…baby one more time (13. 218)

Beginning a two-week run at the top of UK charts, the lead single from eponymous debut album from sixteen-year old Britney Spears, child actor with the All-New Mickey Mouse Club sought by proxy to expand her repertoire, came about as the result of rejections by several labels, downplaying her demos with indictments that there was not going to be another Madonna, Debbie Gibson or Tiffany, and traveling to Sweden to work with songwriters and producers on a multi-record deal. The parenthetical “Hit me” was interpreted by many not only as canonically the title but also as a narrative of wanting back an abusive ex- or a reference to sadism but is attributed to the lyrics’s Swedish author tenuous command of English slang and was meant to convey “hit me up”—a strange formulation in itself like all the un-euphemistic metaphors to sports and violence. Initially shopped around to the Back Street Boys and TLC, it was eventually taken by Spears’ agent. Thematically similar with its three-note opening to Beethoven’s Fifth and Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up,” it is considered one of the most influential pop tracks in the history of the genre, propelled by the accompanying video directed by Nigel Dick (Oasis, Toto, Band Aid, Guns N’ Roses, Tears for Fears, Taylor Dane).