This Day in Pop: Britney Spears appears for the first time on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine in 1999 (April 15)

[PokemonSpears]

 

On April 15, 1999, Britney Spears appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. In the picture shot by David LaChapelle (who would continue collaborating with Britney in future projects throughout her career) Britney appears lying in a bed covered with hot pink satin sheets, wearing some dotted pj shorts, her unbuttoned shirt revealing a black bra, a telephone in her left hand, and her right arm wrapped around a Tinky Winky doll from the Teletubbies. 

"Inside the Heart, Mind & Bedroom Of a Teen Dream" was the headline, surrounded by other stories about Cher, Bill Maher, Norm Macdonald, the Hole & Marilyn Manson tour and the lost tribes of the Amazon.

Steven Daly starts the article talking about her "honeyed thigh" and the logo of her t-shirt "distended by her ample chest".

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Britney Spears extends a honeyed thigh across the length of the sofa, keeping one foot on the floor as she does so. Her blond-streaked hair is piled high,exposing two little diamond earrings on each ear lobe; her face is fully made-up, down to carefully applied lip liner. The BABY PHAT logo of Spears’ pink T-shirt is distended by her ample chest,and her silky white shorts — with dark blue piping — cling snugly to her hips. She ***** her head and smiles receptively.

But hold on. It’s not like that. You’re falling into the same trap as the lovelorn youths who call Spears’ local florist to send her long-stemmed roses and the randy fellows outside the MTV studios with prom invites scrawled on their chests. Admittedly, that trap is carefully baited by a debut video that shows the seventeen-year-old singer cavorting around like the naughtiest of schoolgirls. But, as Spears points out, nothing is actually revealed.

“All I did was tie up my shirt!” she says, addressing the critics who would hunt her down like a gay Teletubby. “I’m wearing a sports bra under it. Sure, I’m wearing thigh-highs, but kids wear those — it’s the style. Have you seen MTV — all those in thongs?”

The interview took place at Britney's home in Louisiana while she was recovering from the surgery after a knee injury she got during a dance rehearsal. With just one single out, 1998's ...Baby One More Time, and the album just recently released a few months prior, she was already on top of the world.

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The song that put Spears on top is a strutting statement of intent called “…Baby One More Time” — and that ellipsis tells a tale. The three dots mask a chorus hook line — “Hit me, baby” — that some have taken as a *******ic come-on. “It doesn’t mean physically hit me,” says Spears. “It means just give me a sign, basically. I think it’s kind of funny that people would actually think that’s what it meant.”

Perhaps the linguistic confusion arises from the fact that the creative force behind “…Baby One More Time” is the Swedish Ikea-pop maestro Max Martin, who is also behind Backstreet Boys and Robyn. As cowriter and co-producer on the record, Martin would run lyrics past Britney, ten years his junior, for approval. “I asked them to change the words to ‘Born to Make You Happy.’ It was a ***ual song,” reveals Spears, who cleaves to the Baptist faith, I said, ‘This may be a little old for me.’ Because of the image thing, I don’t want to go over the top. If I come out being Miss Prima Donna, that wouldn’t be smart. I want to have a place to grow.”

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Being a generational mascot brings with it certain responsibilities. “You want to be a good example for kids out there and not do something stupid,” Spears says. “Kids have low self-esteem, and then the peer pressures come and they go into a wrong crowd. That’s when all the bad stuff starts happening, ***** and stuff. I think if they find something that keeps them happy — writing, drawing, anything like that — then they’ll have confidence.”

Spears, who won her first talent show when she was six, sounds more middle-aged than teenage as she delivers this brisk message. Doesn’t she think that people her age are struggling with self-esteem because of a torrent of media images that promote feelings of inadequacy? Spears thinks about this for a moment. “When people see things on TV that they can’t do,” she ventures, “that should make them want to go out there and make something of themselves. That’s how I looked at it.”

They also dived a bit on the breakup with her ex-boyfriend Reg, as well as the rumors that linked her romantically to members of NSYNC and Backstreet Boys

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“It wasn’t that I was changing,” says Spears. “We broke up before any of my success had happened. He became insecure with himself, I felt. I wasn’t gonna do anything — I’m a straight-up, honest person, and if I was gonna do something, I’d tell him before I’d do it and end the relationship. I was really head over heels in love. I don’t think I’ll ever love somebody like that again….I just woke up one day and click, it was gone.” Spears shrugs off the rumors linking her with both Lance Bass and Justin Timberlake of ‘N Sync. “Overseas they say it’s Nick Carter of Backstreet Boys,” she notes wryly. Right now, she says, she prefers to concentrate on her work rather than romance. “I have,” she says, “no feelings at all.”

 

 

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“She was always singing — she would never hush,” coos Britney’s mom, a diminutive forty-three-year-old with large brown eyes. Kinesiology student Bryan Spears remembers his sister dancing in front of the TV, trilling Madonna’s “Like a Prayer.” “It was very annoying,” he confirms.

Before she was ten, Spears had pretty much nailed the talent-show racket. “Those little competitions got really old,” she says. At age eight she impressed judges at an open call for the Disney Channel’s revival of the Mickey Mouse Club, but she was deemed too young for the show. So she did TV ads and an off-Broadway play, Ruthless, attending New York’s storied Professional Performing Arts School for three summers. Then, finally, came a two-season Mouseketeer stint in Orlando, where Spears palled around with Russell and future ‘N Sync members JC Chasez and Timberlake.

In contrast to most child-performer scenarios, it was Spears who got her parents to set up the Mickey Mouse audition. Jeff Fenster, Jive Records’ senior vice president of A&R, who signed Spears, was quite surprised when he saw the family dynamic at work. “Her parents were not pushing her at all,” he says. In other words, Britney Spears is her own stage mother.

 

 

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Spears hobbles out of her kitchen and down a photo-lined hallway to her old bedroom. “It’s a girly room,” she warns. To say the least. The tiny space, like the rest of the house, is awash in floral patterns and frills; throw cushions cover every square inch not colonized by an impressive collection of pale-faced dolls, from porcelain models to squishy plastic specimens. “I knew this would happen!” says Spears in mild exasperation. Her little sister has been trying to fashion one doll’s hair into dreadlocks.

For Spears, these dolls, like Mom’s abiding ban on long-distance phone calls, are reminders of an earlier life. She has no intention of going back.

 

 

Britney also reflects in the kind of music the label ultimately made her record, as well as the origin of the ...Baby One More Time music video.

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According to Spears, the record that was subsequently delivered to those pliant programmers was not quite what she had envisaged. She had vaguely imagined herself singing “Sheryl Crow music, but younger — more adult contemporary,” she says. Spears, however, is happy that she went along with Jive’s choice of high-gloss producers and writers. “It made more sense to go pop, because I can dance to it — it’s more me.”

When it came time to make a promo clip for . . . Baby One More Time, Spears had to show that her Southern conviviality had its limits. Jive had hired on video director Joseph Khan, whose concept reached the storyboard stage be-fore Spears spoke up. “They had this really bizarre video idea, this animated Power Ranger-y thing,” she explains. “I said, ‘This is not right. If you want me to reach four-year-olds, then OK, but if you want me to reach my age group …’ So I had this idea where we’re in school and bored out of our minds, and we have Catholic uniforms on. And I said, ‘Why don’t we have knee-highs and tie the shirts up to give it a little attitude?’ — so it wouldn’t be boring and cheesy.” The seventeen-year-old won the day, and the rest is chart history.

 

You can read the full article here.

 

 

Britney and David would later talk about the controversial photoshoot that caused a lot of criticism among parental groups that were concerned about the message Britney was sending to kids.

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Britney Spears has been on nearly 100 magazine covers, but her first was Rolling Stone, in the spring of 1999. “It was freakin’ awesome,” she says. “Most girls my age would have done their first cover for Seventeen or something.”

Her debut album, … Baby One More Time, was already triple platinum, but Spears was only seventeen and still living with her parents in her Kentwood, Louisiana, childhood home. Which is where David LaChapelle and his crew spent two days snapping the pop star, in her element. Her father, Jamie, hosted a crawfish cookout on the first night, and her mom, Lynne, lent set designer Kristen Vallow a sewing machine to stitch together the purple satin sheets Spears is lying on.

Spears and LaChapelle both say they knew the photo would cause a bit of commotion, but they figured it was worth it. “I said to her, ‘You don’t want to be buttoned up, like Debbie Gibson,’ ” LaChapelle recalls. “I said, ‘Let’s push it further and do this whole ****** thing.’ She got it. She knew it would get people talking and excited.” Spears proved, even then, that she was going to take charge of crafting her own image. One night while they were shooting, LaChapelle says, Spears’ manager, Larry Rudolph, walked in at 2 a.m. to find her posing in her bra and *******. Rudolph demanded to know what was going on. “Britney said, ‘Yeah, I don’t feel comfortable,’ ” says the photographer. “At first I felt betrayed. But as soon as Larry walked out, Britney said, ‘Lock the door’ and unbuttoned her shirt wide open.”

Says Spears, “Holy Roller religious people made such a big deal about that photo, and I didn’t really get it. That’s the way I’ve always been, and I thought that photo was a good representation of who I really am.”

 

She also covered the magazine several times throughout the years

 

 

 

[MikeHunt]

I remember I went with my older cousin so he could buy the magazine at a 7/11, and the cashier refused to sell it to him cuz he thought it was a pörn mag hahaha. His manager came over and told him, no it’s alright and my cousin was able to buy it. 

[devilsadvocate]

Since I was a kid when this came out, I didn’t see it as anything wrong with it, I remember Abercrombie kids getting into trouble cause they made thongs for kids.
 

Now as an adult .. I think this was a bit much, the cover, the one with the dolls, and the one with the tricycle .. the others were fine. But it was really about jail bate and the fact she was a kid … idk it does come off sleazy .. and it’s even worse that she was marketed to kids and was presenting herself as innocent! I think they could’ve waited till she was 18/19 for this personally :/ 

I hope she talks about it in her book

[Whyshouldibsad21]

 

Sad that the younger generation will never get to experience Britney at this level. I remember literally everyone at school talking about this and showing each other. True legend.

[Isla]

Iconic although it’s crazy to think she was only 17 here. Definitely playing up to the whole ‘Lolita’ persona. 

[Moscow]

The way this made no controversy here when I was in school, but years later came I came to know this was Hella controversial for Britney and USA is suppose to be forward thinkers 

[princessmimi]

Wow so its been 23 YEARS since this infamous cover?!

Damn!

Its still as salacious now as it was back then.

I gotta admit though she sure had the balls to do this cause this brought her into the mainstream.

Sometimes controversy works

[IStandByWhatISaid]

Still wrong tho... I won't call iconic this abusive and predatory behaviour from that photographer, yikes... poor Britney I will 100% understand if she retires from entertaiment industry 

[sunny_liston]

An all-time pop-culture moment.

We all have our opinions and I have my own, but I badlyyyy want to hear from Britney about it .. will she opine on this other early career highlights in the biography??

[Moscow]

2 minutes ago, Jaime Jean said:

Forward thinkers about what? Putting an half naked minor on a cover,I would like to think that a society of “forward thinkers” would never put a minor in a position like this. It seems like you’re insinuating that people in the US were wrong for being upset at this it is because it was wrong.

I would not like to argue with you, you can think whatever. Don't quote me.

[Moscow]

35 minutes ago, Jaime Jean said:

Well I don’t want to want to either, was just pointing I think that our definition of “forward thinking” is very different. Like I said to me a forward thinking society would never put a minor in this position in the first place.

My point was different but good for you! 

[DignifiedLove]

2 hours ago, Avenger said:

The way this made no controversy here when I was in school, but years later came I came to know this was Hella controversial for Britney and USA is suppose to be forward thinkers 

Not you using this as an opportunity to criticize the US. Worry about yours and less on ours. Thanks boo.

[Tar_isa]

And the world was never the same.

[FemmeFataleBrit]

I really don’t like this at all. It’s the fact that there were grown adults on set watching a 17 year old girl in a bra. Doesn’t feel right to me, but I don’t blame Britney at all.

[LeavinExhaleByYearEnd]

What Pink thinks of that cover?