Britney Spears’ Best, Most Enduring Songs

Over the past few decades, Britney Spears has been more known for difficulties in her personal life, from her rocky public relationships, her drug problems, and her father’s control over her life and career, than she has been for her actual music. However, when we look back on Britney’s career, it is the music that stands out above all else, even more than her extravagant music videos and performances.

Go back to the late 1990s, and Britney Spears was the hottest female act around, with many of the biggest songs of the era to her name. These are songs that whenever we hear them, we get transported back to a more innocent time, and time when the teenage vixen singing “Hit Me Baby One More Time” was both shocking and radical. Read on for five of Britney Spears’ best songs which still make us want to dance today.

The Beat Goes On

Britney Spears had the power to transform a song and make it new, as we discovered when she released her version of “The Beat Goes On” by Sonny and Cher. It can be hard to top that great pop duo, not to mention covers by a range of artists who had interesting interpretations of it, but Britney’s version with her signature sultry vocals stands out as one of her best works. 

To this day, Britney’s version remains little known, and as the last song on her debut album “...Baby One More Time” it failed to stand out despite its interesting bossa nova and trip hop stylings. By changing the musical style as well as the tempo and the feel of the vocal performance, she and producer Eric Foster White, in collaboration with British electronic group All Seeing I, successfully reinterpreted this classic for a new generation.

Soda Pop

When it comes to music made by teenagers for pre-teenagers, bubblegum pop is the ultimate genre, and Britney mixed that eternally catchy style with dancehall music for her debut album’s fourth song “Soda Pop.” It was something different for Britney, being a pure piece of pop confectionary, 

The song first appeared on the popular show “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” which helped build Britney’s audience before she had an album out. It may not be one of Britney’s best known songs, but it is immediately catchy to anyone who hears it. Music critic for the “Village Voice” named it as one of the album’s best tracks along with the title track, and if you revisit the album you will likely feel the same way.  

Born to Make You Happy

“Born to Make You Happy” was the fourth single on “...Baby One More Time,” in much of the world, though not in the U.S., and it remains one of Britney’s most underrated tunes. It is the only song on the album to be c0-written and co-produced by Kristian Lundin, who is well known for working on the songs “Quit Playing Games (with My Heart)” by the Backstreet Boys and “Tearin’ Up My Heart” by NSYNC.

Its other co-writer/co-producer is Andreas Carlsson, who also had a hand in many other classics of the Britney/Boy Band era. The song is not just one of the most emotional on Britney’s debut, but it is also one of Britney’s most impressive vocal performances as it spans more than an octave. Though reviews for the songs were mixed, it still made the top five on the charts in eleven countries.

(You Drive Me) Crazy

One of Britney’s biggest early hits was “(You Drive Me) Crazy,” which was her third single and hit the top ten in seventeen countries. Britney’s waitress dance routine in the video is one of her most memorable, and her performances of the song at the MTV Europe Music Awards and the Billboard Music Awards were undeniably some of her finest. The song was well timed as it was featured in the 1999 rom-com “Drive Me Crazy.”

As the song caught on, Britney embarked on the “(You Drive Me) Crazy Tour” which saw her perform 25 shows across the U.S. Hearing the song today is a nostalgic experience, bringing us back to the days when someone drove us crazy and kept us up all night. 

...Baby One More Time

The greatest of Britney’s early singles was her debut album’s title track “...Baby One More Time.” It was Britney’s first single, and right out the gate it was clear that she would be one of her generation’s biggest superstars. It hit number one just about everywhere, and with over 10 million copies sold it ranks among the top selling physical singles ever. “Rolling Stone” magazine declared it to be the best debut single ever.

The song almost didn’t go to Britney, as it was written with TLC in mind, but they rejected it and the rest is history. Britney was launched into superstardom, and the song and its video, with Britney playing a schoolgirl, got everybody talking. Not all of that talk was good, with some being concerned over the lyrical content and the sexualized video, but as the saying goes there is no such thing as bad press, and these concerns by a few just made Britney even more popular.