Number 1 on my 18th birthday,
Wannabe - The Spice Girls
and I don't really want to be the 44 year old man writing about how he's not a fan of the Spice Girls, but there we go.
No, I wasn't a fan of Wannabe. The first time I encountered the Spice Girls was on a billboard on a bus shelter outside Northfields tube station on the way to one of my last A-levels. I couldn't quite work out what it was an advert for - a TV show, a foodstuff, a perfume, a comedy troupe ... i guess that was job well done by the marketing team.
Wannabe was, for a while, dismissed as a new definition of summer madness, but Say You'll Be There went straight in at Number 1 as well, and the Spice Girls were here to say. Though not for that long. They really, really, only lasted, as an active combined force in the charts, for two years.
At the time, I was very rockist, and was not going to give this kind of thing a chance. I didn't like any non-guitar music. But, now, wise and generous, I'd say Take That have several 8/10 and 9/10 songs, likewise All Saints, Girls Aloud have a few 10/10 songs, TLC have some 10/10 songs. Eternal have a handful of 8/10 songs. The Spice Girls ... Spice Up Your Life is 6/10 for a few seconds, likewise Stop and 2 Become 1. That's it. Emma Bunton's first solo single is really nice, Geri Halliwell's solo career contains a hint of true lunacy which is almost entertaining. So, as you can see, I'm still not having it.
There are parts of the Spice Girls story I think are cool and parts I still resent. Geri Halliwell, at school with Priti Patel, an inspiration and friend to Liz Truss, a devotee of Thatcher, married to the worst person in the worst era of the worst sport, might be an even more culturally significant figure than we realise, in a bad way.
It's not for me to say whether their Girl Power was a good thing. Josie Long doesn't think so. On the playschemes in the following summers, all the young girls were dressing like the Spice Girls and shouting Girl Power and assigning themselves Spice Girl personas. Maybe all that did some good, maybe it didn't.
I just don't think the Spice Girls were good. I don't like the records. They're still popular enough, especially Wannabe which has almost a billion spotify streams, but to me, when it's deliberately messy, it's too much, when it's not deliberately messy, it's empty.
But, yes, they were clearly cultural significant, and did signal the changing of a guard. They were lucky that their first single followed directly on from the end of Take That. That fanbase was right there for them. Did they, though, signal the end of laddish, monocultural Britpop, and usher in a brighter popcentric dawn (you may think this is my regular straw man, but i see this regularly claimed)?
Or were the Spice Girls the ultimate Britpop band? 96 was the summer of Three Lions and then Wannabe. I kind of think, along with Noel Gallagher at Downing Street, those are the main things people actually think about when they think, vaguely, about "Britpop". The blunt instrument. The george cross and the union jack.
I've seen Britpop described by moderately sensible, right-on people, as partly responsible for the rebirth of nationalism in this country? Who do they mean? Elastica? The Boo Radleys? Super Furry Animals? Sleeper? Supergrass? Maybe it was McAlmont and Butler ...
Hmpph, i feel like i'm off-topic, and yet, on-topic. You go ahead and retrospectively love this Tory shell of a pop band, the David's not for turning.
Oh yeah, my 18th birthday ... not significant. Was in Portchester, as I would do for many birthdays to come. Have a vague memory i got drunk quickly, not in a fun way - can't really remember anything else.
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