A No 1 hit in 31 countries, Wannabe is the bestselling single ever by a female
group and propelled Sporty, Scary, Posh, Ginger and Baby Spice to a level of chart-conquering
domination that, even now, seems extraordinary. Such statistics can make it
easy to forget quite how ropey the five-piece seemed to many music fans, who
saw the title of the band’s debut single not as an expression of female
empowerment, but as an accurate description of five slightly desperate
hoofers recruited from an ad in The Stage. The genius of the Spice Girls —
or, rather, the team behind them — was to bulldoze their way through such
perceptions with the aid of both precision-bomb marketing and, of course,
Wannabe. The former still leaves a bad taste in the mouth: the true legacy
of Girl Power is, arguably, a preteen clothing industry selling crop tops
and other minimal garments to young girls, not a generation of independent,
take-no-nonsense women. But the song remains the same two minutes and 53
seconds of pop perfection that it ever was.
Co-written by Richard Stannard, Matt Rowe and the band, Wannabe opens with
immediately undislodgable piano notes, which act as stepping stones to the
chorus. Over these, Mel Brown and Geri Halliwell holler the song’s key
message of assertiveness: “Yo, I’ll tell you whatI want, what I
really, really want.”
What they really, really wanted turned out to be to “zigazig ah”, a phrase
open to all manner of interpretation. But its air of devil-may-care zaniness
was of a piece with the song’s other message (reinforced by the
storming-the-citadels video): we’re taking charge of our own destinies and
having a riot at the same time, and so can you. The fact that the band were
being manufactured and marketed by a male-dominated industry was an irony
that only increased when Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell’s equally cynical
political packaging muscled in on the action with Cool Britannia the
following year.
Musically, the song is amazingly deft, melding Motown with rap and never
losing sight of the need to stay focused on getting its message across (no
wonder new Labour got on board). Its success made the Spice Girls a global
phenomenon of multiple sponsorship deals and spawned an unforgettably dire
movie, Geri’s departure, Posh’s football wedding and, last year, the
inevitable reunion. Much of what they sang, said and did now seems
ridiculous. On Wannabe, however, the Spice Girls ruled the roost.