Originally written November 21, 2006.

In the kerfuffle about who’s working with Britney on her fifth studio album, we all seem to have forgotten about Brian Kierulf and Joshua Schwartz. These two have made some wonderful music with Britney in the past. I have a few reservations about “Brave New Girl” but “Don’t Hang Up” more than makes up for it and “Anticipating” is one of my favorite pop songs of all time. Another indicator of Brian and Josh’s consistent quality and creativity is “My Only Wish (This Year)”.

Originally written September 16, 2005.

Oops I Did It Again was the battle song for the second major campaign of Britney’s career and as such it was a massive success. It has become a huge part of her public persona, with phrases like the famous title and “I’m not that innocent” regularly being attached to almost everything she does, and it has remained in her repertoire ever since. I’ve described before how many of the elements in Britney’s career seem to work in synergy and here is a classic case. Where “Baby One More Time” contributed to the magical and intriguing Britney persona mainly through the video, “Oops” did it mainly through the words.

Originally written December 21, 2005.

“Sometimes” was written and co-produced by regular Britney-songwriter Jorgen Elofsson, who also had a hand in Crazy, Girl in the Mirror and What You See is What You Get. (A recent lawsuit over the authorship of the song was settled in favour of Britney’s camp.) Main production was by Per Magnusson and David Kreuger. Keyboards were played by Jorgen Elofsson and Per Magnusson, acoustic guitar by Esbjorn Ohrwall and bass guitar by Thomas Lindberg. The only credited backing vocalist is Anders van Hoffsten.

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.