22 January 2000
Our first new number one of the 2000s has a title more fitting to the 1950s. And still to come from Britney: ‘I’m A Slave 4 U’; ‘Overprotected’; ‘I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman’; ‘Toxic’. Scant retort comes from ‘Stronger’, with its clunky callback to the fatal loneliness of ‘…Baby One More Time’. This tells us plenty about the limited space available to female pop stars. Alas for Britney, if only it were a matter of song titles.
We know now how the ’00s will unfold for Britney Spears: not well. Part of that is due to the usual insidious male gaze that always leaves a prominent woman damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t. The rest was down to what was new: reality TV and social media. Millions of randomers online, fired up by a revitalised industry of paparazzi photos and celebrity gossip, felt entitled and empowered to share their snark about a star’s private life with the whole world plus pile onto the star together in real time, as if all the reply guys and banter merchants in the world could now show up en masse on a celeb’s doorstep to shout their snide remarks in through the letterbox. For Britney that intense pressure led to head-shaving breakdown and punitive conservatorship. At the start of the new millennium we’re not quite at that stage of her story yet, which only serves to make this song’s passive title feel ominous. Welcome to the 2000s.
So, ‘Born To Make You Happy’ makes a bad first impression, its title suggesting the nasty old stereotype of a helpless, clinging woman. It’s unfortunate, because apart from that title in the chorus the song itself doesn’t really go down that road, being more your standard pop tale of romantic travails. Max Martin is still a co-producer here but not a writer, and ‘Born To Make You Happy’ doesn’t have the hook-laden zing of top-tier Cheiron material. Britney’s value-added, her ability to turbo-charge teen angst with a hi-octane mix of stage school steeliness and almost Grand Guignol emotional desolation, just about lifts this glossy but unremarkable track above the ordinary.
Surprisingly, we won’t see Britney at number one in Ireland again for almost four years. Her next two singles in 2000, also Max Martin joints, both stick at number two here, but they’re still massive hits anyway. By the time of that next number one, though, topping or not topping the charts in Ireland will be the least of Britney’s worries.
