My Journey With Britney Spears Part 2: Oops! I Did It Again
As From the Bottom of my Broken Heart was fading away from the charts in early 2000 news of Britney's second album was upon us. To say I was excited was an understatement but a lot had changed for me by 2000. We moved away from California to Rhode Island in the middle of my 8th grade. While we were now closer to family who lived in Connecticut, I had no friends and I would struggle to find friends in Rhode Island during the duration of my time there. So I turned to music even more during this era. That said I put up pics of Britney in my locker at my new school and one day the Principal came by and took the more sexually suggestive ones. I'm sure he had fun with them the dirty old man (who was eventually fired for inappropriate behavior!) People said I was pathetic for hanging pictures of girls I would never score with like Britney Spears or Sarah Michelle Gellar. Of course I hung them up because I felt empowered by them but I couldn’t say that without giving myself away and I was still deeply in the closet.
I did meet one other boy who really liked Britney though and his obsession with her definitely exceeded my own. I loved Britney but I also loved my other pop divas too. With this kid you could tell Britney was his one and only. He knew Britney’s birthday, height, all her likes and dislikes and everything there was to know about Britney. People used to mock him as the Britney guru at our school. He was like the original “Stan” before social media and it was obvious in retrospect that he was just as gay as I was. He even reserved a copy of Oops! I Did It Again at Strawberries and told me I Pips not be able to snag a copy if I didn't reserve one (I didn't reserve a copy and I still was able to buy it the day of release.)
Because of the times Oops! I Did It Again was set to premiere on MTV's Making the video. I remember watching it that night with a blank tape in the VHS player and remote in hand ready to tape the music video at the end of the show. And when the video finally played I LOVED IT! It was everything I was hoping it would be. The song was insanely catchy, the choreography was fun (and yes I practiced the dance moves all the time especially the ‘play with your heart’ part) and she looked amazing. Her White top and mini skirt in certain scenes were enough to make me question if I really was gay for 2 seconds. Of course I was gay and that summer it was becoming more and more clear to me that I definitely preferred boys over girls but when it came to my pop stars I still liked the girls way more. I strived to be like my pop divas because the boys in N'Sync and Backstreet Boys felt boring and mechanical. I wanted to be a sexy pop diva dressed up in a full body red leather suit because it looked a lot more fun and glamorous to me.
My mom drove me to strawberries to pick up Oops! I Did it Again the day it came out which I am pretty sure I used the gift coin from my birthday to buy it. Strawberries used to have red colored gift coins for 15 dollars worth of credit which was kind of cool and unique. At the time Oops! I Did It Again broke sales records for biggest selling opening week by a female artist ever which had previously been held by Mariah Carey for Daydream in 1995. 2000 was the peak of the music industry as a commercial juggernaut with record breaking sales hitting almost every other week. I had a subscription to Entertainment Weekly back then and they would follow the top 20 albums for the Billboard 200 Album chart every week and I followed that like a hawk back then. The music industry would never experience another year like 2000 ever again and Britney was right at the center of this.
Once we got home I played the CD on my parent's surround sound stereo system and I loved the whole album instantly. I already knew it was a step up from the debut within my first listen. While I love the best songs off ...Baby One More Time there was definitely some filler (Hello E-Mail My Heart) and it felt a little scattered at times, but with her second album the songs felt tougher, catchier and stronger overall. The album also held together much better than the debut.
The song that stuck out the most upon my first listen was Lucky. I loved the storytelling aspect of it and the heart and I know it's so lame but at 14 years old I was really moved by it. Listening back to it kind of makes me sad because I no longer think of Lucky but Britney herself who ended up having an even worse time than the title character of that song. There was also these little talk sets in between certain songs that helped define Britney's public persona at the time. Before Lucky we hear Britney's voicemail which is silly, charming and geeky. It made you love her even more because sure she was this huge pop star but she also seemed down to earth, fun and a little bit of a nerd and I think it was that balance that really endeared her to an entire generation of pop listeners. We all felt like we could be friends with Britney and that she would get us. That's not something you thought about with most pop stars back then during the pre-social media age when pop stars still communicated from afar. Britney was huge but she still felt like one of us and these little glimpses into her character on the Oops! I Did It Again album solidified that feeling for most of us fans.
Oops! I Did it Again had raised my love for Britney to a whole other level and I finally asked for something I had never asked for before. I asked my parents if I could see Britney Spears live. I had seen concerts with my parents before that they had wanted to go to, such as Billy Joel and Hall & Oates and my Dad tried to get me Spice Girls tickets when they finally toured the U.S. in 1998 but they sold out before we could get any. Still I had never gone to a concert of my choosing and I really wanted Britney to be my first. My parents said that I could see Britney and they would pay for it so I got on the phone because this was still before you bought tickets online. After being on wait for a while I finally got through and the ticket seller said she had one last ticket! This felt fate to me. So I bought that last ticket and then my mom found out Britney was also performing at Hershey Park that summer. We had been to Hershey Park frequently as a family and any excuse to go back was good enough for my parents so they bought tickets for us all to see her live much to my younger brother's chagrin who was no fan of Britney or any pop divas for that matter! I'd make it up to him by taking him to see 311, Incubus, Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, Soundgarden, Jane's Addiction and Garbage later in life.
I remember Britney had a few openers who were on the Jive roster that they were hoping would go on to TRL fame like No Authority. All I can say is there is a reason none of these openers went on to fame and fortune. The openers I think just served to make Britney look even better when she finally came out. It was a fun a show and she did everything you wanted her to off the first 2 albums. The second show was when I went in by myself and my Dad sat in the car the whole time. I felt kind of bad that he had to sit by himself but when I got back to the car he said he had a very entertaining night. Apparently, lots of parents were bringing their kids to see Britney with no tickets thinking they could get scalped tickets. Things did not go according to plan for these parents. Girls were crying and Dad’s were screaming and apparently it was a hot mess. Dad says he will never forget watching these families fruitlessly try to get into the concert. The show was pretty much the same but the opener was a step up this time. Remember BBMack and their hit Back Here? It was everywhere in 2000 and then they promptly disappeared. Well this was right before they disappeared and people knew the hit so it went over a lot better than No Authority. Seeing Britney twice in one summer was pretty awesome and it would kick off a decade of me becoming a regular concert goer.
I also remember the VMA performance in 2000. Britney had performed the year prior at the 1999 VMAs and it was a fine performance but it was nothing compared to what she did the following year. Coming out in a suit and hat singing her cover of the Stones' Satisfaction she then ripped of the suit and for a brief second I honest to God thought she was naked! It was shocking in the way Madonna's Like a Virgin Performance back in 1984 had been shocking. And then she performed Oops! I Did It Again it and was riveting. Britney commanded that VMA stage like Madonna and Janet had done years previous. I was blown away by it. That was the moment that cemented for me that Britney had really entered the big leagues.
Meanwhile I was still loving all the music videos spinning off Oops! I Did It Again. I had wanted Lucky to be the second single and then I wanted Stronger to be the 3rd single and Don't Let Me Be the Last to Know to be the 4th single and for once my wish of what was released as singles in that exact order happened. The Stronger video had a great chair dance routine which also reminded me of Janet's Jackson's The Pleasure Principal and Madonna's Open Your Heart music videos which was intentional because Britney is a student of Madonna and Janet Jackson. It was around this time to that I made my own music video collections. I learned how to tape to tape from my Grandfather and I started making music video compilations of my favorite pop divas. I did one with all my favorites, Madonna, Janet, Mariah, Britney and Paula all mixed together.
It was also around this time that Britney did her Pepsi commercial which premiered on TRL of all places. Sure it was a commercial but it also more than that which is why TRL premiered it. A Britney commercial was a pop culture event at this point that’s how huge she was. Just like The Spice Girls Pepsi song it was so catchy I wanted to own the song just for my own listening pleasure. A friend made me my first mix CD in early 2001 and he was able to track down the 2 minute version The Joy of Pepsi by Britney off Limewire. My parents thought it was ridiculous I was listening to a commercial jingle on my stereo system. I just thought it was ridiculous that The Joy of Pepsi somehow didn't become a # 1 smash hit!
Looking back The Oops! I Did It Again album was the peak of my early Britney fandom. She was killing it on all fronts and I was there for every minute of it. I never let anyone change the channel when she came on the radio or TV, she was on every mix tape I was making, I taped the episode of SNL she hosted and performed, and watched her music videos over and over again. This was when my love for Britney Spears and pop music as a whole was still at its most pure despite people trying to tell me she had no talent and it wasn't real music. Still that era couldn't last forever and what came next is when things started to get a bit bumpy.
