u/stypop

If not the premier, I can definitely see her hosting at some point this season.

Welcome, my friends, to STYPOPALOOZA! This prestigious contest will help decide who will represent ME in the 52nd edition of Song Contest Sunday!

Here are your contenders:

1. Tinashe - Melatonin
2. HYRA - REM (No Sleep)
3. Jane Remover - Dreamflasher
4. Miley Cyrus - Golden Burning Sun
5. Saint Etienne - Carnt Sleep
6. Kelela - retaliation lullaby
7. Sky Ferreira - Lost In My Bedroom
8. JADE - Dreamcheater
9. Lady Gaga - Zombieboy

And here is your RECAP of all these incredible entries!

Simply rank the songs from favorite -> least favorite via this Strawpoll. Voting will close by Saturday, August 15 at 1:30 pm EST. May the best song win!!

Welcome, my friends, to STYPOPALOOZA! This prestigious contest will help decide who will represent ME in the 51st edition of Song Contest Sunday!

Here are your contenders:

1. Bree Runway - APESHIT

2. Janelle Monáe - Make Me Feel

3. Carly Rae Jepsen - Want You In My Room

4. ROSALÍA - SAKURA

5. SOPHIE - Immaterial

6. Sky Ferreira - You're Not The One

7. CMAT - Take A Sexy Picture Of Me

8. Isaac Dunbar - Bleach

And here is your RECAP of all these incredible entries!

Simply rank the songs from favorite -> least favorite via this Strawpoll . Voting will close by Friday, August 7 at 11:30 pm EST. May the best song win!!

....would it be "dumb heterosexual normative gossip" to suggest that this is a "fuck-you pap" ?

Though the single had technically been released in Japan the month before, today is widely regarded as the official release date of the song. Thus, today is effectively the thirtieth anniversary of the Spice Girls’s recording career, a career that would only span a short time but would undoubtedly leave a permanent mark on pop music history.

It all started with this song, which was the second one written in the group’s initial sessions with Matt Rowe and Richard Stannard (the first being an unreleased, soulful and rather spicy track called “Feed Your Love”). It goes that Rowe set up an MPC3000 drum loop, and each girl individually (except for Victoria Adams, who had missed most of the session in-person thus explaining her lack of solo part in the song) went in the booth and went totally crazy with it. “They made all these different bits up, not thinking in terms of verse, chorus, bridge or what was going to go where, just coming up with all these sections of chanting, rapping and singing, which we recorded all higgledy-piggledy,” said Rowe. Melanie Chisholm (Sporty Spice) recalled of the session: “You know when you're in a gang and you're having a laugh and you make up silly words? Well we were having a giggle and we made up this silly word, zigazig-ah. We were in the studio and it all came together in this song."

The original mix of the song was considered “lacklustre” by executives at Virgin Records, who highly preferred “Say You’ll Be There” and were thus pushing to make that song the debut single instead. However, after being touched-up by audio engineer Spike Stent and tons of pushing from the girls, particularly Geri Halliwell, they relented. “‘Wannabe’ was either a hit or a miss,”Geri recalls, “We felt, well, if nobody likes it then we have got other songs up our sleeves, but that was the one we wanted to release.”

The iconic music video first premiered on The Box network in May of ‘96. It had been shot just a month prior under the direction of Johan Camitz, who initially wanted to film the video in Barcelona but was unable to attain the necessary permits. Thus, filming was moved to the Midland Grand Hotel in St Pancras, London. The girls were followed around with a Steadicam operator for filming, and the final cut came from two takes made to look like a single take. The chaotic energy of the video “horrified” Virgin executives, who wanted to either re-shoot it or film an alternate video for the US. The girls, once again, refused. The video wound up staying at number one on The Box channel for 13 weeks, airing up to 70 times a week and becoming the most requested video in the channel’s history. The same video took home the Best Dance Video award at the following year’s VMAs in the US.

As for the single itself? After debuting at number three, it spent seven weeks at number one on the UK singles chart. After being officially released to US audiences in January of ‘97 the song debuted on the Hot 100 in the number eleven spot, the highest debut on the chart for a British act at the time. It’d reach the top position five weeks later, and would stay there for four weeks. To this day the song remains the biggest selling single by a female group in both countries. In 2023, the song reached one billion streams on Spotify.

From there, the rest was Girl Power history. The group would go on to score five more consecutive number one singles in the UK, filling the airwaves with dance-pop anthems filled with female empowerment. They’re considered to have played a major role of the Cool Britannia phenomenon of the late 90s, becoming major cultural exports of the country. The phenomenon of their cultural dominance was grand, however also brief. Their initial run as a five-piece group would be cut short in May of ‘98 when Geri Halliwell abruptly announced her exit from the Spice Girls in the middle of the group’s Spiceworld Tour. The four remaining girls would go on to release one more album before embarking on a seven-year long hiatus. Aside from a few one-off singles, the group hasn’t released any new music in 25 years.

To this day, the Spice Girls remain the best-selling girl group of all time worldwide.

QUESTIONS

1. Do you remember hearing the song/watching the music video for the first time? If so, did you suspect that it would become the monster hit that it was?

2. As a standalone song, how would you say it ranks among the other pop of the 90s? Furthermore, do you think the song holds up well today?

3. Do you think the group would’ve found the same success had they listened to record executives and chose a different single to debut with?