Earlier I claimed that Britney Spears’ second number one – the nice enough ‘Born to Make You Happy’ – was a placeholder, something to keep things ticking over until her next main event. Here then, is that main event.
Oops!… I Did It Again, by Britney Spears (her 3rd of six #1s)
1 week, from 7th – 14th May 2000
Yes, Britney’s debut ‘…Baby One More Time’ is a classic: a timeless pop song that managed to win over the even the snobbiest ‘proper music’ critics. And ‘Oops!… I Did It Again’ is much more rooted in time by its crunching Max Martin turn-of-the-century production. But ‘Oops!…’ is also a work of genius. It’s basically ‘Baby… One More Time’ – they share the same piano, and the same chords – deconstructed and rebuilt in a brutalist fashion. (The two songs are also exactly the same length.) It’s the evil twin. It’s the version of ‘Baby…’ that you’d hear in the Upside Down.
Then there’s the little Easter eggs, the pronunciation of baybay, and the ellipsis in the title. And the fact that said title refers not just to the song’s lyrics, but to the fact that, oops, she’s come back with another monster hit. It’s all very modern, very now: the in-jokes and the sarcasm. Oh you shouldn’t have… Brit deadpans when presented with a diamond in the spoken middle-eight, which parodies ‘Titanic’, another pop culture behemoth. In fact, this song just might have invented 21st century pop culture. I hope you don’t think I’m going overboard here…
All this is compounded by the fact that the submissive Britney of her first two number ones is gone. I think I did it again, I made you believe, We’re more than just friends… she teases, before announcing: I’m not that innocent! In the video she dances in a red catsuit while brandishing a whip.
The entirety of her second album, which shared the same title, was a bit of a reinvention. It’s now something of a cliché, that a female teen-pop star’s second album has to see them ‘grow up’ in some way, and Britney’s main rival Christina would take this concept to the extreme a couple of years later. But Britney laid the foundations for a long career here, and in singles like ‘Stronger’, about empowerment, and ‘Lucky’, about the loneliness of fame. Plus, the album also included an actually half-decent cover of ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’.
But back to the aforementioned main event. The question remains: is ‘Oops!… I Did It Again’ better than ‘…Baby One More Time’? I’d say no, musically it is not. But also… yes. It’s conceptual, it’s clever, it’s camp and catty. I’ll bet a greater number of Britney fans list this as their favourite song over ‘…Baby’, which is almost too prefect, too pristine.
So, three number ones and two solid-gold pop classics. Not bad going for a singer still in her teens. We’ll have to wait a while for her next chart-topper, but when it does come it too will be worth the wait. And many of the Britney singles that didn’t get to the top during this imperious, pre-breakdown phase are also classics of their time. Churning out hit after hit, banger after banger? That is just so typically her…
The UK Number Ones Blog 
Ohhhhh do I remember this song. This one takes me right back to my high school years. I was sure that this was number one in the US as well because it was EVERYWHERE. All anyone could talk about was the video. Not to mention the song is SUCH an ear worm that it gets stuck in your head very easily.
But alas, it was only #9 in the US, which just shocked me.
Then again, I also was surrounded by friends who were into the teen pop of the time, like Britney, N Sync, and Backstreet Boys, so I got to hear this song a LOT. They were also big TRL fans too, so I got to watch that show with them quite a bit. This song was on TRL for forever.
Only #9……..!? That’s just wrong. The US charts in the late 90s/early 00s were often very uneven, because of airplay being counted, while some huge songs never even charted because they didn’t get a physical release.
Yes another Britney pop classic here, cheeky and sassy and any video with astronauts in it is always going to win me over. For me it was One More Time taken literally, and I find the new catsuit Britney less troublesome than the schoolgirl outfit. Emma Peel was doing that in the 60’s, Diana Rigg was very much not dressing up in pigtails and school uniform. Is it a better record than Baby? No. It is great though, albeit follow-up Lucky was the one to give her a second chart-topper in my charts. This one and Stronger would peak at 3, Born To Make You Happy at 2. Then it got less essential for me until 2004, oh my!
Baby… is the better song, but given the choice I’d always want to listen to Oops! over it. It’s just Britney at her Britney-est. I love Stronger, too. I always thought Lucky came across almost as a novelty, it’s just too silly, in a way (though again, I do love it). From her 3rd album, I agree the quality dipped slightly. With one exception – I think Overprotected is her best non-#1 single.
Oh baby, baby, she did it again. She’s playing our hearts, ruling the pop game. Britney’s been sent from above to help bring back some good music to the top of the UK singles chat. This is a certified classic. Another Max Martin genius production. This is perfect pop music. I think I like Hit Me Baby a bit more, but this is almost as good.
Yeah, this one is pretty much unimpeachable. Love Richard Thompson’s cover too.
I’ll check that cover out!
Not my thing BUT…I can respect this and I know why it was such a big hit…on some other #1s I can’t say that…but yea you hear this and just know…its gotta be a hit.
Yeah it hits all the right buttons. Precision engineered pop!
Thats it…down to the last note.