The Haven Opinion #12 : Spice Girls - Wannabe

[Shireblogger]

Astonishingly, it is now 20 years since the Spice Girls burst onto the scene with their Girl Power anthem "Wannabe". At the time, the song, and the group, divided opinion. Has time been kind to their debut single or does hindsight solidify people's views ?

What does Haven think of "Wannabe" now ? Does the exuberance of the quintet retain its freshness ? Is it an appalling example of talentless exhibitionism ? Is the lyrical message of female empowerment to be applauded ? Or is it an over-hyped piece of vacuous nonsense ?

Tell us if you want to zigga-zig-ah.

Please give us your opinion of "Wannabe", along with a score between 0 (very bad) and 10 (very good). You must write a minimum of 5 words and a maximum of 5 paragraphs for your score to count, and scores outside the range of 0-10 will not be included.





5.1 AVERAGE from 13 judges

[Razzle Dazzle]

Maybe im the right age to appreciate the Spice Girls without prejudice, I was 12 when it came out so had an open mind, of course it is pop nonsense with no meaning that was most likely "co-written" by a team of faceless men looking for the next big sound but a catchy sing along chorus goes a long way. I was young enough to take it at face value, the deeper complexities remained unknown to me as a 12 year old. Did I like it yes/no.

Spin on 20 year, have I listened to this song or the Spice Girls through choice in the last 15 year. Nope. But I still appreciate their music, I was recently in Crete and amongst all pubs and clubs full of young en's who demand generic house music we found a 90s bar and found ourself singing along and doing something that could losely be described as dancing to a Spice Girls mega mix which brings me onto for me another big factor for liking music. Good old Nostalgia. I have a feeling this will be a marmite track, if you were in your 20s or 30s when this came out you'd be too cool for school and hate it as it would be everything you've learned to hate about music or if your into pop and always have been this is a bit of an anthem, expecially for girl power

Solid 7/10

[Kingpin]

I liked Wannabe when it came out but then it seemed to be constantly on The Box TV channel and at number one for ages so I got a bit bored of it.

Quite liked the Spice Girls, think they had better songs to follow this up with. Sounds a bit dated now. Always liked the video they looked like they were having a great time and not taking themselves too seriously

6/10

[rewardman]

I'd give it 8/10.

I enjoyed it at the time it was released. It was simply an infectious pop song with a good supporting video.

I didn't take talk of female empowerment terribly seriously.

[vastar iner]

I remember the huge amount of hype behind this, thought it would go nowhere as girl groups never sold as well as boy groups and that they'd missed the target. Oopsie.

Fairly anodyne and mediocre pop backed up with bags of charisma and chutzpah. Only now can we see just how toxic it was; basically the knock-on effect saw ever increasing amounts of hype poured into blando creations (Girl Thing/Tommi/Supersister et al) and girls were diverted away from wanting to be Britpop figures like Elastica/Lysh/Echobelly (and, indeed, Belly) into being corpo-whores.

The week before "Wannabe" hit the charts, the top 10 featured Underworld, Lightning Seeds and Sleeper; the top 20 Ash, Super Furry Animals and EBTG. I suppose the Spice Girls didn't kill music, they just pumped a few bullets into the twitching corpse that had already been butchered by Fake Tax and Jackson, but they prevented any real resurrection.

4/10 for the song.

[Earl Purple]

Yeah, "Wannabe" hit #1 in the height of Britpop but that Fugees cover also annoyed me intensely and I thought that Underworld song was hugely overrated too.

That zig-a-zig-a lyric makes no sense, either they had no idea what they really wanted or they had to get the girls to write something so they wrote that... Bits of the song make sense and they had charm. I got to like them more with later songs.

I'll give it 6/10. A better line than "zig-a-zig-a" and I'd have scored it higher but that line stands out like a sore thumb.

[Deleted]

In my opinion Spice Girls is the one from two most overrated girlband ever (together with Supremes). They even were not a pioneers of girl power in pop music (Kenickie and Shampoo did it before and better).

Geri's solo material is amazing and more interesting than Spice Girls' stuff. Emma also had some beautiful singles.

I adore pure pop music and girl bands, but prefer their followers (include many short-lived UK groups from that time period).

Also I wish to add that "Wannabe" aged very bad.

4/10.

[raliverpool]

A great British female pop group for two albums and 30 months. To blame them for all the generic female sh!t girlgroups who came in their wake (with the exception of All Saints; Girls Aloud; & The Sugababes (before they became the very definition of "trigger's broom")) is like blaming the Beatles for the likes of Herman's Hermits & Freddie & The Dreamers.

Sure the memory of the group has been tarnished by that dreadful R&B 3rd album where they turned into a 5th rate Destiny's Child meets TLC; the feeble comeback tour and that tepid "Headlines" single; Geri Halliwell's solo career being near universally awful, as she did not have four two & a half other females to hide her lack of singing ability (with that utterly rank cover of "It's Raining Men"; the unwanted Transvision Vamp pastiche "Scream If You Want To Go Faster"; and a contender for the most cringeworthy video in music history "Desire" in which she sounded like Alison Goldfrapp being run over by an Ice Road Trucker ... being three horrific nadirs); Mel B was similarly atrocious (apart from "Feels So Good"); ditto Victoria B (although Stuart Price's "Let Your Head Go" is superior to everything on Madonna's Confessions On A Dance Floor album which he produced); and Emma B was OK with the 60s pastiche stuff; with only Mel C being the only member of the group with a worthwhile solo career.

Whilst Britpop imploded because Blur; Elastica; & Suede where taking far too much Heroin; Oasis were taking far too much Cocaine; the fat dancer from Take That diluted the Britpop sound thanks to the help of former muso members of The Lemon Trees; the likes of Ocean Colour Scene, Dodgy, & Paul Weller were boring the nation to death with their brand of dad rock; Radio 1 DJ & Channel 4 TV presenter Chris Evans was turning into an unlikeable alcoholic egomaniac; and the remarkably untalented Menswear got a record contract and regularly appeared on Top Of The Pops FFS. Little wonder the definitive British rock act of the decade Radiohead bailed out of Britpop after "The Bends" to make the album of the decade "OK Computer".

Having said that this is not amongst the group's top three singles (Viva Forever; Say You'll Be There; & Spice Up Your Life).

As John Lydon said in a Q Magazine interview in the late 1990s "The only difference between The Spice Girls & The Sex Pistols is they had more better tunes".

8/10

[-Big Dan-]

I have no more appreciation for it now than I did at the time, and I was pretty astonished that a song so irritating could spend so long at the top of the charts. I might have found it a bit more tolerable without Mel B's rapping parts, but as it is, it's a song that I wouldn't mind if I never heard again.

3/10 from me.

[smokeyb]

From my point of view at the time I thought it was utter tosh, nothing since has altered my opinion. I wouldn't listen to this if you paid me.

1/10

[Deleted]

Sept 6, 2016 18:43:03 GMT 1 raliverpool said:

Geri Halliwell's solo career being near universally awful, as she did not have four two & a half other females to hide her lack of singing ability (with that utterly rank cover of "It's Raining Men"; the unwanted Transvision Vamp pastiche "Scream If You Want To Go Faster"; and a contender for the most cringeworthy video in music history "Desire" in which she sounded like Alison Goldfrapp being run over by an Ice Road Trucker ... being three horrific nadirs)

She is my # 1 favourite singer. With the exception of awful "It's Raining Men" (original is the one from my all-time least favourite songs) I adore every her song, she has 9 out of 10 possible number ones in my weekly chart and "Desire" even was awarded as my "Single Of The Year" from 2005.

[Earl Purple]

Paul Weller, Ocean Colour Scene, and Dodgy made some of the greatest music during britpop, and it's difficult to place Paul Weller in britpop anyway, he'd been going for ages, and Ocean Colour Scene had been around for a while too. Pulp had been trying for over a decade too. It was always likely to transform in sound, but that wasn't an excuse for the influx of boy-bands in 1999 with so much "real" music ignored, in particular new bands (and a band led by the keyboard player of one of the Madchester acts) but even that wasn't anywhere near as bad as it is now, and Travis still had the 2nd biggest selling album of 1999 behind Shania Twain with the boybands nowhere.

I'd agree with the summary of the Spice Girls in general but Wannabe was more a "sensation" than a good song. "Stop", which didn't reach #1, was a better song than "Wannabe". And S Club 7 also released some great pop songs.

[vya]

This was, undeniably, both unavoidable, and more or less, and despite the mega-hype, irrestible. Energy, enthusiasm, apparent sincerity. Though I can’t help wishing that the Belle Stars (who combined some of the characteristics that the Spices brought to life – both the sense of being a group of friends, and of a certain independence of mind) had enjoyed such a degree of commercial success and media blanket coverage in their day.

It strikes me, too (unlike their sort-of successors, also quite brilliant on occasion, Girls Aloud) that the Spice Girls never wasted our time with pointless or mediocre cover versions (or, indeed, cover versions, full stop). Which is a further point in their favour. Not least as the lyrical demands that we (or, at any rate, an unidentified and presumably male listener) not waste their time are part of the backbone of both this and some of their other singles - including their quite probably superior follow-up "Say You'll Be There".

They probably did make better records than this one, but as a way of saying ‘nous sommes arrivées’, ‘Wannabe’ is hard to beat. It’s fun, it’s pacey, and it’s in your face. Poppy but not over-polished, and with oodles of character.

A manifesto - as it was more or less claimed to be, about female independence of mind and assertion - is pretty much the right word for this, and with some ups and downs , one the group more or less, mostly stuck to – at least if we close our eyes to their ill-advised reunion, which, among other things, blemished their hitherto almost perfect chart record (one no 2, everything else no 1), and tactfully overlook some, indeed most, parts of the ensuing solo careers.

As regards "Girl Power", this is much more fun than the entire careers of their precursors in Shampoo and Silverfish put together.

8

[o]

Vacuous nonsense, but catchy at the time, and a couple of them were cute, it's not aged well, but I doubt they have either. 4/10

[raliverpool]

Sept 7, 2016 19:05:09 GMT 1 Earl Purple said:

Paul Weller, Ocean Colour Scene, and Dodgy made some of the greatest music during britpop, and it's difficult to place Paul Weller in britpop anyway, he'd been going for ages, and Ocean Colour Scene had been around for a while too. Pulp had been trying for over a decade too. It was always likely to transform in sound, but that wasn't an excuse for the influx of boy-bands in 1999 with so much "real" music ignored, in particular new bands (and a band led by the keyboard player of one of the Madchester acts) but even that wasn't anywhere near as bad as it is now, and Travis still had the 2nd biggest selling album of 1999 behind Shania Twain with the boybands nowhere.

I'd agree with the summary of the Spice Girls in general but Wannabe was more a "sensation" than a good song. "Stop", which didn't reach #1, was a better song than "Wannabe". And S Club 7 also released some great pop songs.

I'm not arguing with any of your points. All three of Paul Weller, Ocean Colour Scene, and Dodgy made great records which I bought because I loved the whole Britpop movement, but unfortunately like all music scenes they become a victim of their own success, and the average music buyer gets fed up of the overkill, until suddenly hipsters, music journalists, and then radio playlist committees declare the scene is old hat, and music moves on to the next big thing.

Economically, the late 1990s saw the beginning of illegal downloading sites such as Napster, LimeWire, Kazaa, etc which ate into the profits of record companies. Hence, it was easier and cheaper for them to invest in a manufactured pop act rather than invest in a rock band. Hence, the reason why "real" music got ignored because it was less cost effective to get up and running and turn in a profit.

If you were to ask me what the next big chart pop movement is going to come along and replace EDM/tropical house, then my gut feeling is that guitars are (over)due a revival alongside frenetic uptempo electronic music with melody added, as an antidote to the current scene that fills up the majority of the singles chart. Because even the superior beige pop from the likes of Adele & Taylor Swift is starting to sound rather stale IMHO.

The only thing I disagree is "Stop" sounds like a poor Phil Collins Motown pastiche. In retrospect it was nowhere near as good as Boyzone's second best song "Picture Of You". Both were co-written and produced by the duo known as Absolute.

[Earl Purple]

Phil Collins covered a Motown song but didn't do anything original in the "Motown" sound. Wham! did though. But for me that makes good pop. "Picture Of You" was my favourite Boyzone song, more so than "No Matter What" which was a major disappointment for me as a big Jim Steinman fan and also knowing Andrew Lloyd Webber had written far more exciting stuff in the past.

In 1999 there was a new band called Ooberman who by rights should have been huge but were not. They did manage one top 40 hit, peaking at #39 with "Blossoms Falling". I saw them live in 2000, taking Carol who I had only been with for just over a week at the time, and she really liked them too. And she was someone who was into stuff like Sting, Phil Collins etc.

[Razzle Dazzle]

I used to have an Ooberman poster back in 1999, probably from Melody Maker, can't say I remember their music now though

[raliverpool]

Sept 8, 2016 23:05:23 GMT 1 Earl Purple said:

Phil Collins covered a Motown song but didn't do anything original in the "Motown" sound. Wham! did though. But for me that makes good pop. "Picture Of You" was my favourite Boyzone song, more so than "No Matter What" which was a major disappointment for me as a big Jim Steinman fan and also knowing Andrew Lloyd Webber had written far more exciting stuff in the past.

In 1999 there was a new band called Ooberman who by rights should have been huge but were not. They did manage one top 40 hit, peaking at #39 with "Blossoms Falling". I saw them live in 2000, taking Carol who I had only been with for just over a week at the time, and she really liked them too. And she was someone who was into stuff like Sting, Phil Collins etc.

Re: Phil Collins, Forget about his pedestrian Supremes UK chart topping cover, what about the Temptations influenced "Easy Lover"; and the Four Tops influenced "Two Hearts", for starters.

As for a band who I associate with knowing that the Britpop scene was over, then I'd nominate this Atlantic Records offshoot London based act whose debut single peaked at UK #37, considerably lower than I and many others expected it to peak:

[borneoman]

I certainly enjoyed it at the time
but don't think it has aged very well
sounds very very dated
5/10 for me

[Shireblogger]

I never really liked Wannabe. It was irritating right from the first time I heard it, and the rap was excruciating. It hasn't got any worse with time, but nor has it become any less painful. The Spice Girls went on to produce some rather enjoyable singles, and I bought 7 albums from Mel C and Emma B's solo careers.

But it's only a 2/10 from me for Wannabe.