In the search for the perfect pop song, one act’s trash can be another one’s treasure.
And — oh baby, baby — such was the case with “…Baby One More Time,” Britney Spears’ smash debut single, which hit No. 1 25 years ago in January 1999.
“Max Martin had written that song for TLC. He wrote it as, like, an R&B record,” Barry Weiss — who was then president of Spears’ label, Jive Records — told The Post. “But that didn’t work out. And the next thing was that Arista [Records] wanted the song for Deborah Cox … but Max wasn’t interested in that.”
Finally, the Swedish hitmaker got a serendipitous suggestion from Jive’s Dutch A&R head Martin Dodd.
“He proposed that, ‘Max, why don’t you try this with this young artist Britney Spears that they just signed in New York?’ ” recalled Weiss. “And that was the beginning of history.”
No doubt: Catapulted by its schoolgirl-power video, “…Baby One More Time” would go on to top the charts the same week that its like-named album — which was released on Jan. 12, 1999 — debuted at No. 1. And as the hits — and TRL-tailored clips — kept coming with “Sometimes,” “(You Drive Me) Crazy” and “From the Bottom of My Broken Heart,” Spears’ debut LP became one of the best-selling albums of all time, selling over 14 million copies in the US and over 25 million worldwide.
Indeed, at the turn of the new millennium, a new pop princess was crowned at the age of 17.
And even while Spears vowed that she’ll never return to music just last week, her ascension from Disney Channel darling on “The All-New Mickey Mouse Club” to a certified cultural phenomenon changed the game for everyone from Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift (who would become a future Martin collaborator) to Ariana Grande and Olivia Rodrigo.
“The modern blueprint for being a pop star in this millennium is because, at the end of the last one, Britney Spears made it big,” said Lori Majewski, host of SiriusXM’s “Fierce: Women in Music,” who was Entertainment Editor at Teen People magazine when Spears launched her recording career.
“Early on in the ’90s, girls wanted to be Jennie Garth from ‘[Beverly Hills] 90210.’ Now all the Olivia Rodrigos, all of these people — they all wanted to be pop stars because Britney made it cool.”
In the years and months leading up to “…Baby One More Time” — both the single and album — the teen market was booming, with both Teen People and “TRL” launching in 1998.
“What happened is that media executives were seeing that there were going to be more teenagers on the planet than ever before,” said Majewski.
And before Spears, the Spice Girls, Hanson and the Backstreet Boys — who were also signed to Jive Records — had all scored big with teen-pop tunes in 1997.
That same year, a 15-year-old Spears got a meeting with Jive. “When she came in to audition, she sang Mariah Carey and Toni Braxton ballads,” said Weiss.
After she got signed to a development deal, she began working with Jive staff producer and songwriter Eric Foster White. “Eric went in with her, cut like three songs, and came back and said, ‘We can absolutely work with this girl. You absolutely should sign her,’ ” said Weiss.
With Spears’ mother, Lynne Spears, staying behind with the family in Mississippi, Felicia Culotta served as both the singer’s assistant and chaperone when she went to New York to begin recording her debut album.
“We stayed in a corporate apartment that the record company put us in,” Culotta said of the temporary lodgings in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. “We went to Eric Foster White’s house every day [to record] over in New Jersey — they had a car that would pick us up. And we had one day off a week.”
As a writer and producer on six of the 11 tracks — including the hit ballad “From the Bottom of My Broken Heart” — White was impressed with the young Spears’ tireless work ethic. “She was probably the hardest-working artist I ever worked with,” he said.
“I’m a notorious perfectionist. So we had to punch in a lot of times, and we had to re-record many, many things. I was known as a very, very demanding vocal producer. So, for her, I think it was bootcamp basic training.”
And White — who is now executive producer of YouTube’s MusicClub Kids! — helped Spears develop her signature vocal tone. “We got her to do that sort of nasal affectation,” he said. “When she did the nasal thing, it gave you a color you could play off.”
Newly schooled in the studio, Spears, accompanied by Culotta, went to Stockholm to record the “…Baby One More Time” single and the rest of the album with Martin — who had already worked with Backstreet Boys and ’NSync — and a squad of other Swedes.
“Sometimes” producer Jörgen Elofsson had already written the midtempo bop in late 1997. “Actually it was like a present to my wife,” he said. “She wasn’t my wife at the time, but my girlfriend.”
While tweaking the lyrics of the album’s second single to suit the teenage Spears, Elofsson also co-wrote the third single “(You Drive Me) Crazy,” which became the singer’s second Top 10 hit.
And it was Spears herself who drove fans crazy after her “…Baby One More Time” single dropped in September 1998 — the same month that “TRL” premiered on MTV.
After the song’s video — with Spears rocking that iconic schoolgirl outfit — premiered in November 1998, “it was an explosion from there,” said Weiss.
“You couldn’t have timed it any better. It was all serendipity, synchronicity. It all just kind of happened at once.”
It all made Spears much bigger than the music. “She was the girl that every girl wanted to be, the girl that all the guys wanted to date,” said Majewski, noting how quickly she grew beyond the mall tour that Teen People once took her on to promote “…Baby One More Time.”
“She bottled this American teenager of that moment like no one else.”