It is difficult to explain the phenomenon that Britney Spears represented in 2000. Basically, it was absolutely everywhere, in everyone’s lips. His music and image were impossible to escape. In addition, at the time of monoculture, when the public’s attention was directed towards a few celebrities and a few media. Spears was the global pop icon during the transition time of the Analog / MTV era to the digital age that dominates today.
The launch of ‘Oops!… I Did It Again’, the first single from Spears’ second album, hit the world as a meteorite. It was the time when Spears’s video clips – which at this time was 18 years old – were authentic cultural events and were broadcast on the MTV without rest. That in the video of “Oops”, Spears appeared dancing on Mars, stuffed in a red monkey that would become iconic instantly, had all the sense of the world.
In 2000, Britney Spears had not yet reached the level of media saturation that would later define his public figure. At that time, his image was not yet completely marked by the growing sexualization, nor by his famous relationship with Justin Timberlake, nor by the intense advertising exhibition as a result of his millionaire collaboration with Pepsi, which included several ads in the video clip style launched between 2001 and 2002, much less because of the scandals that would arrive later. In that context, his second album limited himself to maturing the sound and image of Spears and to cement his position as a teenage icon.
Spears started recording ‘Oops!… I Did It Again’ in September 1999, a week after the end of the tour of ‘… Baby One More Time’. In the interviews, Spears would recognize feeling pressured for offering a continuation worthy of his debut, which sold more than 30 million copies. From the sessions of that first album the Power Ballad ‘where are you now’, very Mariah Carey, and ‘You Got It All’, a version of the jets were recovered. Spears did not lose the train: the album came out on May 3, 2000, only a year and a half after ‘… Baby One More Time’, and sold more than 1 million copies in its first week, becoming the best selling by a woman in her first week of history, a record that Spears held for 15 years, until the launch of ’25’ (2015) of Adele.
The music of ‘Oops!… I Did It Again’ was more mature and better than that of the debut, and that its sound followed the pattern of that first album Spears recognized it in the same title of the album with an eye wink. Spears mainly had Max Martin to production, and with the Swedish he made a continuation of ‘… Baby One More Time’ “more funky” and “with more claw” that reflected its maturity. Rhythmic beats abounded in the album, compared to the debut, which was exceeded in ballads. And Spears linked some songs with small spoken words that reflected their romantic and social world as a teenage girl. He talked on the phone with her friends, she laughed, gossip about the boy she likes.
The three main singles were outstanding and today they are canonical of Spears’s discography. ‘Oops!… I Did It Again’ presented the album by merging the structure of ‘… Baby One More Time’ with the melody of ‘Woman in Love’ by Barbra Streisand, winning forcefulness, and its title would become a popular expression. ‘Stronger’ was empowered with industrial sounds and a chair choreography in the style of Janet Jackson. ‘Lucky’ reflected on loneliness at the top, resulting in premonitory. One of her most moving songs, would be versioning decades later both Taylor Swift and Courtney Love.
These three singles molded Spears’ not so innocent “” not so innocent “girl, but it was Spears’s striptease in the MTV Video Music Awards of 2000 that forever revealed his most sexual facet, turning it into one of the most provocative pop figures – or provocative, rather – of the time. The fourth and last letter of presentation of the album, the Country-Pop ‘Don’t Let Me Be the Last To Know’, already thrown in March 2001, concluded the era with a soft sound, helping a composition of Shania Twain.
But the maturity of ‘Oops!… I Did It Again’ was that of a person who, after all, still did not leave adolescence too behind. The sound was still a gum, more than those *n Sync that seemed sample to Aphex Twin at times. Some clues, such as the catchy ‘What U See (IS What U Get)’, launched a clear message of empowerment, but others fell on the excessive spill, such as the final ballad, ‘Dear Diary’, autobiographical and written by Spears itself: the vocal performance was passionate, but the production was pure novelty sentimentality.
The version of ‘(I Can’t Get No) satisfaction’ of the Rolling Stones was decaffeinated, although in the Spears of the VMA’s performance it gave the hit mixed with “oops”, but the best of ‘oops! … i did it again’ is that the proposal of the previous album was improving changing the filling for a handful of potential singles Knockin ‘On My Door’ and the nth copy of the Britney/Max Martin sound in ‘Can’t Make You Love Me’. Other tracks, such as reggae-pop
‘Oops!… I Did It Again’ received mostly positive criticism at the time, although, as a complete work, it is less satisfactory “than the visionary ‘Blackout’ (2007). Above all, “Oops” deposits three of the best pop singles of the first decade of the 21st century, and by dates it is inevitable that he has influenced the young superstars of today: the main single was the first song that Chappell sang in his life and the one that inspired Charlie Puth to devote himself to music. Ariana Grande has versed it, Miley Cyrus has imitated her video and Sabrina Carpenter has incorporated an audio of the song into a performance. In 2025, ‘Oops!… I Did It Again’ appears in the trailer of the movie ‘M3gan’.
The commercial and cultural legacy of ‘Oops!… I Did It Again’ is amazing: it is one the best-selling records in history-its sales are estimated around 20 million copies-and one of the emblematic works of the golden age of the teen-pop. The sound of the album is the product of its time, but its three main singles have become imperishable classics that today add hundreds and hundreds of millions of streaming views. It is hard to believe that Spotify was born only 6 years after the launch of this album. What would have been the figures of this album if Spotify had existed at the time?
A reissue of ‘Oops!… I Did It Again’ for its 25th anniversary is launched in streaming on May 16, with the themes that were missing for being available on platforms, ‘Girl in the Mirror’ and the version of ‘You Got It All’ of the Jets. In addition, the reissue includes the faces B ‘Heart’ and ‘Walk on by’ and an assortment of remix of the singles.
