Just thinking about the Spice Girls’ schedule for 1997 makes me feel tired. Live shows, sponsorship deals, a movie, adverts, awards ceremonies around the world… And, of course, a second album to record and promote.
Spice Up Your Life, by The Spice Girls (their 5th of nine #1s)
1 week, from 19th – 27th October 1997
‘Spice Up Your Life’ is classic pop group lead single fare. It’s brash, it’s catchy, it has the name of the band in the title… In fact, it’s basically a call to arms for Spiceys everywhere: When you’re feeling, Sad and low, We will take you, Where you gotta go… set to a pounding, gyrating samba rhythm. People of the world, Every boy and every girl… Spice up your life!
I may have mentioned in previous posts how much of a fan I was of the Spice Girls’ first album. And I distinctly remember hearing ‘Spice Up Your Life’ for the first time… and hating it. It was annoying, it was chaotic, it felt like ‘Wannabe’ (never my favourite Spice Girls’ song) times a hundred. Maybe it was my age? I was almost twelve by this point, approaching the too-cool-for-school stage… Or maybe the song was just a bit naff?
Listening to it now, I’d say it was the latter (I’ve never been too cool for anything). By the second verse, the chaotic energy starts to rip the song apart… Kung Fu fighting, Dancing queen, Tribal spaceman, And everything in between… Then there’s the gibberish of the middle-eight: Flamenco, Lambada, But hip-hop is harder… While it’s perhaps best not to get into the yellow man in Timbuktu…
What does redeem it for me, slightly, is the fact that the chorus is an earworm, and provides its own dance moves: slamming it to the left, shaking it to the right. Plus, the song in its entirety doesn’t outstay its welcome. It blows in, upends your furniture, and blows out all in under three minutes. It charged straight to number one, of course, just as it looked like Elton John’s Diana tribute might stay there for the rest of the year (that was #1 on the Billboard charts well into 1998).
At the same time, ‘Spice Up Your Life’ only stayed on top for one-week, compared to the seven weeks of ‘Wannabe’. Although the ‘Spiceworld’ album was a massive seller, and the singles off it all big hits, it didn’t quite match the impact of its predecessor. In the video to this single, the girls descend in a spaceship to a post-apocalyptic world in which everything is ‘Spice’d. It’s visually impressive, even with the dated CGI, but you wonder what the thought behind it was. If you were starting to feel Spice Girl over-saturation, then that video wouldn’t have changed your mind…
The UK Number Ones Blog 
I liked this single, catchy and in ya face with a great video. The second album wasn’t quite up to scratch, and nor were the singles in comparison to the first, bar one yet to to come. I still enjoy it though.
I’d say this is my least favourite of the four singles from Spiceworld, by far. The other three compete quite well with the ‘Spice’ singles, I’d say. I don’t think I’ve ever listened to the album in its entirety, though.