Managing a Beatles-matching three Christmas number ones in a row, it’s the Spice Girls…

Goodbye, by The Spice Girls (their 8^th of nine #1s)

1 week, from 20^th – 27^th December 1998

Could we argue that this is a more impressive feat than that managed by The Beatles, as the Fab Four’s three festive chart-toppers came before the Christmas Number One © became a thing? Perhaps. But that’s a discussion for another day. On to the ballad at hand.

For it is, of course, a ballad. My favourite of their three Xmas #1s, by far, is ‘Too Much’, because it desperately didn’t want to be a ballad. But this is much more traditional fare. Listen little child, There will come a day… To be honest, I’m not sure what this is about. A break-up, I guess? With children involved?

Of course, with lines like Goodbye my friend… and I never dreamt you’d go your own sweet way… many at the time saw this as the remaining Spice Girls making their peace with Geri, after she’d abandoned them several months before. It was, after all, the first song they recorded as a four-piece, and wouldn’t appear on an album until two years later. Others saw it as the Girls bowing out entirely, which wasn’t a strange assumption given that Mel B had already enjoyed a solo chart-topper.

Musically this is lush and atmospheric, though perhaps a little more predictable sounding. coming straight after B*Witched’s Celtic-influenced ‘To You I Belong’. I like the squelchy bass – a little out place at first – while the beat is very American R&B, very Destiny’s Child. I can’t find too much to love, though. And coming two years after I’d outgrown my tweenage passion for the Spice Girls, I’m not sure I’ve ever properly listened to ‘Goodbye’.

It’s not as good a ballad as ‘Viva Forever’, that’s for sure. But you can tell that they had access to the best songwriters of the day, as evidenced by Mel C’s genuinely memorable chorus-within-a-chorus: So glad we made it, Time’s never, ever gonna change it… She always did get the best parts… I also like the fact that none of their Xmas number ones have gone down the cliched sleigh bells and choirs route (although the video to ‘Goodbye’ does involve a lot of snow, and people frozen like ice sculptures).

So, after two and a half years, two albums, eight singles yielding seven number ones, the Spice Girls… went on a break. There was still a tour, and solo projects to invest in. But there were also still plans for a third album, that will come about eventually, and give them a final footnote of a number one. It would have been cleaner, somehow, if they’d just bowed out with ‘Goodbye’, their record-matching third consecutive Christmas #1. Pushing them all the way in the charts that week was an animated chef, voiced by a soul legend, who would have his moment in the sun soon enough…