After a slightly disappointing start to her solo career, missing out on #1 by a few hundred copies to Boyzone, Ginger becomes the second Spice Girl to make top spot away from the band, and the first to do so completely on her own…

Mi Chico Latino, by Geri Halliwell (her 1^st of four solo #1s)

1 week, from 22^nd – 29^th August 1999

Just a few weeks on from ‘Livin’ la Vida Loca’, Geri Halliwell hops aboard the Latin-revival bandwagon. Or is it the mid-80s Madonna bandwagon? For this slice of Spanish silliness owes quite a large debt to Madge’s 1987 chart-topper ‘La Isla Bonita’. It also reminds me of holiday classic ‘Lambada’ in the melancholy chord progressions, not to mention ‘Viva Forever’s flamenco guitars, and even ‘Spice Up Your Life’ in the propulsive beat.

But what ‘Mi Chico Latino’ lacks in originality, it makes up for in camp charm. From the start, Geri clearly knew that her core fanbase were gay men, and she had no illusions of much wider appeal. (The video features a liberal amount of men in trunks, while the ‘B’-side was literally titled ‘G.A.Y.’) And she is, as has been well documented, no great vocalist. But she carries this tune along with a likeable purr in her voice.

Geri has, I have just discovered, a Spanish mother, which gives the lyrics a little more respectability. She chucks around some GCSE-level stuff like confetti – Donde esta… Yo no se… – but I’m fairly sure there was no mention of el hombre con fuego en la sangre in the textbooks my school used… I might have studied a bit harder if there had been.

Like the Westlife song it replaced at number one, nobody is going to argue that ‘Mi Chico Latino’ is a classic. But at the same time, it is. Sort of. A classic of the summer of ’99, when Latin pop was having a resurgence, and a one-time Spice Girl was on her way to becoming the country’s biggest female star, for a year or two at least. There’s something quite appealing in the way this record barrels along, on the castanets and the ayayays. ‘Loveably crap’ might be a good way to sum it up. That might also be a good way to sum up the entire solo career Geri Halliwell, my now-favourite Spice Girl.