Songoftheday 7/27/22 - There's nothing you can do or say, I've had enough I'm not your property as from today...
"Stronger" - Britney Spears
from the album Oops!...I Did It Again (2000)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #11 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 8
Today's song is from Britney Spears, whose sophomore effort Oops!...I Did It Again had already scored a pair of pop radio hits with "Oops!...I Did It Again" and "Lucky". The third single promoted from the album was the song "Stronger". Written and produced by the Swedish team of Max Martin and Rami Yacoub, the song puts Britney in the position of casting off an overbearing and neglectful love (or maybe father?), declaring that she can make it on her own no matter what. The lyrics are simple and broad, but damn does Spears pour her all into this, what I honestly feel is her best vocal performance. The layered background vocals serve to raise her up, but it's her at the end hitting those notes of triumph that she is, indeed, stronger. The music video puts the theme directly into the "cheating lover" category, and years before Beyonce declared she's "Irreplaceable" Britney did it for the young girl generation...
"Stronger" came a notch from reaching the Hot 100 top ten in America in January of 2001. On the radio, the song climbed to #17 on the Mainstream Top-40 airplay chart and #37 on the dance-oriented Rhythmic format. Internationally, the single reached the top ten in Hungary (#2), Germany (#4), Sweden (#4), Austria (#4), Poland (#4), Ireland (#6), Switzerland (#6), the UK (#7), Finland (#8), Greece (#8), Portugal (#9), Romania (#9), and Iceland (#9). It also made the top-20 in Norway (#11), the Netherlands (#12), Denmark (#12), Australia (#13), Italy (#14), Belgium (#14W/#15F), Spain (#15), New Zealand (#15), and France (#20).
A fourth single from the Oops! album, "Don't Let Me Be The Last To Know", had some bigtime cred, written by producer Robert "Mutt" Lange and his then-wife Shania Twain along with Bryan Adams' guitarist Keith Scott. But I guess Twain's soccer-mom sincerity didn't carry over to the younger Spears, and it stiffed in the U.S., though it was a decent international hit, topping the Romanian singles chart and reaching the top ten in Croatia (#3), Hungary (#5), Poland (#6), Austria (#7), and Switzerland (#9), and getting to #12 in the UK and Germany and #27 in France. Britney, though will be back to the series (bitch!).
(10/10)
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Britney brought "Stronger" to MTV Total Request Live...
Here's Britney live in London in 2000...
She performed "Stronger" on the American Music Awards in 2001...
In 2010, the TV musical Glee included "Stronger" in its Britney/Brittany episode, sung by Kevin McHale in a dream sequence. The version went to #53 on the American Hot 100 and hit #47 in Canada...
and lastly, back to Britney on her Vegas stint...
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