the second single from ...Baby One More Time on April 30, 1999. Songwriting controversy The song created controversy over the writing credits. Steve Wallace, an Indiana songwriter, claimed he wrote "Sometimes" in 1990, but did not copyright it until 2003, four years after Spears registered the song's copyright. Wallace claimed Spears confessed he wrote the song, by showing to the court a possible e-mail from the singer, which said, "I now know for a fact that you wrote ['Sometimes']. But there's nothing I can do about it. That's all I can say about it." The e-mail was considered fake and the lawsuit was dismissed on October 31, 2005, when Judge John D. Tinder ruled that the singer did not steal the song. Composition "Sometimes" is a romantic bubblegum pop song, with a length of four minutes and four seconds. The song is composed in the key of B major and is set in time signature of common time with a moderately slow tempo of 96 beats per minute. After the bridge, it transposes to B major. Spears' vocal range spans almost two octaves from the low note F3 to the high note E5. The song has a sequence of Cm11–F7sus–B–B(9)/D–F/A–F as its chord progression. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic said that "Sometimes" and the album's other hit songs revealed Max Martin's mastery of the pop hook, Eurodance rhythm, and memorable melody. Lyrically, the song is a "heartbroken ballad", where Spears declares on the introduction, "You tell me you're in love with me / That you can't take your pretty eyes away from me / It's not that I don't wanna stay / But every time you come too close I move away". According to musicologist Melanie Lowe, "Spears shows a different side of her personality [with 'Sometimes'] than she does in her other songs." Both of them also commented the song "lacks rhythmic drive and the backing track is fuller, with smoother and rounder synthesized instruments", while describing Spears' vocals as more natural when compared to "...Baby One More Time" and "(You Drive Me) Crazy". Critical reception A reviewer from CD Universe commented that the song "warns a potential love of [Spears'] need for time and patience, rolling along nicely with a slow groove and a big beat". Amanda Murray of Sputnikmusic considered "Sometimes" a competent single, but claimed the song as unremarkable. Kyle Anderson of MTV said that the