![]() ![]() Her 2011 comeback single “Hold It Against Me” pivots on a pickup line that sounded dated in the swingers’ era four decades prior–”If I said I want your body now, would you hold it against me?”–but her attitude, half-winking, half-serious, makes it work. Over the years, her catalog has been studded with songs that reflect the facets of the singular traits at which she’s offered glimpses. Martin was onto something when he said he would “use qualities appropriately,” even if the phrasing does give one pause in the context of her present life under conservatorship. Still, Britney Spears wouldn’t be Britney Spears without the outsized, appealing personality at the megastar’s nucleus. ![]() “She’s fifteen years old I can make the record I really want to make, and use her qualities appropriately,” he reportedly told Spears’ A&R, Steve Lunt, in the run-up to her debut album …Baby One More Time. Superproducer Max Martin, who spearheaded “…Baby One More Time” and a slew of other Spears hits, wanted to work with the singer because of her young age, which made her more malleable in his eyes. In John Seabrook’s The Song Machine, which came out in 2015, the writer notes that Spears’ original artistic vision had her making “Sheryl Crow music, but younger” during her come-up in the late ‘90s. How those assets were managed wasn’t entirely up to her at first. “It’s very rare to hear someone that age who can deliver emotional content and commercial appeal,” Jeff Fenster, an executive at her eventual label Jive Records, told Rolling Stone in 1999. While some suits believed she would only succeed as a member of a band like the Spice Girls, her precocious delivery and girl-next-door appeal led to her eventually signing a solo deal. Spears grew up in Kentwood, La., and appeared off Broadway and on Star Search before her big break as a pre-teen: a role in the Disney machine as part of the revived The Mickey Mouse Club, which also featured eventual stars like Christina Aguilera, Keri Russell and Ryan Gosling.
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