What Britney Spears Found Hilarious About ‘…Baby One More Time’

Music

"...Baby One More Time" was Britney Spears' first No. 1 single. Here's what made it different from all her other chart-toppers.

Published on July 28, 2024

2 min read

Britney Spears' "…Baby One More Time" is one of the most famous music videos of all time (even if it's a touch problematic). The "Womanizer" singer explained what made that music video different from all the clips she made afterward. In addition, she said one aspect of the video was hilarious to her.

Britney Spears' '…Baby One More Time' had an unusual cameo

In her 2023 memoir, The Woman in Me, Spears discussed the filming of "…Baby One More Time." "The director for the video, Nigel Dick, was open to my ideas," she recalled. "In addition to the school bell cuing the start of the dancing, I added that it was important that there be cute boys." The "Hold It Against Me" singer decided that the dancers in the video should start out wearing school clothes so the clip would feel more exciting when they went outside and wore casual clothes. Spears also had her teacher, Miss Fe, play a frumpy teacher in the clip. The "Toxic" singer found that hilariou s.

Britney Spears said making music was easier for her back then

"Making that video was the most fun part of doing that first album," the "Everytime" singer wrote. "That's probably the moment in my life when I had the most passion for music. I was unknown, and I had nothing to lose if I messed up."

Spears listed some perks of being a nobody. "There is so much freedom in being anonymous," she opined. "I could look out at a crowd who'd never seen me before and think, 'You don't know who I am yet." Soon enough, Spears would become so famous that it was impossible for her to make any mistake, no matter how small, without facing intense scrutiny.

"It was kind of liberating that I didn't really have to care if I made mistakes," she added. "For me, performing wasn't about posing and smiling. Onstage, I was like a basketball player driving down the court. I had ball sense, street sense. I was fearless. I knew when to take my shots."

What made '…Baby One More Time' different fro all the Princess of Pop's other hits

"…Baby One More Time" became the first of Spears' five Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 singles. The others are "Womanizer," "3," "Hold It Against Me," and "S&M." "…Baby One More Time" was the only one of those songs to top the charts for multiple weeks. The tune was No. 1 for two of its 32 weeks on the chart, making it Spears' biggest hit in the United States.

The song appeared on the album of the same name. …Baby One More Time topped the Billboard 200 for six weeks, lasting on the chart for 103 weeks in total. While the title track of …Baby One More Time overshadowed all of its other songs, the record produced one more top 10 single: the underrated "(You Drive Me) Crazy." That single reached No. 10 and spent 20 weeks on the chart. It sounds a lot like "…Baby One More Time" but it has a little more bounce and a little more sass.

Perhaps the reason why the world loved "…Baby One More Time" so much is because people could tell Spears put her heart and soul into it.