Spiceworld (1997) - Spice Girls

"Don't you know it's going too fast? Racing so hard, you know it won't last."

The song Stop, from which this line was taken, is notoriously a thinly veiled dressing down of the Spice Girls' manager Simon Fuller, protesting that he's working them too hard, and that eventually something would have to give. By the time Stop was released as a single in 1998, something had given - they'd sacked him. But only 3 months later, something else would give; Geri Halliwell would leave the band mid-world tour, and change the trajectory of the Spice Girls forever. Now, I'm here to critique music, not act as a biographer, so you know I wouldn't be relaying any of this if it wasn't directly relevant to the sound, vibe and overall manifestation of the Spice Girl's second album, Spiceworld.

And yes, I'm following the Spice Girls canon - here comes round 2.

Remember how, in my review of Spice, I talked about the inevitability of its success? How the girls were all so hungry, so adamant and so ready to get out there and do their thing that there was no option but for it to blast the roof off? Spiceworld picks up where Spice left off, with absolutely no gap in the proceedings to digest or reflect. Spice's success directly led to the necessity for Spiceworld; the world wanted more, and they wanted it fast. So the girls did what they had to in order to sustain their momentum. The album was announced before any new songs had even been written, amongst talk of a movie, and the creation of the two entities eventually end up coinciding, songs being written and recorded on-set. I don't believe anything was even demoed - there couldn't have been time. And the result is a selection of bright, tutti-fruity pop songs that very much pertain to the essence of the Spice Girls, and deliver the message the world had come to expect them to deliver.

This is not to say that genuine sentiments don't exist within - in fact, I would argue that the surmounting pressure experienced by the girls, Geri in particular, sparked some of their best lyrics and most cerebral, relevant song topics (see Stop and Too Much). The album also featured a more diverse range of inspiration, with a latin pop influence infiltrating on a couple of songs, as well as Motown, doo-wop and jazz. But these elements don't really diversify what the Spice Girls put out with Spiceworld - they combine into a kind of rainbowtastic showcase of the media's five favourite everyday lasses, never really leaning into the edge that caught the public's eye in the first place. The music isn't bad - there are some excellent, catchy, very on-brand moments of brilliance. But it's clear that the girls were not granted much opportunity to dig deep, and the slightly-too-new, plastic sheen that is omnipresent throughout Spiceworld demonstrates this, as does its slightly colour-by-numbers array of songs.

1. Never Give Up On The Good Times
2. Saturday Night Divas
3. Too Much
4. Stop
5. Move Over
6. Viva Forever
7. Denying
8. Do It
9. Spice Up Your Life
10. The Lady Is A Vamp

Total Points: 30/50
Average Score: 6.0

But, as the upper-mid score indicates, that does not make this a bad album, by any means. It's just not as gritty and daring as the moments I enjoy most within Spice. Thematically, we're in largely familiar territory, plus the girls are well settled into their vocal ability and only more deft at peppering their personalities throughout, even when the material doesn't invite much scope for character definition. It's the Spice Girls themselves that hold up this album - their real voices, girl-next-door personas and genuine input - that make Spiceworld decent; if autotune had been brought forward for 1997 and applied to these songs, it would render them utterly generic.

Take Stop for example. The lines are divvied out in their usual equitable way (a little bit more to Mel C because she can handle it, a bit less to Geri who lacks control and Victoria whose voice is a little hollow), and the harmonies are as even on the chorus and complex on the bridge as the corresponding segments are on Who Do You Think You Are - but the sound is notably tamer. It's only really because Mel B gets to rasp out the bridge and Mel C can do some belting that it's distinct as a Spice Girls song, and not any one of the numerous other 90's-does-60's pop offerings of the era. Similarly, Viva Forever is beautifully performed, but there's no chutzpah within its instrumentation or even its construction. In reality, it's the subtle aloofness in the vocals and the unique timbre of layered harmonies that allow it's simplicity to shine.

But, even with heaps of personality in the performance, the weaker songs tend to be so because their content is too directly interpreted. This is why Do It doesn't quite 'do it' for me; it's so literal. Had more time been taken to flesh out the essence of the song and come up with a way of conveying it that wasn't so lacking in creativity, it would have been much stronger. Just because it acts strong doesn't mean it is - sure, it has a bold, tough kind of sound that exudes confidence and empowerment, but this is a veneer of bravado for a concept that's only been explored skin deep. In fact, it is sonically very similar to the Spice era (but only widely released as a Spiceworld25 extra track) Step To Me, but Do It is comparably sterile in terms of potency and manifestation. Its message, though valid as a message, has merely been superficially churned out, and is recited almost mindlessly, from start to finish, with no adjustment for artistry. It's just straight-up in-your-face jargon, the likes of which the girls could have spewed out on the fly in any radio interview. It illustrates the overarching insufficiency with Spiceworld; that over-saturation leads to stagnation. You get out what you put in, and when you're running on fumes, you end up with a feeble output. If they'd had a decent gap in their schedule, or at least a few days a week to touch down and process things, they'd have been able to get their teeth stuck into the themes they were interested in, and write a whole bunch more songs, and tracks like Do It would never have made the cut.

Spice Up Your Life represents another case of riding the hype-train and delivering what is expected, without really generating anything majorly provoking. Its chord structure becomes tiresome before the midway point, and the sung-in-unison verses and general approach of shouting out catchphrases just don't scratch any itches. Move Over, though just as filled with buzzwords, at least manages some moments of sumptuous and unusually built harmony, with Emma taking the low 'yeah, yeah, yeah's of the chorus to beguiling effect when you notice it. Additionally, it's shorter, snappier and less of a cliche than Spice Up Your Life, with a broader range of influences coming together to produce a more textured listening experience. The same can't be said for Lady Is A Vamp, however, whose jumble of lyrical references are slapped over a track that sounds like a reject from Chicago. The resulting song, though not remotely lacking in vibrance and fun, feels more like a parody than an original song, and does nothing to bring together the rest of the album.

Gentler tracks, like Too Much and Saturday Night Divas, contain a plethora of sultry and stirring elements that award them, as well as the album at length, an ample boost in quality and intrigue. With Too Much, the incremental chord pattern and the luxe string arrangement open up a deep, immersive headspace for the listener to swim in, and it manages the tough task of sounding unlike anything else in the mainstream at the time. Saturday Night Divas is the coolest track on the record, with chilled out, nonchalant verses and bewitchingly limber bridges, where Emma rises to the challenge of swinging her voice around betwixt highs and lows, and pulls it off breezily. The repetitive nature of the refrains are, unfortunately, a bit of a let down on an otherwise sleek and grown-up track that feels perhaps like the most natural successor to the material on their first album; still savvy and chic, but a pronounced evolution nonetheless.

It's Never Give Up On The Good Times which is the true highlight of this record - rather than being comparable and therefore potentially inferior to something on Spice, it goes for something Spice didn't attempt in any way. Third-person story telling, a polished disco beat, an increasingly progressive structure as it advances; it takes the fibre of the Spice Girls and threads them through the eye of an altogether new needle - so we can still perceive their zest and velocity, but the result is an entirely new experience. Perhaps for the same reason, the B-sides of the Spiceworld era are also strong; Outer Space Girls and Walk Of Life are somewhat novelty in nature (probably why they were never considered for the album itself, which tends to eschew anything more gimmicky than the schtick of the girls themselves), but it's their novelty that results in their triumph. It's impossible to come across as a pastiche of your own stereotype if you've switched proceedings up for a kitschy, sci-fi themed song instead of your usual Girl Power stuff. Furthermore, rhapsodising on a subject that's not 'serious' or 'topical' means that it doesn't matter if the lyrics don't get a chance to cut so deep. Even Spice Invaders, the lowest of low-effort filler tracks, has a candid authenticity and overt lack of direction that everything present on Spiceworld was too self-conscious to encroach upon. When the pressure was off, when they weren't expected to be what the world expected them to be, the magic could surface, even through the rigamarole of overwork and constant media noise.

Spice, no matter how you look at it, was always going to be a tough act to follow, and I genuinely believe that Spiceworld fulfilled this task as well as it could given that the Spice Girls were global superstars at this point, so in demand by different channels, radio stations and sponsors that they could barely keep track of everywhere they'd been in any given week. It is by no means perfect, and I'm very much aware that in pointing out its varying flaws, I've probably been hypercritical to make a point of what they are. But anything that feels disproportionately incendiary on my part should be compared to the apex reached with Spice. Spiceworld is a great album, but Spice was subjectively better, and that comparison is always going to be a consideration when looking at this band through the necessary worldwide public lens.

In a way, I'm surprised I've found so much to say about it, because it really did feel like it just happened: like it was almost auto-piloted into existence and that this kind of analysis is kind of moot. Why spend time breaking down a project that wasn't thought-through so reverently from its conception? And there it is again - insulting a perfectly fine album by overdoing the analysis!

The bottom line is this: it is what it is, and what it is did every part of the job it set out to do. It doesn't do to pick it apart any more, it's just a fun pop album by the biggest superstars of its time. And that's all it needs to be.

Spice (1996) - Spice Girls

I've had this review on the back-burner for several years, but have been putting it off and off and off. Given that one of my main objectives with the curation of this blog was to systematically find my favourite album of all time, I always felt it would be a bit of an anticlimax to write up what almost definitely takes that accolade after only reviewing 20 or so records prior. Because, as will soon become apparent, the Spice Girls' debut album Spice comes very close to ticking all the boxes for me, and will almost definitely be my highest scoring album of all time.

So why now? Well, we're on the cusp of unearthing a small bounty of previously unreleased demos, with the release of their 30th anniversary singles collection in November. The first of four, Do You Think About Me, is already streaming (legitimately, rather than the identical bootleg I've already heard countless times) and I feel the need, as an enthusiast, to get this review published before any more thoughts can take root. It's a habit of mine to hypothesise about the various what-ifs that an album's b-sides and demos pose to me, and I need to get my current mind-map out in the open before the potential of any more interference coming along. That said, I'm personally hoping for official releases of demos I already know about - fingers crossed for W.O.M.A.N, Don't Break My Heart and the earlier pop version of Right Back At Ya* - having these to stream would literally make my year!

And, y'know... it's my blog, for me, and I'll do what I want. Who cares if I peak too soon?

*update: it's not. It's demos of 2 Become 1, Love Thing and Mama. Like the real versions of these aren't already widespread. Why can't they give us what we want, what we really, really want?

If you're looking for a full socio-political breakdown of how the Spice Girls played a pivotal role in the Cool Britannia movement and all that bollocks, you can look elsewhere (don't worry, you'll find it very easily). While there are certainly contextual elements that made the group so iconic, a word that I'm not using in a remotely hyperbolic way, these largely do not concern me. My concern is the music, and if anything influences that (it does) then I'll dig a little deeper. But it's important to note that the Spice Girls, as a novelty, as a brand, as a figurehead, never really appealed to me personally. The whole shebang, it's all ancillary to the music. It played a huge part in what helped form the music, but ultimately I never cared about their outspokenness or Geri's Union Jack dress - I cared about their craft, which is often the least considered facet of the Spice Girls' legacy.

Spice is a very important album to me, and it's one that has surprisingly stood the test of time. Year after year I've come back to it, and I've never ceased to enjoy it. In fact, I've only grown to love it more as I've gotten older. Initially, as an actual child who was there to witness the Spice phenomenon, only the lively, upbeat hits caught my attention. Then, giving the albums a whirl, the similar sounding non-singles were all that warranted my time. Even disparaging certain tracks as novelties, throughout the years where I'd fixated on more decorous artists or more underground offerings, I still appreciated the textures and the mechanics of their vocal arrangements and the down-to-earth, instant get-ability of everything. Now, I've grown to love the ballads, the quirkier moments, and the rawness of everything the girls brought to their writing and recording. And that? That's the full package. That is me basically saying I enjoy every part of this album.

Now for the fun part:

1. Love Thing
2. Say You'll Be There
3. Who Do You Think You Are?
4. Mama
5. Wannabe
6. Somethin' Kinda Funny
7. If U Can't Dance
8. 2 Become 1
9. Last Time Lover
10. Naked

Total Points 37/50
Average Score: 7.4

There are no bad songs on this album. The weakest point would be Naked, which suffers from being a little too vague in its lyrics, with an ambience that lacks the sophisticated, sultry refinement of recently surfaced gem Feed Your Love. This understated ode to blowjobs (yes, blowjobs), which featured for the first time in 2021 on Spice 25, the album's quarter-century celebratory expanded release, was surely positioned as the penultimate track - where Naked ended up - before an inevitable last-minute switch being made after the Spice Girls found such extreme commercial success with, in particular, a preteen female audience. But Naked is not bad. It just lacks the vivaciousness and straightforwardness that the girls are known for, and the street-smart confidence that saturates the rest of the album.

Take Last Time Lover, for example: vulnerability disguised in the girls' trademark directness and honesty, and simultaneously savvy and hyperaware.  It's definitely one of the clunkier moments of the album, the melodic refrain of the song's title as basic as they come, and the soundscape crossing the line from bombastic to ham-fisted. But the song, like most of the album's contents, oozes with that je ne sais quoi that we've come to instantly connect with their trademark 'Girl Power'. This unmistakable but barely definable quality takes an unremarkable song with throwaway lyrics and gives it a time and a place, and basically saves it.

But what does it do for songs that don't need saving, due to already being lyrically tight, dextrously produced and more catchy than a cold? Say You'll Be There and Love Thing comprise half of the four songs written with Eliot Kennedy, in the week immediately following the girls chosen departure from the management company that had first scouted and formed them*. This confluence of time, circumstance and people, all the layers of context involved, was destined to bear the juiciest of fruits, and these two tracks are undeniably the best on the record. Slick, effervescent verses full of personality and declarations of independence, thumping basslines alongside raspy, challenging instrumentation choices and uncompromising beats, and some of the best and most memorable ad-libbing from the vocal powerhouse that is Mel C - these songs are confident, confrontational, uninhibited and cool. Everything that defines a Spice Girl.

*The other two would later surface as Pepsi tie-in single Step To Me and the much-bootlegged Strong Enough, all four tracks, incidentally, of a similar style and caliber that would make for an excellent EP release

I went through a brief phase of dismissing Wannabe as cheesy. Which it absolutely is, but I've come to realise that cheese and refinement are not mutually exclusive qualities. Wannabe is so pure in set-up, so uncomplicated by trying to be anything aside from what it is (ironically, given the track's title) that there is an understated elegance beneath the veneer of its brash, fun charisma and bubblegum chorus. Those low piano steps underneath the shouted question and answer segments, the sweetest of line deliveries from Emma on the chorus (really living up to her nickname) and the sheer effortlessness with which the whole thing is performed - it is masterful. It is a living lesson in how to write pop music, whilst at the same time being completely inimitable.

Quieter moments like 2 Become 1 and Mama are structurally the most stable parts of the record, acting as pillars that ground and support the rest of the songs' frenetic vigour. The various ways the girls 'divide and conquer' the vocal work really come to life in these songs, often teaming up in pairs to alternate lines of harmonies, creates such unique layers,  the likes of which just didn't happen (and still seldom do) in mainstream music. The quirkiness of 2 Become 1's chord pattern is its hidden superpower, while Mama's is that the longer it continues, the more vocals layer up like a round and you're swimming in a rich sound bath of pure, unaffected voice. The more tender subject matter of these tracks is perhaps the corniest the girls get, but their candidness carries through and they ultimately just come off as very real.

Perhaps the weirdest track on the album is If U Can't Dance, which is a story of hate turned to love for me. Sampling the droning bass motif from Digital Underground's The Humpty Dance, it first struck me as a massive WTF moment at the end of the album, a baffling note to finish on. But the essence of the girls is peppered throughout, Mel B's chilled, conversational rap over a slow background police siren, the ethnic-sounding overblown flute in the chorus, the message of assertion through a simple proclamation of standards on a night out - it's all so them. The only thing missing is Victoria's slightly flat but very catchy chant throughout the chorus, present in the demo version but inexplicable vetoed from the final article. This, as well as the slightly shifted repetition of the track's title, give the song a little bit more melodic neatness and maybe would have helped acclimatise it to the nine tracks before it if they'd stayed.

B-sides and demos of the era are a little dicey, and ultimately I think that one of the main reasons I gave the album such a high score is because the right tracks made it on. Wannabe and Say You'll Be There's respective b-sides Bumper To Bumper and Take Me Home verge a little too much into r&b to fit in, sonically incongruous with the firm pop vibe of Spice, the latter also uncharacteristically weedy and underdeveloped. One Of These Girls isn't bad as such, but is self-referential in an almost pandering and awfully on-the-nose way, and would stick out like a sore thumb if it had made the cut for the album. As for demos, the aforementioned Strong Enough would easily have been the best addition, funky and exuberant, and in-keeping with Spice's strong message of empowerment. Do You Think About Me, Don't Break My Heart and Walking On Air, some of their earliest demos from when they were still known as Touch (imagine that world for a moment!), are all great tracks but sound a little too primitive in their construction and lyrics, and even with polished up vocals would probably, unfortunately, sound quite juvenile next to the likes of Say You'll Be There.

So it's a score of 7.4, and I can't see that being superseded. I actually feel I've been hypercritical in awarding only two tracks blue status, and leaving If U Can't Dance and 2 Become 1 as yellows. But even with this debatable underscoring, it'll probably beat every other album I listen to. Their follow-up album has decent moments (and better b-sides) but the name of that game with the Spiceworld was always going to be continuing the momentum built up by Spice. It wasn't set up for failure (and it certainly wasn't a failure, commercially or critically) but it lacked the specific terroir that amalgamated to make Spice such a knockout.

While some debuts are fumbled, tentative accounts of artists trying to find their sound or carve out a niche in the music industry, Spice was only ever going to be a steam train hurtling down the track, already full of momentum, vivacity funnelling right out of it. By the time Wannabe was released, the girls had been through the mill with their initial management company Heart, broke away from their restraints and used one another as catalysts for their own success. Their rise was inevitable and, by extension, so was the greatness of Spice.