Britney Spears’ occupation virtually were given off to a very other start.

In 1997, when music at the radio ranged from bubblegum dance (Aqua’s “Barbie Girl”) to gangsta rap (The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Mo Money Mo Problems”) to soft-rock power ballads (Céline Dion’s “All By Myself”) and the whole thing in between, songwriter Max Martin penned a catchy pop track titled “Hit Me Baby One More Time.” He at first supposed for it to be included on TLC’s album FanMail, however the R&B girl team ultimately rejected it. Instead of scrapping the music, Martin made up our minds to ship it over to Jive Records, which had simply signed a 15-year-old singer from a small town in Louisiana whom the label was hoping would turn out to be its next large act.

Right off the bat, Jive executives had one major worry: They feared listeners would assume the song condoned domestic violence. (It turned out that TLC’s Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins also sought issue with the lyrical content material, as she told MTV in 2013, “Was I going to mention, ‘Hit me child one more time?’ Hell no!“) Luckily, the solution used to be a somewhat simple one. “Hit Me” was once removed from the name and replaced through an ellipsis, even though the lyrics remained untouched.

The label invited Spears to a studio in Stockholm in March 1998 to file her vocals for “Baby.” Due to nerves and inexperience, the teenager underperformed in the sales space. She returned the following day feeling more at ease and gave it any other move. The 2d time around, she knocked it out of the park.

“I knew it used to be a great track,” Spears, now 36, advised The Guardian in August ahead of the twentieth anniversary. “It was other and I liked it.”

“…Baby One More Time” was launched on October 23, 1998, as Spears’ debut unmarried. She was simply 16 years old at the time, however temporarily made her presence identified with the earworm’s in an instant recognizable three-note introductory motif followed via her supply of the now-iconic first line: “Oh, bay-beh, bay-beh.” Entertainment Weekly reviewed the track as a “candy-pop-with-a-funky-edge wreck,” while Rolling Stone went on to name it “probably the most very best radio pop of the past decade-plus.” In January 1999, “Baby” secured the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100, where it remained for 2 consecutive weeks. It found even longer good fortune on MTV, which had the accompanying song video on heavy rotation each and every afternoon on TRL.

But just like the song itself, the video got off to a very other start. It all began when director Nigel Dick, who had previously labored with rock bands such as Guns N’ Roses and Oasis, signed on to helm the mission. “I’ve always been a fan of significant pop songs, and this one inspired me instantly,” Dick tells Us Weekly exclusively. “Once we began on the task, [Spears] struck me as extraordinarily skilled and hard-working.”

So hard-working, in truth, that the ex-Mouseketeer right away took regulate of the imaginative and prescient. “The record label rejected my initial thought and simply said, ‘Britney has an concept. Why don’t you get on the phone and communicate to her about it?‘” Dick remembers to Us. “Initially, I was a bit bent off form, and then I spotted that A) I’d long past to an all-boys school in England, and that B) I used to be no longer 16, so most likely Britney had a better take hold of of what 16-year-old ladies would possibly need to see in a music video.”

Spears even made positive that she had a say in the cloth wardrobe. “It was my thought to do the entire schoolgirl outfit and us being in school and having the dance numbers throughout it,” she advised Vevo in 2012.

The “Baby” video was filmed over two days in early August 1998 at Venice High School in Los Angeles, the same location used two decades previous for John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John’s movie Grease.

“It was in point of fact, truly disturbing and nerve-wracking because it was my first video and I used to be truly worried about how the tip results have been going to end up,” Spears stated in a behind-the-scenes video released at the time. “I have in mind the primary day I used to be on the set once we had been taking pictures ‘…Baby One More Time.’ There was once, like, a lot of these people there. I used to be like, ‘Oh, my goodness.’ I didn’t comprehend it was going to be that gigantic of a production.”

The video started with Spears sitting in school, tapping a pencil on her table and staring at the clock slightly than her teacher, who was performed through her real-life assistant, Felicia Culotta. When the bell in any case rang, Spears and her classmates ran into the hallway and started a choreographed dance regimen. The budding pop star, with her hair in pigtails, wore her risqué take on a traditional Catholic faculty uniform: a gray cardigan over a quick black skirt and a white button-down blouse tied around her midriff.

“She rejected my plan to put on jeans, T-shirts, and many others. and mentioned, ‘Wouldn’t I be wearing a school uniform?’” Dick recounts to Us. “It was a simple step to take her concepts on board. Plus, I really like it if the artist has a usable thought because then the video is in reality one thing that reflects them and now not who I feel they could be.”

Throughout the shoot, Spears used to be “all the time able to do every other take,” in keeping with the director.

“[She] impressed me a lot,” Dick tells Us. “I therefore labored with any other younger female artist who sought after to do a dance video, and he or she said she sought after to ‘out-Britney’ Britney, and I believed, ‘You’ll have to work very demanding to do this.’ In the top, the other artist didn’t even come close.”

Dick went directly to direct three more of Spears’ movies: “Sometimes,” “(You Drive Me) Crazy” and “Oops!…I Did It Again.” He admits that he has not noticed her since 2000, but he has continued to practice the numerous ups and occasional downs of her high-profile profession.

“I enjoyed operating along with her,” he tells Us. “We did 4 videos in combination, and I therefore become horrified by the way she used to be pursued by means of the media and used to be left to fry out in public. It broke my middle to peer what came about.”

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Two a long time later, “Baby” stays one of the bestselling singles of all time and is broadly looked for redefining pop track. It scored a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in addition to three MTV Video Music Award nods. To date, the tune video is the most-watched on Spears’ YouTube web page, with more than 365 million views. “Baby” has additionally been a staple on all of Britney’s setlists, from her arena excursions to her four-year Las Vegas residency, Britney: Piece of Me.

“It was once such a a laugh and loopy time,” Spears informed The Guardian in August. “It was once a little bit of a blur.”

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