One More Time?

Like so many teens, Britney Spears is dealing with major peer pressure these days.

After hitting the pop music jackpot last year with the mega-hit song and album “. . . Baby One More Time,” Spears, 18, is out to prove she is not a one-hit wonder with her follow-up effort, “Oops . . . I Did It Again,” which arrives in stores next Tuesday.

But she’s also contending with more than just sophomore expectations.

That’s because Spears is part of an elite class in youth pop, the Jive Records brigade of acts featuring boy-band stars the Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync. All those groups have done lately is take turns shattering all-time records for first-week album sales. Talk about ruining the curve . . .

And there’s more: Spears must also deal with the real or imagined rivalry with her old colleague in the “New Mickey Mouse Club,” singer Christina Aguilera. Spears leads Aguilera in album sales, but it was the other way around at the Grammys when Aguilera took the best new artist statuette. Perhaps more telling, Aguilera also soundly thumped Spears in an MTV fan straw poll on the eve of the Grammys--and MTV viewers are a powerful constituency these days.

There’s also this pop quiz question: How long can this youth music bonanza and its gaudy sales keep going? Spears isn’t the only one hoping the answer is at least “one more time”:

* Mandy Moore, who is either a fresh new talent or, to the more cynical, a blatant Britney knockoff, has a new disc, “I Want to Be With You,” in stores today. The collection is largely a retooling of Moore’s 1999 debut CD, “So Real,” which has sold more than 725,000 copies.

* Hanson, which, oddly, is an old-school act that is still under the drinking age, also returns to stores today with its “This Time Around.” The youths’ “MMMBop” single hit No. 1 in 27 countries in 1997 and helped launch the entire youth pop craze, but it’s not clear if their guitars will resonate in the new era of dancing pretty boys. Sales of the trio’s debut album, “Middle of Nowhere”: more than 8 million.

* 5ive, a British “lad” band put together by the same people that brought you the Spice Girls, delivers its second U.S. title, “Invincible,” next Tuesday. Arista is hoping this will be the group’s breakthrough package.

* The A-Teens, originally known in their native Sweden as the “ABBA Teens,” deliver a U.S. debut next Tuesday. The group has an interesting artistic strategy--all their songs are cover versions of, you guessed it, ABBA songs.

* Aguilera is reportedly mulling a Latin album or Christmas collection for her next release, but no dates have been set yet. She’s also gearing up to launch her first solo tour in July. Sales of her debut album have now topped 5.5 million.

* And, finally, the Backstreet Boys, the 800-pound pop music gorilla with the heartfelt harmonies, are waiting in the wings for the fall. Their “Millennium” was the top-selling disc of 1999--it has now surpassed 10.6 million copies sold, replacing Celine Dion’s “Falling Into You” as the fifth-biggest seller in the SoundScan era--and most observers expect them to follow-up just as strongly.

“This music is doing super right now, and there is always room for great pop songs,” says Michael Steele, program director for KIIS-FM (102.7), the top local pop station. “But you might see it hit a saturation level by the end of the year. . . . Some acts, like Christina Aguilera, who is the real deal, will escape the whole thing, but Mandy and Britney might get slumped into it.”

Ouch. More pressure for Spears. Some in the industry say the future of Spears and the youth pop craze will not be revealed in the first-week sales of “Oops,” but the album’s ongoing health may tell.

“This is where we see if there’s a second act to Britney’s career,” says Tom Calderone, vice president of music and talent for MTV. “This is where we see how she fits into the grand scheme of pop music today.”

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Retailers and radio executives are expecting Spears to not only fit in, but also to step forward to the head of the class--at least among the female performers.

“I think this album will do very well, but I don’t think it’s realistic to expect it to put up ‘N Sync numbers,” says radio programming consultant Jeff Pollack, referring to the 2.4 million copies that group sold in its debut week in March with “No Strings Attached.” (Its total sales have topped the 5 million mark.) “For Britney, this album may not do quite as well as the first one even, but it will be very strong.”

”. . . Baby One More Time” has totaled 9.1 million copies in total U.S. sales and is still at No. 55 on Billboard’s Top 200 album chart after 70 weeks in release. The sugary, syncopated title track and video had young girls around the country dancing and re-creating Spears’ schoolgirl fashion in front of their mirrors. Only “Millennium” sold more copies in 1999.

“Baby” also was a perfect example of the new youth pop movement, which began with the Spice Girls and has found its most powerful dynamo in the Backstreet Boys. With a vast demographic surge of youngsters that are, as a whole, flush with disposable income and inundated with media. Besides MTV, preteens are finding their taste makers in the increasingly music-minded Nickelodeon and Disney channels (the latter the launching pad for ‘N Sync).

“I think the youth pop will taper off, but this isn’t something that’s going away,” Pollack says. “This is a market that will stay but some of the heat will leave. I don’t know that it’s peaked yet, but it will.”

How does the new Spears album sound? Musically, “it’s got more attitude,” says Max Martin, who has written and produced many of the biggest hits for Spears, the Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync. The Swedish pop producer says the follow-up album presents a more mature-minded performer in Spears. Some of the drippier ballads on the first album give way to more funky fare this time, he says.

Overseas, “Oops” debuted at No. 1 on the singles tally in England, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the pan-continental “Eurochart.” In the U.S., excitement over the album landed Spears back on the cover of Rolling Stone.

Also, MTV is using the album today to debut a new show, “First Listen.” Spears will perform three songs on the network’s show at 4:30 p.m., and fans gathered in a studio will hear the entire disc and chat with their idol about it.

Privately, Jive Records officials say they don’t anticipate Spears rivaling the blistering ‘N Sync sales. The feud between ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys fans (over who is better, cuter, etc.) fueled the sales derby, with some loyalists buying multiple copies.

“Britney doesn’t inspire that kind of fanatical devotion, so comparing them is a little unfair,” says Bob Bell, a music buyer for the Wherehouse chain. “But we anticipate it will be one of the biggest pop records of the year.”

Either way, Calderone says Spears will be a girl standing alone in a boy-band world.

“It’s just Britney up there all alone; she’s one person, not a group,” he says. “It’s a lot easier to reinvent three or four or five guys or change some of their images for variety. It’s harder to reinvent one person, and if you don’t reinvent, maybe people get burned out.”