...Baby One More Time (song) - Legacy

Legacy

"…Baby One More Time" was listed at number twenty five in the greatest pop songs since 1963, in a list compiled by Rolling Stone and MTV in 2000. Blender listed it at number nine in The 500 Greatest Songs Since You Were Born. The song was also listed as the 7th best song of 1990's by VH1 and in a listing compiled in 2003, ranked at number twenty eight in 100 Best Songs of the Past 25 Years. Bill Lamb of About.com ranked "...Baby One More Time" at number fourteen on a compiled list with the Top 40 Pop Songs Of All Time. The music video was voted the third most influential promo in the history of pop music on a poll held by Jam!. "…Baby One More Time" is also one of the best-selling singles of all time, with over 9 million copies sold, and also earned Spears's first nomination for a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. In April 2005, the British TV network ITV aired a short series called Hit Me, Baby, One More Time hosted by Vernon Kay. The show pitted one-hit wonders who generally had their moments of fame in the 1980s against each other to play their own hits and a currently popular cover song. The favorites were chosen by audience voting. The American version of the show also aired on NBC later in the year, and it was also hosted by Kay. In the 2012 poll created by The Official Chart Company and ITV to discover The Nation's Favourite Number 1 Single of all-time, "…Baby One More Time" was listed as the sixth favorite song by the United Kingdom.

Spears became an international pop culture icon immediately after launching her recording career. Rolling Stone magazine wrote: "One of the most controversial and successful female vocalists of the 21st century," she "spearheaded the rise of post-millennial teen pop ... Spears early on cultivated a mixture of innocence and experience that broke the bank". Barbara Ellen of The Observer has reported: "Spears is famously one of the 'oldest' teenagers pop has ever produced, almost middle aged in terms of focus and determination. Many 19-year-olds haven't even started working by that age, whereas Britney, a former Mouseketeer, was that most unusual and volatile of American phenomena — a child with a full-time career. While other little girls were putting posters on their walls, Britney was wanting to be the poster on the wall. Whereas other children develop at their own pace, Britney was developing at a pace set by the ferociously competitive American entertainment industry".

Scott Plagenhoef of Pitchfork noted "songs like Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", Dr. Dre's "Nothing But a G Thang", and Britney Spears's "...Baby One More Time" altered the landscape of pop culture so quickly in large part because they were delivered to all corners of the U.S. simultaneously by MTV. MTV's ability to place a song and musician into the pop music conversation was unparalleled at the time, and by the end of the decade that meant absurd levels of both financial and creative commitment to music videos." PopMatters writer Evan Sawdey commented that Spears's concept for the music video of the song was the one responsible for her immediate success, saying that, as a result, the singer "scored a massive No. 1 single, inadvertently started the late '90s teen pop boom, and created a public persona for herself that was simultaneously kid-friendly and pure male fantasy. Her videos got played on both MTV and the Disney Channel at the same time, showing just how well Spears (and her armies of PR handlers) managed to walk that fine line between family-friendly pop idol and unabashed sex object."