I wanna really, really, really wanna zigazig ah
Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts
29/12/96 : Spice - Spice Girls
The Spice Girls, you say? Never heard of 'em!
Unfortunately, this is not true.
This is the album where it all started - and it opens with "Wannabe", which started it all off. And it's a lot of fun, isn't it? With a positive message as well - what's not to love? I actually don't mind it, but I have to admit it I assumed that would pretty much be it for them and they'd sink without trace when their second single failed. It's safe to say this wasn't quite how things turned out. The rest of the singles are fine - I actually like "Who Do You Think You Are?" the best and find myself singing along unironically. Across the whole album, it's funny how an awful lot of the stuff that you can identify as "singing" (it's rarer than you think) is obviously done by Sporty, and remarkably little of any of it (singing or otherwise) can be attributed to Posh (she doesn't even get a verse on "Wannabe").
However, the various bits where they "rap" do not work well and feel extremely dated, but I imagine there are a lot of women of a certain age who can drop it all without taking a breath. "Naked" is a very bad track with Geri trying her sultry act on - which doesn't particularly work, but works considerably better than Emma trying to pretend she's such a bitch. Also worthy of a mention is "Last Time Lover" which is just a horrible track, made up of all sorts of musical odds and ends - none of which work in the slightest. I "enjoyed" the album as a whole though as an exercise in musical nostalgia - and you forget exactly how massive they were at the time. I certainly resisted their appeal at the time, but I had to check whether Mrs Reed ever owned this - and it was a firm "No" so we start off with 0/1.
We're at #1 in the charts on their eighth week of a 66 week run, of which they spent 15 weeks at the top, including an eight week run. They also had a 40 week run in the top 5 - this really was a MASSIVE album. It's been back in the charts a further ten times over the years giving them another 30 weeks, including a somewhat bizarre single week at #5 in 2021 - I assume some kind of re-release shenanigans were responsible. Back in 1996, given that it's Xmas/New Year, new releases are very thin on the ground - nothing new in the top 100 at all.
Wikipedia has LOADS on this cultural behemoth (324 milliPeppers!). I did try reading some of it, but I have to admit I just didn't care enough to bother. The critics were imho pretty kind to it, but in the end it didn't really matter what they thought because it just took over the world - #1 in 17 countries, 23 million copies sold globally, the best selling album in the US in 1987 and the third best selling album of the 90s in the UK. So, why did it only get to #10 in Hungary? Them Magyars, eh?
"Customers also listened to" Britney, TLC, Christine Aguilera and, errr, Right Said Fred. It's easy to be sniffy about them Spice Girls, but they worked bloody hard to get there and stay there - and they did produce some well-crafted pop in the process. But, upon listening to this (and if you feel the need), I personally think you're much safer sticking with their "best of" - the highs here are pretty high, but the lows are really quite low indeed (and age hasn't treated them kindly). But it was an interesting listen and put me back in 1996 nicely.
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