arrangements. According to Seabrook's book, Max Martin spent two years hanging around Cheron Studios learning what exactly a producer does. And by 1995 he was helping to produce singles himself, including eventually this one.
- [23:04]
Britney Spears
It's a Beautiful Life. Oh oh, It's a Beautiful Life.
- [23:12]
Chris Melanfen
Beautiful Life was not only the leadoff single on Ace of Bass's sophomore album, the Bridge, it was the first Max Martin production credit to appear on the Hot 100. When the song reached number 15 in December 1995. It also displayed early hallmarks of Martin's maximalist pop sound and the precision of his productions. Everything was in service to the tempo and the music. Martin called the concept melodic math. In addition to this high priority single, Dennis was also allowing Max to work on tracks by newer Cha Ron clients, such as a brand new boy band from Orlando, Florida. We've Got It Going on was the debut single by the Backstreet Boys. Like the vaguely urban name of the boy band, Goin on was a studious attempt to sound rhythmic and street. Written by Swedes whose only exposure to the mean streets was in Stockholm. It was the Backstreet Boys first collaboration with Dennis Pop and Max Martin, who had been working on the song even before they met the five young men from America. It would not be their last collaboration. Martin would go on to write or produce literally dozens of songs for the Backstreet Boys, including most of their enormous hits at the end of the decade in Europe, which remained devoted to pure pop acts. This debut Backstreet single worked like gangbusters. We've Got It Going on was a top five hit across the continent, eventually even the UK. But in the Backstreet Boys homeland boy bands in 1995, half a decade removed from the peak of New Kids on the Block and New Edition were nowhere. In a later interview with Entertainment Weekly magazine, Backstreet Boy Howie Durrow recalled, quote, we'd have tons of fans at the airport when we'd leave Europe, and then back in America, there'd be like nobody. It was humbling. It wasn't just us radio programmers who were skittish. Mtv, the leading music video channel, slash national creator of Buzz, had gotten the memo that 90s youth culture was dark and edgy, not bright and shiny. In his book, Seabrook talked to Andy Schoen, who in the 90s went from Los Angeles alt rock radio station KROQ to taking on the chief programmer role at mtv. And Schoen remembered his reaction to We've Got It Going On. We looked at that Backstreet video and said, that doesn't feel right. I mean, the whole channel was top 40, but we were the arbiters of cool. And that made it harder for us to play that stuff. It's fate sealed. Backstreet Boys We've Got It Going on made the Billboard Hot 100, but peaked at a dismal number 69 in December 1995. The Backstreet Boys and Max Martin would have to wait a couple more years for their big US Breakthrough. However, around this time, America was incubating its next wave of pop stars. Only it wasn't on top 40 radio. It was on television. From Kentwood, Louisiana, here is 10 year old Britney Spears. Britney Jean Spears was born in Louisiana in 1981 and raised in the small Mississippi bordering town of Kentwood. Before. Before she was even 11 years old, Spears had built an impressive resume as a child performer not just in talent shows in Louisiana, but on the TV performance competition Star Search and young Britney was a belter. In 1992, Britney's performance of the Judds song Love Can Build a Bridge got her second place on Star Search. She was crushed not to win, but she had other irons in the fire. An audition for the new Mickey Mouse club at age 8 so impressed the Disney producers that the only thing keeping her off the show was her young age. The producers suggested that she move to New York, enroll in the professional performing arts school and begin auditioning for stage roles. While there, Spears scored an understudy role in an Off Broadway musical. All that preparation got Spears ready to officially join the Mickey Mouse Club, the revived kids TV show that had made Annette Funicello famous. And in the 50s, Spears was finally cast as a mouseketeer at age 12, alongside future stars Ryan Gosling, Christina Aguilera, Keri Russell, JC Chazzet and Justin Timberlake. Even among that crop of budding luminaries, Spears stood out. Britney Spears was on the Mickey mouse club for two seasons, in 1993 and 94, before the show was canceled. Besides Brittany, three of her fellow Mouseketeers would go on to pursue singing careers. But by 1996, Britney was back in Louisiana, attending her Kentwood high school and dreaming up her next move again in the mid-90s. The grim faced popular music landscape was not especially hospitable to the sort of teen idol Spears was grooming herself to become, or the frothy music being produced by Cha Ron Studios in Sweden. Notwithstanding Ace of Bass's fluke success, the American charts of 1995 and 96 were ruled by alternative rock. And yet another wave of gangster rally. And then the tide began to turn and and at first the Swedish hit factory and the new crop of Mouseketeers had nothing to do with took a little bit of girl power. Had never broken on the charts. It is questionable whether the teen pop explosion of the late 90s ever would have happened. Perhaps it was simply demographic fate. As the relatively small Generation X gave way to a much larger cohort, the millennial generation, a changing of the guard in popular music was inevitable. If it hadn't been the Spice Girls, perhaps a boy band would have broken the grunge and gangsta log jam. Nonetheless, when the five member British girl group broke first in their homeland and then by the start of 1997 in America, the Spice Girls made it safe for radio stations and MTV to play pure pop again. And unlike the 8 Ace of Bass breakthrough in 1994, the Spice Girls had coattails. By the spring of 97 as their debut album Spice rose to the top of the charts and spun off multiple top 10 hits. They were joined in the top 10 by a brother trio from Tulsa, Oklahoma named Hanson. This at last was the moment Chayron Studios and its stable of uber catchy pop acts had been waiting for. Within weeks of the twin breakthroughs of the Spice Girls and Hanson, the Hot 100 welcomed two acts with hits written and produced by Max Martin. One of them was even Swedish, a soloist from Stockholm who went by a single number. Robin Carlson, who records as simply Robin, is known in the 21st century as a pop innovator, generating acclaimed albums filled with deeply personal, independent minded electro dance music music on her own label. But in the final years of the 20th century, Robyn broke around the world as a teen pop star. Literally. Robin was just past her 18th birthday when do you know what it takes broke on the US and UK charts in the summer of 1997. Even then, Robin was creatively assertive. She wrote or co wrote all of the tracks on her debut album Robin Is Here. But her breakthrough hits were produced and co written by Dennis Pop and Max Martin. That included do youo Know, which reached number seven on the Hot 100 in August and Show Me Love which also reached number seven by November. These Max Martin collaborations remain to this day Robin's highest chart hits in America. Do you Know what It Takes was Max Martin's first credit on a US top 10 hit. Actually, Martin went from having no American top 10s to instantly having two. The very same week in the summer of 97 that Robin's single broke into the winner's circle. Right alongside it was another single Martin had both produced and written and it was shaping up as a blockbuster.
- [35:09]
Britney Spears
Quit Playing Games with My heart with my heart.
- [35:23]
Chris Melanfen
The Backstreet Boys had finally broken through on the Hot 100 with Quit Playing Games With My Heart. It turned out that this sort of mid tempo balladry, not the wannabe R B of We Got it going on, was an easier sell for American audiences. Quit Playing Games ultimately peaked at number two, and it was quickly followed by the similarly romantic as Long as yous Love Me which wound up spending a full year on Billboard's radio songs chart.
- [35:56]
Britney Spears
I don't care who you are where you're from, what you do as long as you love me who you are.
- [36:09]
Chris Melanfen
All of this teen pop activity on the Billboard charts had not gone unnoticed by the music industry. Pop acts they might have passed on earlier in the 90s suddenly seemed more promising by 1997. That included the now 15 year old Britney Spears. The year before, in 1996, Britney had recorded a demo in which she tried to sound like a young R and B balladeer. Her then lawyer had passed her a track that had been rejected by Toni Braxton. Spears even tried to tackle uber diva Whitney Houston's bodyguard power ballads I Will Always Love youe and I have Nothing.
- [36:56]
Britney Spears
I Don't Wanna have to Go where you don't follow.
- [37:02]
Chris Melanfen
This demo tape got Britney meetings with three major labels in New York City in the summer of 1997, including Jive Records, a label then known for its R and B and hip hop acts. Jive founder Clive Calder thought Spears might be their ticket into the pure pop sweepstakes, that she would be less expensive to sign and maintain than a power diva like a Whitney or a Mariah. Brittany, he thought, could be an American version of Robin. Max Martin agreed. Jive contacted him to see if he could do anything with their new signing and he flew to New York to meet her. After their first meeting, Martin said, I get it, I know what to do. Privately, he told Jive's A&R staff that Robin, who was currently riding high with the songs Martin had co written with her, was a forceful artist and Max couldn't always get her to do a song his way. With Britney, Max had a young artist willing to be molded to adhere to his melodic math. He even had a song in mind for her, a demo he'd already worked up. But it would be several months yet before Brittany and Max would record together. More on their collaboration after this. Entering 1998, compositions and productions by Max Martin and Shay Ron Studios were becoming ever more ubiquitous on the pop charts. That included Backstreet Boys, who were not only scoring multiple Hot 100 hits, but finally connecting with the more uptempo white funk sound Martin had tried to launch them with back in 1995. Their self referential everybody. Backstreet's back reached number four on the Hot 100 in May of 98. By then, Backstreet Boys were competing on the charts with a new boy band and they were founded by the man behind the Backstreet Boys. Lou Perlman, Backstreet's manager and future convicted felon, devised this quintet which included former Mouseketeers J.C. chazzet and Justin Timberlake. As an in house rival to the Backstreet Boys. He dubbed this other boy band NSync. NSync's first two hits I Want yout Back and Tearin Up My Heart were both Che Ron Studios productions, each co written by Max Martin. I Want yout Back also included production and writing help from Cheron founder Dennis Popp. But by the time NSync's first hit reached number 13 on the Hot 100 in the spring of 1998, Dennis was in no condition to celebrate. He was battling an aggressive cancer that had spread from his stomach to his brain. By the time Britney Spears arrived in Stockholm in May 1998 to record tracks for her Jive Records debut, Max Martin was running Chiron Studios. Brittany would never meet Dennis Pop, the man who reinvented Swedish Popcraft for the new millennium and founded the studio that lay the path for her stardom. On August 30, 1998, Dennis Pop died. He was 30. Che Ron and its team of songwriters and producers were now under the auspices of Karl Martin Sandberg, the man the late Dennis Pop had renamed Max Martin. Like his mentor, what Max always wanted to write was American style funk and R B. He'd been trying it with acts like the Backstreet Boys to only modest success. No one confused Backstreet with an R and B act. But by 1998, Martin had put together a track he believed would connect him with the R and B side of the charts. Working with Rami Yakoub, a Swedish Moroccan producer and beat maker in the Chayron stable, Max put together a full demo of the song, multi tracking his own voice to show how it could be arranged. He sent this demo to American girl group tlc, who were working on material for what would ultimately become their chart topping 1999 album Fan Mail. But TLC passed. Years later, the group's T? Boz called the track wrong for tlc with a lyric she could never have put over. The song was also shopped to vocalist Deborah Cox, a rising R B hitmaker who was Clive Davis's latest protege in the mold of Whitney Houston. But Max Martin's demo wasn't right for her either. Martin even tried presenting it to Robin, with whom he'd recorded multiple hits, but that went nowhere. It was only then that Max Martin presented his demo to Jive Records around the time they had signed with Britney Spears. Jive loved it. It sounded like a hit. Jive A and R man Steve Lunt later called the demo a Swedish version of what Max thought was R and B. Indeed, to this day, when writers and A and R people recall that original Max Martin demo, all agree that everything, the whole song was already there, right down to its opening three note piano riff. What Britney Spears brought to the track Max was calling Hit Me Baby One More Time was a truly original vocal quality. Purring, seductive, but not too salacious, fringed with vocal fry and accented with guttural melisma. After years of singing in a range of modes on talent shows and demos, Spears had finally found what would come to be known as her Britain version. Voice sultry like an R and B diva, but with a pop sheen, A generation of pop singers would wind up imitating that vocal. As for Max Martin, the song was an amalgam of every trick he had learned in his years working with Dennis Pop. The beat was pure chiron, double tracked, like Dennis's Ace of Bass. Hits of yore percolating, made for dancing, maybe even strutting. And while the song was not quite R and B, it featured funk guitar and wawa effects. And then when the song arrives at the refrain, the climax is pure abba. A chorus of Swedish style multitracked voices rising to deliver the payoff. Oh, and about that title. Like abba, Roxette and Ace of Bass before him, Max was coining his own English vernacular. What he meant by hit me, baby was hit me up, as in call me on the phone, let's hang out. It did not mean hit me physically, of course. As far back as the Crystals 1962 single he hit Me and it felt like a kiss. Certain pop songs had gone to the edge of endorsing domestic violence. This was what made early listeners to Max's demo blanche at the song's payoff line. It was finally Jive president Barry Weiss, who had the idea to replace the phrase hit me in the title with ellipses. When Jive released the song in the fall of 1998, its official title was Baby One More Time. Beyond her vocal, the other big way Britney Spears exerted influence on her debut song was on her first music video. MTV was going to be vital to the rollout of Baby One More Time. And so Jive hired veteran video director Nigel Dick to helm the clip. Only it quickly became apparent that Nigel was not the one in charge. Brittany was. When Dick presented his original treatment for the video to Jive, one idea had Spears as a live action Powerpuff Girl. In another idea, Britney would be dancing in outer space. The 16 year old balked. Quote, this is horrible. Britney said, no way am I doing this. She asked Jive to put her on the phone with Nigel Dick. To the director, she proposed, quote, I want to be in a school with a Bunch of cute boys and do some dancing. Britney also suggested that the wardrobe in the key dance section of the video should consist of Catholic school uniforms with the shirts tied up at the waist. Good God. Dick later recalled thinking, I'm a grown man taking instructions from a 16 year old girl. But then he realized, she knows more about this world of girls and boys than I do. The video was shot as Spears conceived it. High schooler Brittany daydreaming in class about the boy she was crushing on and dancing in formation. So much dancing. Leading a troupe in midriff bearing outfits by the lockers on the basketball court in the parking lot. The clip would prove iconic a dozen years later. In a poll conducted by Billboard magazine. The Baby One More Time video was voted the top music video of the 1990s over such celebrated clips as TLC's Waterfalls, Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit, and Madonna's Vogue. As prescient as Spears and her camp were in creating this arresting video, I A key MTV programming decision no one could have foreseen was also instrumental. NSYNC fans.
- [49:11]
Britney Spears
I mean, it's absolutely insane.
- [49:14]
Chris Melanfen
NSync TV is about to get underway. Please welcome in. They're performing the number one video on Total Request Live.
- [49:19]
Britney Spears
Who is NSYNC doing?
- [49:20]
Chris Melanfen
Tearing up my heart, guys. In September 1998, MTV merged two prior daytime programs. Total Request, a daily video countdown of clips requested by viewers, and MTV Live, a daily broadcast from the channel's Times Square headquarters in New York City. This new after school show with the portmanteau title Total Request Live. TRL for short, hosted by 25 year old Carson Daly, was a countdown on live TV. Steroids screaming teenagers would pile into Times Square either inside MTV's fishbowl like studio or out on the street shrieking for favorite pop stars and their videos. TRL was an instant hit. And for Spears, the timing could not have been better. The show launched one month before her single dropped. Within weeks, she was on the program being introduced by Carson Daly into the living rooms of millions of teenagers. Have you been watching any of it or seen. Have you felt the aftermath of your video doing so well?
- [50:42]
Britney Spears
Yeah, I saw it on MTV like three days ago. It was really cool. It was really cool.
- [50:47]
Chris Melanfen
All right. How's it touring? You're touring with NSync, is it right?
- [50:49]
Britney Spears
Right? Yeah, they're such cool guys.
- [50:51]
Chris Melanfen
Yeah. Jive sent the Baby One More Time single to radio stations in October 1998. It scored immediate airplay across hundreds of stations, unusual for a brand new artist. And it began charting in Billboard on airplay alone when the Baby single arrived in retail stores in November and it was an instant smash and the song debuted within the Hot 100's top 40, all the way up at number 17. Before Christmas, Baby was in the top 10 and by New Year's, the top five. Two weeks into 1999, Jive released Britney's debut album, also titled Baby One More Time.
- [51:40]
Britney Spears
If you die, Baby, all I need is time.
- [51:45]
Chris Melanfen
It sold 121,000 copies in its first week. Stellar numbers for January after the holiday season was over when all the tallying was done in the billboard issue dated January 30, 1999, Britney Spears had both the number one single and number one album in in America. The brand new number one song on American Top 40 is Baby One More Time by Britney Spears. By now the late 90s teen pop boom was entering its third year, two years after the breakthrough of the Spice Girls. But in retrospect, the rise of Britney Spears to the top of the Hot 100 and the Billboard 200 was the centerpiece of this movement. 1999 and 2000 would be teen pop's most frenzied years with one chart and sales milestone after another, and the music of Max Martin punctuated many of these chart feats. I Want it that Way was the first single from Backstreet Boys second US Album Millennium. Britney Spears helped stoke fan anticipation for the album. Jive placed a bonus track at the end of her Baby One More Time album promoting her labelmates. The gambit worked. In early June 1999, Millennium not only debuted at number one on the album chart and it shattered the all time first week sales record, opening with 1.1 million copies in its first week. It didn't hurt that I Want it that Way, co written by Max Martin and fellow Che Ron songwriter Andreas Carlson, remains the most acclaimed single of late 90s teen pop. Millennium wound up shipping 11 million copies in 1999 alone. Genie in a Bottle by Christina Aguilera spent five weeks atop the Hot 100 in Joao and August, making it 1999's song of the Summer. Spears and Aguilera, both alumnae of the Mickey Mouse Club, were positioned as teen pop rivals, even though the rivalry was largely ginned up by teen magazines and trl. Both budding starlets did fine. Spears sold more albums, while Aguilera had the longer running number one hit and won the following year's Best New Artist Grammy. Britney wasn't having a bad summer herself. Max Martin brought her back into the studio to record a remix of her track you Drive Me Crazy, spin magazine said of this remix, you Drive Me Crazy goes full Scandinavian with clanking syncopated bells, stretched rubber bass and scratching turntables. The remix was for the soundtrack of a romantic teen comedy starring TV teenage witch Melissa Joan Hart. So popular was Spears by the middle of 1999, stop that. 20th Century Fox retitled the movie Drive Me Crazy to match Spears song. By the end of the year, the Baby One More Time album was certified nine times platinum in America. The album would eventually sell 14 million copies in the US alone. Before 1999 was over, the first wave of Britney wannabes were already starting to chart. Starlets with vocal fry and a seductive ache from Mandy Moore. To jessica simpson. Going into 2000, no album was more anticipated than the sophomore studio release from NSync, the boy band led by Justin Timberlake, then enjoying a high profile as Britney Spears boyfriend. The band had been stuck in litigation with former manager Lou Perlman, which held up their album by months, but when no Strings Attached finally landed in March 2000, Obliterated the one week sales record set the year before by their rivals the Backstreet Boys. No Strings Attached sold a staggering 2.4 million copies in its first week, a chart record that would hold for more than 15 years until Adele beat it in 2015. The lead single, Bye Bye Bye, written and produced by the Cheiron team, was received by fans as a flip of the bird to former manager Lou Perlman. It reached number four in April and the follow up, written by Max Martin himself, Went all the way to the top of the Hot 100 in the summer of 2000. It's gonna be May, Excuse me, Gonna Be Me became the first max Martin penned Hot 100 number one since Baby One More Time 18 months earlier. And speaking of Spears, Britney's second album, Oops I Did It Again, executive produced by Max Martin, arrived in May of 2000 and proceeded to set sales records of its own. Opening with 1.3 million copies in its first week, Oops became the first album ever by a female artist to open to a million in sales. The album's title track, which critics pointed out out sounded like a near carbon copy of Baby One More Time was Nonetheless another top 10 hit, reaching number nine by June of 2000. At that point, the Oops album was debuting atop the album chart. By year's end, Britney Spears would receive an eight times platinum plaque for Oops I Did It Again. But could they keep doing it again? Not just Britney, the music business itself, 1999 and 2000 were the all time peak of the recording industry, driven by profits from the compact disc and by a new generation of millennials forking out $17 a CD in record numbers. As we talked about in our great war against the single episode of Hit Parade, the good times couldn't last, especially once Napster launched and teenagers began downloading their hits for free. Accordingly, by 2001, the millennial teen pop wave began to peter out. Follow up albums by the Backstreet boys in late 2000 and NSync in mid-2001 opened big but then wound up with smaller sales totals. Moreover, as the teen stars aged into their 20s, they began turning away from the Chayron sound in favor of more directly American R and B and even hip hop derived production. On NSync's final album, 2001's Celebrity, Cha Ron Studios produced only one track and the album biggest crossover hit paired the boy band with rapper Nelly. From 1997 to 2000, Cha Ron Studios in Stockholm had placed dozens of hits on the Hot 100, more than two dozen of which were either written or produced by Max Martin himself. Which perhaps made it surprising when at the end of 2000, Martin and his team closed the doors of Sheron. They had never fully gotten over the 1998 death of Dennis Pop, who was still regarded as the heart and soul of the studio, and Martin knew he and his craftsmen could continue to do their work independently for other studios and production facilities. Sheyran was created with the intention of having fun, making a few hits and not getting too serious about it, martin wrote in a statement on the studio's website announcing the closure. We feel the hype of Sheyran has become bigger than the studio itself. It's time to quit while we're ahead, unquote. In early 2001, Martin opened his own Stockholm based production company, Maritone Studios, which remains his base of operations nearly two decades later. His first client was Britney Spears, for whom Martin Martin and Rami Yaqub produced songs for her 2001 album Britney. But Martin and Yakub's tracks made up only a third of the album, as Spears, like her former teen pop peers, started seeking out collaboration across the genre spectrum for the album's provocative lead single, I'm a Slave for your, Spears worked with Pharrell Williams and his Neptunes team, who specialized in a syncopated hip hop informed sound. The Neptunes were also intimately involved in the launch of Justin Timberlake's solo career, in which the former Nsyncher moved in a deliberate blue eyed soul direction. If the late 90s teen pop stars were now positioning themselves for the new decade in opposition to the old Che ron Sound, certain 21st century acts were now positioning themselves in opposition to the former teens. On her 2001 track Don't Let Me Get Me, husky voice diva Pink literally called out Britney Spears in the lyrics of the song. Pink was only on her second album and she was already fed up with comparisons to Spears Spears. If I may make an analogy, both Britney Spears and Max Martin can be compared to the wave of dot com companies at the end of the 1990s. When the dot com boom imploded at the start of the 2000s, dragging down the stock market with it, pundits assumed it was the end of an era that dot coms had been a fad. But like, say, Amazon.com, martin and Spears regrouped and continued to thrive in the new millennium. Spears recorded some of her most acclaimed material in the aughts, including the bloodshy and avant collaboration toxic, a number nine hit in the spring of 2004. Later that same year, Max Martin, working with protege Dr. Luke, produced the hit that would reboot his career, the indie rock influenced Kelly Clarkson smash Since youe've Been Gone. Suffice it to say that if Max Martin and Britney Spears were forged as creators at the end of the 1990s, it was in the 2000s that they became indelible parts of the pop landscape. To fully reinvent her career in her 20s, Spears had to go to some dark places.
- [65:45]
Britney Spears
It's Britney bitch.
- [65:50]
Chris Melanfen
And take on some of her antagonists in the media. The less said about Kevin Federline, head shaving and invasive paparazzi, the better. But by the late aughts, Spears influence on a generation of pop stars was unmistakable. Some, like Katy Perry, were actually produced by Max Martin himself.
- [66:20]
Britney Spears
Cause you're hot and you're cold. Yes, the neck.
- [66:30]
Chris Melanfen
The same week in 2008 that Perry was reaching the top five on the Hot 100 with Hot and Cold, Spears hurdled to the top with Womanizer, her first number one hit since Baby One More Time a decade earlier. It would not be her last chart topper. By late 2008, Spears and Martin had reunited and began recording together again. In 2009, Spears scored another post comeback chart topper with three an ode to let's Call Them Love Triangles, written by Max with his Swedish lieutenant Johann Schell back Schuster. Like Britney, Max actually generated the overwhelming bulk of his long roster of number one hits. Not at the turn of the millennium but at the turn of the tens, artists who had built hit making track records and pop Persona of their own turned to Martin for help producing their biggest hits. Whether it was pop rock band Maroon 5. Or singer songwriter Taylor Swift.
- [68:06]
Britney Spears
Getting back together.
- [68:12]
Chris Melanfen
Since 2010, Britney Spears has collaborated on hits with several other pop stars, all of whom became hitmakers after her, from Rihanna to Iggy Azalea to Will I Am. But the Last solo top 10 hits Spears scored came from her 2011 album Femme Fatale, and all of them were written and produced by Max Martin. Britney and Max were back at number one one more time together in January 2012 with Hold It Against Me. A couple of months later, Britney returned to the top five one more time with the song that still closes with virtually all of her concerts. The Max Martin produced Till the World Ends. In a way, Till the World Ends is a quintessential hit for both of them. Max Martin drew on the talents of a team of his collaborators, including Alexander Cronland and even the pop singer songwriter Kesha for the lyrics, but the song has Max written all over it, enveloping hooks, sonic ear candy, a beat like a metronome known. And Spears her vocal has the same purr she patented on Baby One More Time. When she sings about dancing till the world ends, her voice has the same ache as that teen girl dancing in her video 20 years ago. And on stage, Britney is still dancing. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Hit Parade. My producer is Chris Barube and we have help this episode from Danielle Hewitt and Dan Barube. The managing producer of Slate Podcasts is June Thomas. Our our senior producer is TJ Raphael and Gabriel Roth is the Editorial Director of Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture Gabfest feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. Until then, keep on marching on the one. I'm Chris Melanfen.
- [71:34]
Britney Spears
I. Keep on if you feel it.