...Baby One More Time

Max Martin wrote the song and produced it with Rami Yacoub. It was first called Hit Me Baby One More Time and was written for Backstreet Boys and TLC, both of whom passed. Jive also thought of the British group Five, who passed too. Some executives feared the opening line would be taken as condoning domestic violence, so the title became ...Baby One More Time. Spears said the line just means give me a sign. She recorded the vocal at Cheiron Studios in Stockholm in May 1998. The first day went badly because she was too nervous, so she went out that night, and the next day she nailed it. She had listened to Soft Cell's Tainted Love the night before to find the rusty voice she wanted. Thomas Lindberg played guitar, Johan Carlberg bass, and the backing vocals are by Spears, Martin and Nana Hedin.

The song runs 3:30, in C minor at 93 beats per minute, and opens with a three-note motif in the bass range of the piano. It entered the Hot 100 at number 17 on 21 November 1998 and reached number one two and a half months later, for two weeks. It was number one for nine weeks in Australia, and in the UK it sold 460,000 copies in its first week, a record for a female act at the time. More than 10 million copies have been sold worldwide. Rolling Stone named it the greatest debut single of all time in 2020. Pitchfork ranked it number 28 on its list of the best songs of the 1990s, where Jamieson Cox wrote that the song mixes the romantic and the religious: confession, belief, begging for a sign.

Nigel Dick directed the video. Jive wanted a cartoon setting, but Spears pushed for a school, and it was shot on 7 and 8 August 1998 at Venice High School, the school used for the 1978 film Grease. Dick said every piece of wardrobe came from Kmart and none cost more than 17 dollars. Spears came up with the knotted shirt. Billboard voted it the best video of the 1990s in 2011.