Rolling Stone April 15, 1999

issue #810

Britney Spears extends a honeyed thigh across he length of the sofa, keeping one foot on the floor as she does so. Her blond-streaked hair is piled high, exposing two little diamond earrings on each ear lobe her face is fully made-up, down to carefully applied lip liner. he baby path logo of Spears' pink t-shirt is distended by her ample chest , and her silky white shorts cling snugly to her hips. She cocks her head and smiles receptively. But hold on. It's not like that. You' re falling into the same trap as the lovelorn youths who call Spears' local florist to send her long -stemmed roses and the randy fellows outside the MTV studios with prom invites scrawled on their chests. Admittedly that trap is carefully baited by a debut video that shows the seventeen year old singer cavorting around like the naughtest of schoolgirls. But,as Spears points out nothing is actually revealed. "All i did was tie up my shirt!" she says, addressing the critics who would hunt her down like gay teletubbys. "Im wearing a sports bra under it". Sure, I'm wearing thigh-highs, but kids wear those it's the style. Have you ever seen MTV all those girls in thongs? Spears' left thigh is presently adorned by several small plastic disics that are wired to a neuromuscular stimulator. A dance rehersal accident has temporarily confined Spears to her parents' ranch style house in rural-burban Kentwood, Louisiana, when she should be out promoting her white-hot debt, Baby One More Time, 1999's biggest top selling pop album so far. Saying home has its compensations: As Spears holds forth, her mom, lyne, a second-grade teacher sits on the carpet in the wood-paneled livingroom, fluffing and folding the laundry, If it wernt for the diamond-laden tennis bracelet that Britney just bought her, you'd think her daughter was a vacationing collage kid not a pop sensation with an eleventh-grade education. The song that put Spears on top is a strutting statement of intent called "Baby One More Time" and that ellipsis tells a tale. The three dots mask a chorus hook line "Hit me, Baby" that some have taken as a masochistic come-on. "it doesn't mean physically hit me," says Spears. "It means just give me a sign basically. I think it's kind of funny that people would people would actually think that's what it ment. Perhaps the liguistic confusion arises from the fact that the creative force behind "Baby One More Time" is the Swedish Ikea-pop maestro Max Martin, who is also behind Backstreet Boys and Robyn. As cowriter and co-producer on the record Martin would run lyrics past Britney, ten years his junior, for approval. " I asked them to change the words to Born to Make You Happy". It was a sexual song." reveals Spears, who cleaves to the Baptist faith said, "This may be alittle old me.' Because image thing. I don't want to go over the top. If I come out being Miss Prima Donna, that wouldn't be smart. I want a place to grow."

1960 Elvis has been kidnapped by Uncle Sam. Buddy Holly is dead, and Little Richard has found the lord. Into the vacuum rises a counterrevolutionary force of adenoidal adolecents like Bobby Vee, Frankie Avalon, Fabian and former Muuseketeer Annette Funicello. These pop puppets, was their Tin Pan Alley songs and Sta -Brite smiles, actually managed to neutralize rock & roll's threat for several years. It's happening again. Welcome to the new Teen Age. In a distant demographic echo of the postwar baby boom, the American teen population has reached the kind of critical mass that makes culture industry sit up and listen. Teen spending power is reshaping pop culture, filling our TV screens with teen dramas and our multiplexe with teen movies. It has also put a perky new beat on the pop charts, where devotional vaporings of boy bands have vanished the roiling rock angst of the early to mid-ninties. 'NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, 98 degrees are now choking on dust from the high stepin' heels of Miss Britney Spears. Spears, who shares a manager with 'NSYNC and Backstreet Boys, screamed off the production line early this year and became the first solo artist of the Sound Scan era to lodge a debut single and album atop the charts simutaneosly, in the album's first week of release. But for all the fan-mag prose that greeted Spears' explosive marketpalce entry, we know precious little about her beyond an image that hints at several stereotypes. Is Spears bubblegum jailbait, jaded crossover diva or malleable Stepford teen? Who knows? Whether by design or not, the queen of America's new Teen Age is distinctly modern anomaly: the anonymous superstar. Lynne Spears is issuing crip directions to the family's home in Kentwood, an hour north of New Orleans. Turn off highway 55" says the husky voiced Lousiana native, " then onto 51 turn right when you pass the burning bush." The Burning Bush?" A bar? Restaurant? Strip club? "No it'a actualy bush that's burning in our neighbor's yard. You can't miss it." Such religous portent is fitting, for, in record industy terms at least, Britney Jean Spears is a golden child the chart topping apotheosis of a generationthat's breathing life into an imperiled business. MTV Vj Carson Daly is intimatley acquainted with the habits of teenagers not just through dating the newly twenty year old scream queen Jennifer Love Hewitt but via his stewardship of the station's afternoon call in and e-mail show, Total Request Live. "Teens don't have an attention span anymore," Says Daly, 25. "They just want to feel good for those four minutes, then go hit the Internet. They don't want to take this to seriously, and they wanna move tempo is everything. Britney is a poster child for them." Being a generational mascot brings with it certian responsabilities. "You want to be good example for kids out there and not do something stupid," Spears says. "Kids have low self-esteem, and then the peer pressures come and they go into a wrong crowd. That's when all the bad stuff starts happening, drugs and stuff. I think if they find something that keeps them happy writing, drawing, anything like that then they'll have confidence. Spears, who won her first talent show when she was six, sounds more middle-aged then teenaged as she delivers this brisk message. Doesn't she think that people her age struggling with self-esteem because of a torrent of media images that promote feelings oof inadequacy? Spears thinks about this for a moment. "When people see things on TV that they can't do," she ventures, "that should make them want to go out there and make something of themselves. That's how I looked at it." The very first low, aching "Ooh Baby-by bay-by" that Britney Spears whispered into the public's ear strongly suggested that this wasn't your average seventeen year old. It's still hard to equate those salarious syllables with the basketball plaing churchgoing schoolkid who would travel an hour to shop at her nearest Abercrombie and Finch. As Max Martin says, "People like this song then they see the video and it's like, 'Fuck!'"You can see that kid in the family photographs and Britney-bila that dominates the walls of the Spears household. Nestled among them near the picture of Britney with Ed McMahonfrom her Star Search proformance in 1992 is a picture of the star with her prom date, a gangly youth wearing moccasins with his dress pants. This is Reg, Britney's only boyfreind with whom she had a two-year relationship. It came to an end when strains of her budding career began to take their toll. "It wasn't that I was changing," says Spears. "We broke up before any of my success happened. He became insecure with himself, I felt. I wasn't gonna do anything Im straight up honest person and if I as gonna do something I'd tell him I was going to do something. I was real head over heels in love. I dont think I'll ever love somebody like that again. I just woke up one day and click, it was gone." Spears shrugs off the rumors linking her with both Lance Bass and Justin Timberlake of 'NSYNC. "Overseas they say it's Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys," she notes wryly. Right know, she says she prefers to concentrate on her work rather romance. " I have," she says, "No feelings at all."

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