Songoftheday 4/10/22 -You see my problem is this I'm dreaming away, wishing that heroes they truly exist...

 

 

"Oops!...I Did It Again" - Britney Spears

from the album Oops!...I Did It Again (2000)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #9 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 14

 

Today's song comes from Britney Spears, whose debut album ...Baby One More Time had spun off four top-40 hits with "From The Bottom Of My Broken Heart", "(You Drive Me) Crazy", "Sometimes", and the #1 smash "Baby One More Time".  "From The Bottom" peaked in February of 2000, and Britney wasted no time with the lead and title single from her sophomore effort released two months later. The title alone, "Oops!...I Did It Again", written and produced by the Swedish team of Max Martin and Rami Yacoub, was such an obvious branding for what to expect from the song. Written in the same musical key (C minor) with almost the same tempo (95 beats per minute as opposed to "Baby"'s 93), it was meant not as an evolution but a continuation of what the fans wanted. In this one, Britney sends off a boyfriend with a laissez faire with a wink to her listener with that eternally memorable punchline "I'm not that innocent!". But in the lyrics even she admits she's wanting a shining knight that he's never going to be. Martin and Yacoub do their job to make the sugar sweet in this confection, and in response radio and the fanbase approved overwhelmingly. It didn't make it to the top of the chart like "Baby One More Time" did, but that's mostly since it wasn't released as a commercial CD or cassette single in the U.S., only on vinyl 12" and 7" forms, limiting its "points" on the chart. The music video for the track put Spears out in space as some sort of alien devil/angel...

 

 "Oops!...I Did It Again" became Britney's third top ten pop hit in the U.S. in June of 2000. The song also climbed to #27 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 radio chart in Billboard magazine, while topping the Mainstream top-40 list for three weeks, and getting to #8 on the dance-oriented rhythmic format. Internationally, the single went to #1 in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK, while reaching the top ten in Germany (#2), Austria (#2), Finland (#2), Ireland (#2), Iceland (#2), France (#4), Greece (#4), and Portugal (#5). The Oops!...I Did It Again album, released in May of 2000, debuted at #2 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, selling over a million copies in its first week, setting a record not broken until Adele's 25 fifteen years later. The set went on to sell over ten million since. At the Grammy Awards in 2001, "Oops!...I Did It Again" was nominated for Best Pop Female Performance, losing to Macy Gray for "I Try". The Oops! album was also up for Best Pop Vocal Album, which went to Steely Dan (!) for their award-stealing Two Against Nature record. Both Britney and the album will return to the series.

(8/10)

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Here's Britney premiering the song on MTV on its release in 2000...

Next up, on her televised concert in Hawaii behind the album in 2000...

 

 moving to the other side of the world, as she ended her concerts on her first global tour in 2000 with it...

Meanwhile, she opened her next tour, the Dream Within A Dream shows, with the song...

And lastly, fast forwarding to 2016 with some serious eye candy for the Apple Music Festival in London...

Up tomorrow: This R&B singer is broken in two.