Spice Girls

In defence of the Spice Girls

I am a Spice Girl! I want to be Old Spice! I want to dance around with a pair of old knickers on my head, shout and swear and get drunk and generally act badly in public! (Actually, I do but no-one will pay me for it). I want to frighten tired old rock journalists who got so addled by soul-searching, sensitive artists they forgot what "Pop music" was all about. When the Slits acted up everyone thought they were cool, so why not Scary or Ginger?

We shouldn't be surprised that the Spice Girls blew up so big. They rose like post-feminist giants, stomping on all-comers with their great platform boots. After years of Pearl Jam clones and traumatized girls with acoustic guitars the world needed some light entertainment. Spice Girls' music is fun. It's upbeat and positive, it's about Girl Power. They sing about the value of female friendships and boyfriends better accept it:

"if you wanna be my lover, you better get with my friends"

They are the natural antidote to the hippy, half-dead Ophelias featured at Lilith Fair. Hooray for the Spice Girls, for they are copers!

Why are they so successful you all wonder? After all, the Spice Girls are a global, cross-cultural phenomenon. They're hugely successful in nearly every country in the world. They sell a trillion zillion records and you probably don't own any of them... (I have two). Were they really manufactured?...let's be realistic. No record company executive is capable of being half that clever; if they were, there would be armies of Spice Clones charging up the charts. No-one would have picked those particular girls. They're too chubby, too loud, too crazy, too sexy, too plain, too everygirl. I believe they are their own creation ...they are themselves.

The Spice Girls' concept is pretty simple which may explain its popularity. There used to be five of them: they all have a different look and personality... therefore, one of them is bound to be your type. You can choose to like just one, but you may change your mind later; you can like more than one, or you can be really greedy and like them all! Who's your favorite? Sporty, Ginger (still a valid choice), Baby, Scary or Posh?...I like Scary.

Critics moan about their inability to play musical instruments. "They can't sing, they can't dance, they don't write their own songs". In other words they don't think they are very good. But Mick Jones couldn't sing very well, lots of people can't dance and they do write their own songs (at very least, the melodies and lyrics). If "Wannabe" and "Spice Up Your Life" weren't great pop songs, they could never sell out Madison Square Garden in twelve minutes; but last summer those songs blasted out of the radio like fresh air and the ineptitude was part of the charm. The Spice Girls may not sing like En Vogue or dance like TLC, but add up all the parts and it's a wonderful package. So why are they viewed as inferior to their peers? Is it because they don't take the whole thing seriously enough? Acknowledging it could all end tomorrow, they look on with amusement as they enjoy greater longevity than most of the acts launched in the last few years. The second album did not die. Spice Girls are not one-hit wonders.

Anyone can be a Spice Girl (or Spice Boy for that matter) and everyone is welcome in Spice World. It's a color-free zone where little home-girls hang out with suburban WASP's. The group and fans are multi-racial and it's no big deal. Fuck Paula Cole with her "I am black" routine - how come no-one calls her on that?...and that tambourine thing she does with her feet??!! God help us all - that is the crap that should carry a parental advisory sticker! But in the Grammy stakes it was Paula Cole: 9, Spice Girls: 0 (unprecedented for such a huge-selling group not to be nominated). Strangely, despite their untiring efforts and financial contributions to its cause, even the industry is down on the Spice Girls.

However, there are signs that the tide is turning. Madonna recently admitted she used to be a Spice Girl - a little denial going on there because she still is one! Avant-gardist Jim O' Rourke apparently likes Baby Spice best. How many other furtive Spice Groupies are out there?...someone's buying those records. Frankly I'm tired of arguing the point, more of us need to come out of the closet and join the fray. We owe it to ourselves to be loud and proud and we mustn't be afraid to let the world hear us shouting, "Three cheers for the Spice Girls! Long live the Queens of Pop!"