...Baby One More Time

Spears signed to Jive in 1997 and was first sent to work with Eric Foster White for a month. Jive president Clive Calder then ordered a full album. White recorded material with her, including From the Bottom of My Broken Heart and E-Mail My Heart. Half the album was made at Cheiron Studios in Stockholm with Max Martin and Rami Yacoub, with songwriting from Denniz Pop. The album was complete by June 1998. Its North American release was first set for October 1998 and moved to January 1999.

Spears had imagined something like Sheryl Crow for a younger audience, but felt it made more sense to go pop. Soda Pop leans on bubblegum pop and ragga and has background vocals from its co-writer Mikey Bassie. Sometimes is a ballad, and the closing The Beat Goes On is a cover of Sonny and Cher's 1967 single, shaded with bossa nova and trip hop. Early CD pressings hide a spoken message after the last track.

It entered the Billboard 200 at number one with 121,000 copies in its first week and spent six non-consecutive weeks at the top. It was certified diamond on 9 December 1999, making Spears the youngest artist to receive the certification, a record previously held by Alanis Morissette. In the United States it was the second best-selling album of 1999, behind the Backstreet Boys' Millennium. It topped the Canadian chart for nine non-consecutive weeks, reached number two in the UK, and has sold more than 25 million copies worldwide.

Five singles came from it: the title track, Sometimes, (You Drive Me) Crazy, Born to Make You Happy (a UK number one that was never a US single) and From the Bottom of My Broken Heart. Reviews were mixed. AllMusic gave it four stars, Billboard's Paul Verna called it a top 40-ready workout, Robert Christgau singled out the title track and Soda Pop, and Rolling Stone's Barry Walters gave it two stars. It earned her a Best New Artist nomination at the 2000 Grammys and a place in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.