Rock and roll and The Mickey Mouse Club seem like mutually exclusive concepts, but the popular televised program and its assorted reincarnations have produced a number of pop stars. Annette Funicello, by far the most popular of the original Mouseketeers, went on to a successful movie career and a string of light pop rock hits like "Blame it on the Bossa Nova" and "Swingin' and Surfin'." Four other cast members had at least one pop rock hit, including Cubby O'Brien, drummer for the Carpenters, and Paul Petersen, the prototype of the socially maladjusted former child star, who charted with "Lollipops and Roses" and "Keep Your Love Locked." The disco-themed New Mickey Mouse Club (1977-79) primarily produced actors and beauty queens, but the All New Mickey Mouse Club, which aired from 1989-1994, yielded Justin Timberlake and JC Chasez, two-fifths of the wildly successful boy band *NSYNC, Christina Aguilera, and Britney Spears.
Spears was not initially cast for the show because she was only eight years old when she first auditioned. However, she was encouraged by the show's casting director to pursue a career in entertainment. She spent summers at the Professional Performing Arts School Center and worked as a child actor for several years, and successfully re-auditioned for the All New Mickey Mouse Club when she turned eleven. After the show's cancellation she began auditioning for pop bands and producers, and was signed to Jive Records in 1998. The label sent her into the studio with pop writers/producers Eric Foster White (Whitney Houston, Backstreet Boys) and Max Martin (Celine Dion, Ace of Base). The latter has written or produced the majority of Spears's hits, the same kind of hook-laden dance-pop tunes and neo-soul sentimental ballads that had propelled the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC to the top of the charts.
To prepare for the launch of her first single, Spears did a mini-tour of malls throughout the United States, a strategy created in 1980s for teen pop stars like Tiffany and Brandy, who were too young to play in clubs. Spears eventually won a coveted spot opening for in *NSYNC on tour. Initially she was booed off the stage by the hoards of girls impatient to see the five teen heartthrobs, but this changed as Britney won over the largely female audiences and "…Baby One More Time" entered heavy rotation on Top 40 stations; the song eventually reached number one. Spears rode the crest of a teen pop wave that began in the mid 1990s with the Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys, but her transformation into a pop media princess paved the way for a new generation of young singers like Mandy Moore and Jessica Simpson.
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Madonna, Tiffany, Brandy, Debbie Gibson
Must Haves:
 "(You Drive Me) Crazy"
"Toxic"
"Stronger"
"I'm a Slave 4 U"
"Don't Let Me Be the Last to Know"
Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore, Nikki Cleary, Angel
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