20: Never Give Up on the Good Times
A Spiceworld album track boasting the best use of disco strings on any Spice track, and in which Party Time is denoted by a lone “WOO!” at 0:17.
19: Right Back at Ya
Track four from Forever was the first time since Wannabe that the Spice Girls lyrically referenced never-ending friendship, although it was an idea they wheeled out again – if less convincingly – for their 2007 comeback single, Headlines.
18: One of These Girls
A 2 Become 1 B-side seemingly inspired by the ancient Sesame Street song One of These Things.
17: Step to Me
A reminder of the speed with which the band ascended to the pop A-list: within months of releasing their debut single, they were the faces of Pepsi, with Step to Me only available to fans who posted 20 ringpulls to Pepsi HQ. Who’d bother doing that, right? Over half a million people, actually.
16: Too Much
Slightly off topic, but is now the right time to point out that nothing in this list is as good as Geri Halliwell’s epic flamencofest, Mi Chico Latino?
15: Tell Me Why
Kicking off with Alexa’s mum barking a robotic “Spice Girls … Darkchild … Let’s dance!”, this Forever album track was everything a turn-of-the-millennium pop audience could have wanted from a Rodney Jerkins-Spice Girls collaboration. It also ensured the band’s first post-Geri album included the line “We could have stayed together but you wanted it this way” a full decade before the “eyes” emoji was invented.
14: The Lady Is a Vamp
Seriously, though, have you listened to Mi Chico Latino recently?
13: Who Do You Think You Are?
The song that formed the bulk of the band’s iconic – and not in the 2018 sense of iconic, like, properly iconic – 1997 Brits performance. Big shout out to Sporty’s “SWING!” “SHAKE” “MOVE!” “MAKE!” bits.
12: Weekend Love
As we move forward with this list you may wonder if the countdown is a little singles-heavy, and let’s just say that the Spice Girls were not what you might call an albums act. This “oft”-overlooked Forever album track is good evidence, however, that the band’s third album may actually be their most robust.
11: Wannabe
All the other big Spice hits have between 10m and 24m plays on Spotify. Wannabe has 210m, but does that make it their best song? Pop is not a democracy, and Wannabe is the 11th best Spice Girls song.
10: Stop
Remembered for lyrics such as “do do do do” and “ba ba ba ba”, this single’s Fauxtown stylings were bolstered by hints of at least two different Supremes songs, and Mel C drifting into Stevie Wonder’s Uptight (Everything’s Alright) in her closing ad-libs.
9: Move Over
One of the few Spice Girls album tracks that feels as if it could have been a No 1 single.
8: Mama
Put aside the none-more-1997 marketing trick of releasing this around Mother’s Day and, instead, go and read the lyrics. Then come back here and say you did not shed a tear. “I never thought you would become the friend I never had” – good grief! “All that you did was love” – stop it!!
7: Holler
These days, Wannabe might sound as alien as a 22-year-old No 1 like the Rubettes’ Sugar Baby Love did in 1996, but you can draw a direct line between Holler and pop in 2018. In fact, this song still gets 1% better every six months. If you’re reading this in 2020, move it up a place.
6: 2 Become 1
The entire amazingness of this pensive festive contraception banger pivots on one moment: the point at 2:40 when Bunton Spice sets her spirit free and dramatically chucks two extra syllables into the word “one”.
5: Say You’ll Be There
Mel B’s “I’ll give you everything, on this I swear” mini-rap remains one of 90s pop’s greatest achievements.
4: Spice Up Your Life
Geri later claimed that Margaret Thatcher was “the first lady of girl power”, but the Spice Girls were not immune to the public mood, encouraging listeners to “slam it to the left” in the same year that Britain voted in its first Labour government in a generation.
3: Sleigh Ride
No, come back! It’s easy to forget that the Spice Girls felt really, really fun. At times they were a completely brilliant mess, and their winningly shambolic spirit is splashed all over this cover version, particularly its chaotic middle-eight in which Posh Spice tells the band’s young fanbase that Father Christmas doesn’t exist, prompting Mel B to shout: “You’re going to get hit in the face if you don’t shut up”.
2: Viva Forever
The perfect Spice Girls farewell single, if you ignore the fact that they released another song later in the year, followed by another album. Either way, this is a magical ballad tarnished only by the fact that its title was also used, many years later, as the name of the worst thing to hit London’s West End since Crossrail.
1: Goodbye
“Goodbye my friend. I know you’re gone, you said you’re gone. But I can still feel you here.” Is it about Geri leaving? No, it was written before she cleared off. Is it about the end of a relationship? Melanie C says yes. Is it though, Mel? Is it actually, in 2018, about how one day without realising it we all said goodbye to our younger selves? But is it also about how we don’t ever totally lose touch with the person we once were, or with a sense how life felt before things got so complicated? And is Goodbye really about the extraordinary power of pop music to bring everything right back, no matter what’s happened since and no matter how much you might think you left your favourite pop band behind? Yes, that’s exactly what it is.
Zig-a-zig-agggrh: The three worst Spice songs
(How Does It Feel to Be) On Top of the World
It’s summer 1998: England are heading to France for the World Cup, and on home turf someone’s decided that the world needs a collaboration between Echo and the Bunnymen, Space, Ocean Colour Scene and the Spice Girls. England didn’t even make the quarter-finals and Geri left the band after shooting the video. It peaked at No 9. So well done, everyone.
I’m the Leader of the Gang (I Am!)
One set-piece in the band’s cinematic millstone Spiceworld involved the band performing a Gary Glitter song, with Glitter himself appearing in the song’s closing moments. The footage was delivered about two weeks before Glitter took his computer in for repair; he was removed from the film, but the song remained.
Channel 5 scored a coup for its 1997 launch: an exclusive new song from the planet’s biggest girl band. Sadly, the song in question was a criminally shonky rewrite of 33-year-old Manfred Mann hit 5-4-3-2-1 that switched lyrics, referencing Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade for lines such as “Wicked shows for you to see, toons and sports and movies – free!”
