20th Anniversary of "...Baby One More Time"

Britney!:

It was …Baby One More Time that convinced Spears of the merits of pop. She initially saw herself as making “Sheryl Crow music, but younger”, while Larry Rudolph, an entertainment lawyer friend of Spears’s mum Lynne who had been tasked with getting her signed (he’s now her manager), had her record a clutch of songs originally recorded by Toni Braxton. It was those recordings that lead to auditions for Mercury, Epic and Jive (the first two labels said no; she signed with the latter) which included Spears covering Whitney Houston’s version of I Will Always Love You. With the more R&B-leaning early material not working, and with a clause allowing Jive to terminate her contract after 90 days if they felt an album wasn’t on the horizon, A&R Steve Lunt approached Martin, who had already delivered success for Jive’s boyband the Backstreet Boys. A meeting was set up with Spears in New York. “I was pretty young at the time, so I was nervous,” she says, “but he was so nice and put me right at ease.” For Martin, his song had finally found its home.