Through the 1990s and early 00s, British pop music and its media did not have much space for people who looked like me. As a rare brown kid on the Isle of Wight, this lack of representation had a strange effect on how I was perceived by my peers, as well as how I perceived myself. When we pretended being the Spice Girls in the playground, for example, I was only ever allowed to be Scary Spice since I was the only kid who wasn’t white. I was a timid child, so to be told that because of my skin tone I could only be the Spice Girl no one else wanted to be was something I internalised, making myself quieter and smaller. (Two decades later, Maya Erskine immortalised her own version of this moment in an episode of sitcom Pen15.)
A couple of years after I had wistfully dreamed of being Baby Spice, my music consumption was a combination of school disco classics (S Club 7, Shaggy, B*Witched), the Bollywood songs and Indian classical my parents blasted from the car at the weekend and, perhaps most importantly, the music channels at my best mate’s place. Here I would discover MTV Base, which would lead to the creation of a shrine to three women on my bedroom wall: Michelle Williams, Kelly Rowland and Beyoncé Knowles.
It’s possible that, not understanding at aged nine that African American and British Indian were two quite different identities, they appealed to me because they were brown-skinned women – but perhaps I would have been just as drawn to any other girl group making such powerful pop songs. All I know is that they quickly became everything to me. The choppy sonics of Bug-a-Boo were like nothing I’d ever heard, and I sang along with no clue of what the lyrics meant; I was moved by the gentle vulnerability of the harmonies on Emotion, and the confidence the girls and their friends exuded on Bills, Bills, Bills. Here was a collective of Black women who were shining, fun, joyous, soft, romantic, beautiful and independent – I could not imagine not wanting to be them. In their videos, they were the main event, and I yearned to be in the bright, colour-coordinated rooms of Say My Name with them.
Through magazines like Top of the Pops and Smash Hits, each fact I discovered became an important treasure: Beyoncé wore big earrings because she didn’t like her ears – so as someone with big ears, this quickly became my default jewellery option. Michelle pretty much only wore trousers because she didn’t like having her legs out – since my relatively traditional Indian parents weren’t keen on mine being out either, I felt a sense of kinship.
I got their albums on CD, poring over liner notes, reading their “thank you” messages and zealously memorising the quasi-feminist (and sometimes less so) lyrics I barely understood. I wrote fan fiction about them for creative writing lessons a decade before I knew what fan fiction was. Beyoncé’s mother, Tina, famously designed the group’s very Y2K matching outfits and I would petition my parents for clothes from New Look and Tammy Girl that resembled her creations – mostly without success, though I did bag some camouflage in tribute to their looks in the Survivor video. I once took a clipping of Kelly to the hairdresser, asking for the short, flicky hair she sports on the cover of her 2002 solo album Simply Deep. (Thankfully, few photos survive from the “bandana” era of my aesthetic.)
The funny childish fixations faded, but my love of Destiny’s Child influenced my taste in unexpected ways for years to come. My route to guitar music came via an infamous mashup of Bootylicious and Smells Like Teen Spirit, which prompted me to borrow a friend’s Nirvana CD. My interest in rap accelerated when Beyoncé started dating someone called Jay-Z, and a man named Lil Wayne featured on Soldier.
Even as a shy child, if someone stuck on Independent Women Pt I, you’d be sure to find me front and centre at the school disco, quietly singing along to the car radio, dancing next to our CD player at home. Destiny’s Child were the first artists to show me how music and fandom could help make you feel powerful and more yourself.
Fully 20 years later, if I am experiencing a crisis in confidence, heartbreak or am feeling low, songs such as No, No, No Pt 2, Happy Face, Jumpin’ Jumpin’ or Lose My Breath make me feel galvanised and less alone. It’s a fandom that remains there like an old friend. In recent years, I have found my own voice and community more and more – but I will never forget the group who gave me that feeling for the first time.
