Hey I'm Brian Hyatt and this is Rolling Stone Music Now. I have with me Brittany

Spanos and Rob Sheffield and we're going to talk about the 20th anniversary of a deservedly legendary album.

That album is Oops I did it again by Brittany Spears.

We love this album. We thought we'd start out by having Rob read his original review of the album from Rolling Stone,

which much like the album itself holds up. Rob, are you ready?

What a great great album this is.

Nobody was prepared.

She broke the second album, Taboo.

Nobody was prepared for any of these like late 90s pop kids

to actually cross the line into becoming career

artists absolutely Rob do you have your review in front of you yes I do all right

do you want to preface this it's like you know since you're doing a reading here, maybe set this up where your head was at when you wrote this where the Rolling Stone collective heads were at where the where the world of music criticism was with Brittany Spears at that point because there are a lot of

complicated rockism and anti-rockest strains running at each other. There's a lot going on, so set it up and then

rated if you don't mind. The world at large was very skeptical of the Brittany thing for various reasons.

Rolling Stone not being anti-Brittany at any point in its career.

No, Stone always being pro- Brittany in those days.

But there was a lot of skepticism about the idea that she could make a second album,

especially with a title as audacious as as oops I did it again.

Basically, presuming the idea.

So I wrote this as a Brittany fan

with very much a sort of defending her

against the widespread derision that faced her at that time.

...