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Originally written August 21, 2006. I never thought I was going to write about this song.....ever. Even though pop encyclopedist Stephen Erlewine describes it as “the utterly delightful, bubblegum-ragga album track”, I always regarded it as pure filler - a piece of irritatingly puerile pop drivel that owed more to Jive’s scatter-gun approach to A&R than to any creative planning. Yet, having been forced to take a closer look by those who requested an “In Depth” about it, I now believe that “Soda Pop” is a hugely important piece in the jigsaw puzzle that is Britney Spears.
But that has very little to do with the song itself. Although written by revered producer Eric Foster White and the equally respected reggae songwriter / producer / instrumentalist Mikey “Bassie” Henry, the words are as nonsensical as some of Sir Paul McCartney’s efforts. I must admit to being charmed by some of the renditions of the words waiting to be found on popular internet song words sites. For instance, many of them give Mikey’s first line as “Like a great boy, all my other women are insoles”! The truth is less offensive but possibly even weirder. If you know for sure that any of these lyrics are wrong, let me know!
Oh-oh.......Ah, here we go now, oh
[Mikey] Like the great poets Homer, Agamemnon, or even Zeus, we takin' a
vibical expedition. This pop ditty we choose....
[Britney & Mikey] So be calm, don’t ring the alarm, you see
[Mikey] Cause we go on and on.
[Mikey] Come, come, come follow my Britney
[Britney] Yeah
CHORUS
Open a soda pop, watch it fiz and pop
The clock is tickin’ and we can't stop
Open a soda pop, bop she-bop she-bop
The clock is tickin’ and we can't stop
We’re monster-riding to the music tonight
A clever way to get by, oh
The pops keep flowin' like its fire and ice
So give it a little blind, so
CHORUS
Ooh-Ooh
We have a plan, we have a definite plan
To level the vibes (vibes), to level the vibes again (ooh-yeah)
See, where ya ba-do for a superlative self, oh yeah
A wicked time to the end, oh yeah, so
CHORUS X2
BRIDGE
So much pop we're losing, sittin’ watching the clock
So turn the table baby, let's go over the top (take it to the top now)
No one else will do, I'm waiting for you
So show me what'cha got, just take a pop shot
And we will never stop she-bop, she-bop
Yeah, mm-hmm [chuckles]
The clock is tickin and we can't stop
Open a soda pop, bop, she-bop, she-bop
The clock is tickin’ and we can't stop (can't stop)
Dudes we nicked it like we've never before (before, before, before)
And lovin it till we drop (we drop, ah, we drop yeah)
We'll flex tonight until they break down the door (oh yeah)
The party won't ever stop....so
CHORUS X2
[Mikey] I bet you we can party like we've never partied before
And we keep comin’ back for more and more for sure (sure)
It's cool Britney when we get down on the floor yeah
And we go on and on until the break of dawn
CHORUS
[Mikey] All we gotta do is just
Open a soda pop, watch it fiz and pop
The clock is tickin and we can't stop
The production is neat and smooth but nothing remarkable. Mikey’s vocals appear as a split stereo pair on a fairly narrow soundstage, while Britney’s are presented fairly randomly as solo center, double tracked center or split stereo pair. Her casual asides come from about 90 degrees to either side. At the passage beginning “we have a plan” she forms a vocal trio with herself, to quite striking effect.
As for the instrumental tracks, I’ve remarked before that Britney has never received a particularly lavish treatment, and here all she gets is snare, hi-hat, a few guitar strums and a minimal bass track that sounds like Mikey because it plays across the bars rather than within them, and that’s what reggae bassists were known for back then. There’s a repeated, somewhat subdued synth effect on the left channel underpinning the words “open a soda pop”. And that’s it.
This song is a duet in every sense, and Mikey contributes a lovely little dancehall-style cameo, full of humor and panache. His “rrrrrr-op-a-bop-bop-bop” at 2:43 always makes me smile. Britney, in her familar role as main backing vocalist, flits around him most of the time, echoing and doubling his lines and cooing sweetly as required, and doing the same for her own lead vocals.
And its her own vocals that are the important thing about this track. It could be said that most of Britney’s vocal performances are “children” of BOMT - or, at the very least, direct descendants from it. But it didn’t HAVE to be that way. A couple of years ago, a Kentwood resident who’d been talking to some of Britney’s friends reported them as saying that Britney’s “real” voice, her natural voice, is bluesy and soulful, and that performing live using the BOMT-style voice was very difficult for her because it was so unnatural.
And Larry Rudolph has recently confirmed that when she arrived at Jive her voice was “deep” and “powerful” but not thought to be very commercial. This was a time when record companies didn’t want a young white girl soul singer, they wanted a young white girl pop singer to reinvigorate the teenage audience - and so her development period with Jive began. At the end of it she had one of the most commercial - as well as one of the most distinctive and recognisable - voices in all of music. But not one that would ever tend to remind us that when she auditioned for the New Mickey Mouse Club her singing scored the same rating as Christina Aguilera’s.
“Soda Pop” is a little window on the past. It shows us Britney at the early stages of her time with Jive, while most of her natural voice remained. The power and bite with which she attacks many of the lines, and the depth and maturity of her voice, would amaze anyone who thinks she was lucky to get her recording contract. The sweetness and flexibility she shows here and there in “Soda Pop” have continued as vital characteristics of her vocals, but many of her fans may have been left wishing that Jive hadn’t interfered. I don’t know. If they hadn’t, Britney probably wouldn’t be the megastar icon we know today.
But if she had waited a while, and hadn’t made her debut till she was 21 or 22, fashions in music would almost certainly have been different and she could have built her career on performing in her natural way. And, if she had, she would probably be rated as one of the best female singers around today, both recorded AND live.
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