"Wannabe" is a song by the British pop group Spice Girls,
released as their debut single, and widely considered to be
their signature song. It was written by the Spice Girls,
Richard Stannard and Matt Rowe for the group's debut album
Spice(see 1996 in music).
"Wannabe" is an uptempo pop song with a touch of white
hip-hop, rap and dance music; the lyrics are a demand of
sincerity, with a feminist message of choosing friends over
relationships, the song became an iconic symbolism of female
empowerment and the most emblematic song of the Girl Power
philosophy. Despite receiving mixed reviews from music critics,
the song won Best British-Written Single at the 1997 Ivor
Novello Awards and Best Single at the 1997 BRIT Awards.
The single was released in July 1996 in the United Kingdom,
reaching the top of the UK Singles Chart for seven consecutive
weeks, and received a platinum certification by the British
Phonographic Industry (BPI). In January 1997 the song was
released in the United States topping the Hot 100 for four
weeks, becoming their only number-one single in that
country.
By the end of 1996 it had topped the charts in 22 nations,
and by March 1997 this number had climbed to 31, before it
became the best-selling single by a female group in the history
of recorded sound, selling over six million copies
worldwide.
"Wannabe" was co-written by the Spice Girls, Richard
Stannard and Matt Rowe. Stannard and Rowe also co-produced the
track. The song's central emphasis is the union and solidarity
of friends, an implicit challenge to any "wannabe" lovers.
Stannard and Rowe began writing with the group in January
1995, and the first song they wrote was called "Feed Your
Love", a slow, soulful song which was eventually recorded and
mastered for the
Spicealbum – but not used because it was considered "too
rude" for their target audience. Having completed that one, the
girls wanted to write something a bit more uptempo.
Rowe set up a drum loop on his MPC 3000 drum machine, which
was quite fast but also had a strutting quality about it. For
Stannard the rhythm brought to mind the spirit of John Travolta
and Olivia Newton-John performing "You're the One That I Want"
in
Grease. Then the girls added their own contributions
into the mix.
Rowe commented: "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 all these sections of chanting,
rapping and singing. And then we just sewed it together."
Halliwell wrote in the group's first official book
Girl Power!that Melanie Brown and Emma Bunton came up
with the song's chorus, and was in that moment that they
realised they had something good.
The group and the producers were working all week on the
song, but only half was completed by Friday night, so it was
decided to finish it the following week. According to Victoria
Beckham's autobiography
Learning to Fly, that week she traveled to Torquay to
attend the wedding of a friend of her then boyfriend Mark Wood;
she communicated with the other girls with a cellphone she and
Halliwell recently bought; even though Beckham wrote: "It's not
the same thing by phone". The song was finished and by the time
they were going to record it, every solo part was already
divided between the four girls. Beckham only participates
during the chorus of the song.
While other tracks on the album each required two or three
weeks of studio time, the group was able to record "Wannabe" in
under an hour – mainly because they had already written parts
of the song beforehand.
The song won International Hit Of The Year and Best
British-Written Single at the 1997 Ivor Novello Awards
presented by the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters.
It also won Best Single at the 1997 BRIT Awards.
"Wannabe" received mixed reviews from music critics.
Allmusic's reviewer Stephen Thomas Erlewine said "none of the
Girls have great voices, but they do exude personality and
charisma, which is what drives bouncy dance-pop like 'Wannabe',
with its ridiculous 'zig-a-zig-ahhh' hook, into pure pop guilty
pleasure".
Christina Kelly from
Rolling Stonecalled the Spice Girls "another bubblegum
pop group that offer a watered-down mix of hip-hop and cheesy
pop balladry, brought together by a manager with a marketing
concept", adding "Spice Girls' idea of power seems to be
flaunting that they are all that, but the lyrics make Alanis
Morissette's sound like Patti Smith's. A few nuggets: 'If you
want to get with me, better make it fast...' Despite their
pro-woman posing, the Girls don't get bogged down by anything
deeper than mugging for promo shots and giving out tips on
getting boys in bed." In a poll conducted by the magazine to
identify the ten most annoying songs, this song was ranked
eighth.
Matt Diehl from
Entertainment Weeklyalso noticed the combination of
genres describing "Wannabe" as "more a compendium of music
styles (from ABBA-style choruses to unconvincing hip hop) than
an actual song", but added that "there's something endearing
about this goofily formulaic Euro pop".
Sputnikmusic in a review for
Spicecalled the lyrics "dire" and wondered "how could
parents feed this to their 10-year-olds? The album's lyrics are
so heavily laden with smut, I'm surprised they even let their
kids have the album" and then used "Wannabe" as an example
saying "The gist of the song is basically get your act together
and treat me right, or there's no show. Not to mention the
famous zig-a-zig-ha... try replacing it with the word 'sex' in
the lyrics and see how it all suddenly makes perfect sense",
adding "this track is built around an infectious keyboard riff,
and so profoundly annoying, you'll want to rip your toenails
off just so it will stop. But it's also really catchy, which
makes you hate it even more." Another review from
"Sputnikmusic" said "The lively bubble-gum pop of the Spice
Girls embodied a gender not willing to lie down, and their
debut single "Wannabe" acted as a proverbial kick in the pants
for male chauvinists worldwide."
In
The Simpsonsepisode "Maximum Homerdrive", Homer plays
the song in the truck and refers to it as the ultimate
truck-driver song. Homer sings the song in the episode
"Fraudcast News" when the power was cut off by Mr. Burns and he
uses the batteries "that have to power everything" in their
house to play this song on the radio. "Ralph Wiggum also sang
the opening lines of the song in the season 20 episode How The
Test Was Done. The song was also used in
The O.C.episode "The Case of the Franks", in the episode
"Stand Up And Holler" of the CBS crime drama
Cold Case, and in the finale of the fourth season of
One Tree Hill. In 2007, online voters rated "Wannabe"
#33 on VH1's list of "The 100 Greatest Songs of the '90s".
The music video for "Wannabe" was shot in April 1996,
directed by Jhoan Camitz and produced by Mod Films. The clip
appears to be one continuous take (although there were two
barely noticeable edits) of the girls creating mischief at the
Midland Grand Hotel in St. Pancras. Among their antics is
Melanie Chisholm's back handspring on one of the tables. In
their first book
Girl Power!, Geri Halliwell wrote about the video: "I
remember the chaos and the cold. It wasn't very controlled - we
didn't want it to be. We wanted the camera to capture the
madness of "Spice".
When the music video was released and first appeared on UK
cable network The Box, it was selected so frequently that it
reached the top of the viewers' chart within 2 hours of going
on air, staying at number-one for 13 weeks, being aired up to
70 times a week at its peak and becoming the most requested
track in the channel's history.
A promotional video for the song which includes clips from
the making of the video was issued by Virgin Records before the
official video was released. In the promo the group is seen
singing "Wannabe" at the recording studio; they described the
origin of "Spice" and their first impressions of each other,
and they also sang the chorus of "One of These Girls", which
would eventually was released as the B-side for their third
single, "2 Become 1". The video won Best Dance Video at the
1997 MTV Video Music Awards. It was also ranked at number
forty-one in the Top 100 Pop Videos of all time by Channel
4.
"Wannabe" was released in the United Kingdom on 8 July 1996,
debuting on the UK Singles Chart at number three, before
climbing to number one the next week, knocking Gary Barlow's
"Forever Love". It then spent seven weeks at the top, the
second longest stay by an all female group, only behind
Shakespear's Sister's "Stay", which spent eight weeks at number
one in 1992. With eighteen weeks in the Top 40, and twenty-six
weeks in the Top 75, it sold over 1,269,841 million copies,
becoming the second biggest-selling single of the year, the
twelfth best-selling single of the decade, the fortieth
best-selling single ever in the UK, and is still the biggest
selling single by a female group in the UK.
In Europe the single reached the number-one position in
almost every country it charted. On 14 September 1996 the song
reached the top of the Eurochart Hot 100 for nine consecutive
weeks, before it was replaced by the group's second single,
"Say You'll Be There". In Ireland the song reached the
number-one position the first week of August, staying at the
top for four consecutive weeks.
In France the song debuted on 27 July 1996 at number
forty-seven, reached the top position ten weeks later for three
consecutive weeks, remained twenty-four weeks on the chart, and
received a diamond certification by the Syndicat National de
l'Edition Phonographique in June 1997. In Germany the song
debuted on 12 August 1996 at the sixty-one position, reaching
the top of the chart five weeks later for four consecutive
weeks, remaining twenty-two weeks in the chart, and received a
gold certification by the International Federation of the
Phonographic Industry (IFPI).
In the Netherlands the song reached the top position of the
Dutch Top 40 for two weeks, and received a gold certification
by the NVPI. In Switzerland the single debuted on 25 August
1996 at number five, reaching the top of the chart for five
consecutive weeks. It stayed twenty-four weeks on the chart,
and received a gold certification by the IFPI.
In Finland the song reached the top for one week, and stayed
thirteen weeks in total. In Norway it debuted at number eight,
reaching the top of the chart for five consecutive weeks, and
was certified platinum by the IFPI. In Sweden the single
debuted on 2 August 1996 at number twenty-eight, reached the
top of the chart for three weeks, and received a gold
certification by the Swedish Recording Industry Association
(GLF). "Wannabe" also reached the first position in both of the
Belgian charts (Flanders and Wallonia), and the Spanish airplay
chart; it also reached the second position in Austria, and the
third position in Italy.
"Wannabe" debuted at number forty-five in Australia,
reaching the top of the ARIA Singles Chart for eleven weeks,
and ending at number-five at the 1996 year-end chart. In New
Zealand the single debuted on 1 September 1996 at number
thirty-eight, reaching the first position ten weeks later,
staying there for only one week, and thirty-two weeks in
total.
In Canada, "Wannabe" debuted at the eighty-nine position of
the singles chart, reaching its peak at number nine in its
eighth week, remaining on the chart for sixteen weeks, and
ending at the sixty-eight position on the year-end chart. The
song was more successful on the Dance Chart, where it reached
the top for three weeks, and ended at the top of the year-end
chart.
In the United States, the song debuted on 25 January 1997 at
number eleven. At the time was the highest-ever debut by a
British act in the U.S. beating the record previously held by
The Beatles for "I Want to Hold Your Hand" at number twelve. It
reached the top of the chart in its fifth week, knocking Toni
Braxton's "Un-Break My Heart", staying there for four
consecutive weeks simultaneously with the group's fourth single
("Mama"/"Who Do You Think You Are") being at number one in the
UK. It was a successful number-one single, reaching the sixth
position of the Hot 100 Airplay chart, and topping the Hot 100
Singles Sales chart for four consecutive weeks. The song was a
crossover success, reaching the top of the Rhythmic Top 40, and
hitting the top twenty of the Hot Dance Club Play chart, and
the top ten in the Hot Dance Singles Sales chart. It ended at
number ten at the 1997 year-end chart.
The Spice Girls were in Japan when "Wannabe" went to number
one in the United Kingdom. The group made their first
appearance on
Top Of The Popsby satellite link from Tokyo, where they
used a local temple as a backdrop for their mimed
performance.
The song was included in the set list for both the
Spiceworld Tour and the Christmas in Spiceworld tour. It was
also performed several times on television, including
Top Of The Pops,
Live with Regis and Kathie Lee,
Live & Kicking,
Saturday Night Live,
The Oprah Winfrey Show, the
Bravo Supershow, and many television programs across
Europe. "Wannabe" was also performed in many awards ceremonies
like the 1996 Smash Hits! Awards, the 1996 Irish Music Awards,
and the 1997 Channel V Music Awards held in India.
"Wannabe" was usually introduced by Melanie Brown. During
the bridge ("here's the story...") Melanie Chisholm did some
acrobatics as in the video, always earning a big ovation from
the public. After Halliwell left the band, her parts were
replaced by Chisholm, Beckham, and Bunton this way:
Lift ("tell me what you want..."): Chisholm, Verses ("get
your act ... if you really..."): Beckham, Bridge ("easy V
doesn't..."): Bunton
The line "easy V doesn't come for free, she's a real lady"
was altered for their Spiceworld Tour (for some shows) to "easy
V doesn't come for free, 'cause she's havin' a baby!" For The
Return of the Spice Girls tour, Halliwell sometimes replaced
"she's a real lady!" with "she's Victoria Beckham!", "'cause
she's Victoria" or "she's Miss Beckham!"
These are the formats and track listings of major single
releases of "Wannabe".
Published by Windswept Pacific Music Ltd/PolyGram Music
Publishing Ltd