Finally! Ten-year-old me’s OG favourite Spice Girl gets her solo number one…
What Took You So Long?, by Emma Bunton (her 1st and only solo #1)
2 weeks, from 8th – 22nd April 2001
We’ve had rapping Spices, banging trance Spices, Latina Spices… Emma meanwhile goes down a very nice, very drive-time radio, soft-rock route. This is classy, grown-up pop.
There are lots of digital swishes and swirls, especially in the dream-pop middle eight (where the producers were reaching for a ‘Pure Shores’ feel), but at its heart this is an acoustic guitar led song, accompanied by tambourines and handclaps and what a middle-class mum might think of as a hippyish atmosphere. It sounds like it was recorded on real instruments at least, and isn’t the sort of thing that we’ve heard on top of the charts recently.
Is it an exaggeration to say that I could hear Sheryl Crow releasing something not a million miles away from this? Or maybe Natalie Imbruglia. The bridge in particular is lovely, with Emma’s vocals coming through pure and clear. If Mel C was the Spice who could sing, Emma was the one who could give her a run for her money.
Compared to her bandmates, Baby was slow to launch a solo career. She’d featured on the one-off #2 hit ‘What I Am’ with Tin Tin Out in 1999, but this was her official solo launch. And it is to her – and the Spice Girls’ – credit that there was still enough interest in them as artists for her to make the top of the charts. And, impressively, to become the first Solo Spice to remain at #1 for a second week.
It is also to their credit that across their eight solo number ones (there’s still one more from Geri to come) there has been such a variety of styles. They’ve been of varying quality, but there have been no real clunkers. You can argue that they would have had the very best producers and songwriters queuing up to work with them, but I think the Girls also had some musical nous about them. They wouldn’t have become such global superstars otherwise.
Although this is her only solo number one, Emma Bunton managed seven Top 10 hits in total, one behind Geri’s eight, making her the second most successful Solo Spice. She can also claim the most recent Top 10 of any of the Girls, with her 2006 cover of ‘Downtown’ which made #3.
The UK Number Ones Blog 
classic pop of the era, loved this track, topped my chart and all and amongst my fave Spice-related tracks. It’s a great song and I can also see Natalie Imbruglia doing it, that would fit nicely, but Emma’s soft vocal style fits beautifully. It’s bizarre she had more top 10’s than Mel C, but Mel is the one that has had a post-hits career of good material, and On The Horizon should have been a top 3 – would have been 2 years earlier!
I’d forgotten all about this one. Sounds really solid in hindsight – kind of sophisticated.
I actually like this alot…and yes…she is my favorite. This is a good song….I hear Fleetwood Mac in this as well. I like this better than the Spice Girls.