girl power

779. ‘Too Much’, by The Spice Girls

/ UK #1s blog / 5 Comments

Happily preventing the Teletubbies from claiming a Christmas number one, the Spice Girls score their second of three festive chart-toppers in a row. And of the three, this is the best in my book…

Too Much, by The Spice Girls (their 6th of nine #1s)

2 weeks, from 21st December 1997 – 4th January 1998

It’s a ballad, of course (a girl group festive release will always be a ballad, there may be actual laws about this) but it’s not as straightforwardly sweet as ‘2 Become 1’, or as sentimental as the one to come next year. This is a sassy, soulful, fairly sophisticated, ballad that, with a little more oomph, could pass as a Bond theme.

It unfurls – that’s the perfect word – seductively, with plenty of horns and strings. Plus it has a couple of the Spice Girls’ best lines. As with all their good songs, they are the ones in charge, not the men. Unwrap yourself… Geri purrs… From around my finger… While in the middle-eight, Mel C unleashes the iconic: What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand, I want a man, Not a boy who thinks he can…!

When you add in her harmonies in the second chorus, Mel C here cements herself not only as the star of this single but as the official ‘Spice who could sing’. I think this might be one of the group’s less well-remembered number ones, and it certainly passed me by at the time – twelve-year-old me having given up on them after the manic ‘Spice Up Your Life’. But listening to it now, I might be tempted to place it as their 2nd best chart-topper, after ‘Say You’ll Be There’ (clearly the singles where Mel C was allowed to unleash are the best).

‘Too Much’ was the girls’ 6th #1 in a row, maintaining their 100% record – a record that stands to this day (though it has since been matched by Westlife). Their next release, ‘Stop’, would be their first and only single not to make the top. As I mentioned in my last post on the Spice Girls, the returns from their second album were clearly shortening, although they remained a global phenomenon. This is also their final number one as a five-piece, as by the time of their seventh chart-topper, Geri will have famously called it a day.

In my last post I mentioned that late-1997 saw extremely high singles sales. It’s hard to say, as records vary, but this may have been the ultimate peak for physical singles in the UK. In the run up to Christmas ’97 there was a week in which the entire Top 5 all sold over 100,000 copies, and in the all-time highest-sellers table four songs from the latter half of the year remain in the Top 50 (‘I’ll Be Missing You’, ‘Barbie Girl’, ‘Perfect Day’ and the record-holding ‘Candle in the Wind 1997’). Why this is I’m not qualified to say… Cut-pricing, cultural relevance, the ubiquity of CD players are all decent reasons. The quality of music, in my opinion, is not. The autumn of 1997 has seen a bit of a drop-off compared to the first half of the year. Whatever the reason, we head into 1998 with sales still high, and the turnover at the top ever-increasing…

743. ‘Wannabe’, by The Spice Girls

/ UK #1s blog / 11 Comments

Ah, now this feels like a significant moment…

Wannabe, by The Spice Girls (their 1st of nine #1s)

7 weeks, from 21st July – 8th September 1996

And not just because it introduces us to a genuine musical phenomenon, who by certain metrics are the most successful chart act ever; but because the Spice Girls were my first modern pop obsession, the first act that I loved in real time.

Listening to ‘Wannabe’ now, I can confirm that I still know all the words, and that I can still picture the one-shot video frame by frame. I’m still pretty sure I know what zigazigah means… But can I now admit that this record isn’t… very… good?

Of course I can. Even aged eleven, I didn’t have that much time for ‘Wannabe’. Far greater pop songs were to be found on the Spice Girls’ debut album, including some of their upcoming #1s. The verses are slightly risqué nursery rhymes – If you want my future, Forget my past, If you wanna get with me, Better make it fast… – while the chorus is an aggressively nonsensical chant: I’ll tell what I want what I really, really want… So tell me what you want etc. etc. etc. It’s breakneck, the sudden changes in direction are dizzying, and it leaves you with a bit of a headache.

One thing remains iconic: the ‘rap’, in which all the Spices are introduced to us. Like the chorus it makes little to no sense, but it does include an all-time classic line: Easy V doesn’t come for free, She’s a real laydee… (at which point in the video, the soon to be Mrs Beckham is grinding on a priest’s lap). Otherwise, this song is best viewed as a statement of intent, a big slap around the face with a leopard-print handbag. Or perhaps it’s actually the Spice Girls’ manifesto, with all those lines about putting friendship first, and everything being on a girl’s terms. (This is before they were lumped with the slogan ‘Girl Power’.)

The Spice Girls probably wouldn’t have been as huge if they hadn’t released ‘Wannabe’ as their debut single (and it surely had to be released first, or not at all). It’s a marmite track, something the girls and their management acknowledged at the time, but they went with it and were rewarded for their decision, and then some. Number one in thirty-seven countries, and voted as the most recognisable pop song of the past sixty years…

‘Wannabe’ itself probably wouldn’t have been as big as it was without the chaotic video, in which the girls rampage through a posh soiree at the St. Pancras Hotel in London. Again, it’s the perfect introduction to the group, their friendship, their vibe. And it’s interesting how young the target audience clearly is: you have five youthful, attractive females, and yet there’s nothing very sexual going on, aside from a bit of zigazigah-ing. It feels more like a madcap kids’ TV show.

In fact, the helter-skelter, cut and paste feel of the song, and the zany anarchy of the video, is pushing me to call this… not ‘pop punk’, as that’s already taken… maybe ‘punk pop’? Cheap, cheerful, and far more to do with attitude than any sort of musical quality. It works for now, anyway. We’ll have plenty of time to further assess the Spice Girls over the coming months. I might even bring up my homemade Baby Spice badge, and the saucy graffiti I drew all over the CD sleeve of their album, at some point too…