The Light That Burns Twice As Bright Burns Half As Long...
Apparently it's 10 years this week since the Spice Girls got their first number one. 10 years?!! I feel old!!!
I remember the first time I heard Wannabe. I was 18, and never previously into pop music, always preferring rock. Wannabe was so totally different I think I (like a lot of people) didn't know what to make of it. It was the perfect debut single. It was instant. It explained who they were. It was quirky. It had 3 killer hooks. And it did all this in under 3 minutes. It was also a love or hate song - and hate gets just as many headlines as love.
I was a massive Spice Girls fan. I loved the story of how they got together, sacked their first manager, then wrote their songs and formulated their act before finding a manager and a record label. They may have originated through an advert, but they still did things the old fashioned way, gigging in the US to build a fan base there. I loved the fact that they were totally different from anything that had gone on before. I loved the concept of Girl Power, despite the fact that the phrase wasn't new (it was the title of a Shampoo song a few years earlier) or the concept (Madonna had been selling the idea that women can be feminine and powerful at the same time for years).
People talk about what an explosion it was, but I don't think I realised it. Us big fans were almost as much in the bubble as anyone else, collecting stuff, chatting over the Internet. It was my first foray into an online community - I was on an e-mail list that contributed around 100 e-mails a day to my inbox! I often wonder what happened to many of the people I chatted with there for 3 years...
I find it quite sad that some of the Spice Girls don't want to get together, even for a one-off show. I truly believed in them. I stood up for them and continue to defend them in the face of those who dismiss them. But sometimes I wonder if they really believed it. Have I just been taken for a fool? Was it just a marketing scam? I've no delusions about the marketing involved, but at the centre of it all were 5 girls who seemed to really believe in what they were doing, the music they were making and the messages they were sending out. It wasn't just fluff, it had a real heart - I think that's why it worked so well. Or maybe they were better actresses than SpiceWorld - The Movie belied...
They used the quote above from Bladerunner as part of their World Tour show. I suspect they knew that their time in the spotlight was never going to last forever. As for friendship never ends - well I can imagine that when you spend that much time in someone else's company you're going to need a break eventually. It's always good to see that they are friends again, but I'm not holding out too much hope for a reunion gig. If Live 8 and the 10th anniversary can't do it, I'm not sure what will. But if it does, I'll be first in line for tickets!
2 comments:
If you've ever seen the movie Fever Pitch, you'll relate to the idea that fans are the only ones who think celebrities are in it for fun. It is a business to them. If their thing was about "friendship" then hanging out together all the time would be great. I've been hanging out with my wife for ten years, and I hope to hang out with her for another sixty or one hundred. We're darn near inseparable in the summer (we both work seasonal jobs). It is likely that the Spice Girls were never friends, and if they did care about fans then they would do that show.
Treasure the memory, enjoy the dream, but acknowledge not the reality.
If you've been in your wife's company for every waking hour in those ten years, then it's comparable. Most people have a few hours apart for work. The Spice Girls only ever had sleep, certainly in those early years.
The fact that they have now built their bridges and are good friends again suggest to me that there was more than a grain of truth to them.
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