Spice Girls - Wannabe
I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want
Why did the Spice Girls’ 1996 debut single and anthem “Wannabe” wannabe in my brain first thing of the new year?
Let’s explore together and see if we can discover the earworm significance of this undeniably catchy tune.
But before we do, I want to give a shout-out to all of you.
To the new subscribers, who are likely trying to figure out what the hell they signed up for, I welcome you into this mishmash of song, personal story, and stream-of-conscious ramblings.
To the old-timers (aka: wormheads), whether you’ve been here since the beginning almost two years ago or you have jumped on board somewhere in the middle, I thank you for sticking around. I know some posts are more music-nerdy than others, while others lean in the direction of personal essays, with details some might consider TMI. I hope that if one style is less in your wheelhouse, you still get something out of it — a chuckle, an unexpected tear, or some bit of trivia that expands your musical vocabulary.
I don’t control the songs that get stuck in my head. Many of them (like the one in this post) often lead to responses such as: “No! I spent decades trying to eradicate that horrible tune!” Or, “Damn you, Steve! Now I’ve caught your earworm!”
I eagerly await reading more exclamations like these in the comments in 2024. I will reply to them the way I always do.
“You’re welcome, and I’m sorry.”😀
Okay, back to our regularly scheduled programming….
Cardamom, Nutmeg, Turmeric, Rosemary and Thyme
I was late to board the boy band bus and girl group gondola. Until the 21st century, I didn’t know an N’SYNC from a Backstreet Boy or a Pussycat Doll from a Spice Girl.
I do recall the Spice Girls plastering the media and the Billboard charts back in the mid-90s, but to be honest, I did not listen to the radio or watch much TV back then. Most of 1995 was spent living on an organic farm in Canada, and when I returned to the States, I lived in a converted garage with no internet and the shower and toilet in the main house, 30 feet away. The backyard garden was my bathroom (#1 only), and I used candles for light. I listened to music from a battery-operated dual-cassette boom box.
By the end of ‘96, I had finally given up my resistance to urban life, graciously welcoming back both electricity and indoor plumbing.
I can’t say for sure when I first heard “Wannabe,” The Spice Girls’ first and biggest hit single of their career. It’s hard to imagine I didn’t hear it back in 1996 when Sporty, Scary, Posh, Ginger, and Baby became international sensations, their debut album, Spice, selling more than 23 million copies.
Perhaps it was the following year? When their version of The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night — Spice World — hit the theaters, becoming a huge box-office success in the UK and breaking the record (at that time) for the highest-ever weekend debut for Super Bowl weekend in the U.S.?
I hadn’t and still haven’t seen Spice World. I’ve never owned a Spice Girls album and have never streamed any of their songs, before today. Yet, somehow I recognized many of them. I was even singing along to them! How the hell do I know the lyrics?
Are these songs everywhere, embedding themselves in our DNA? Is “Wannabe” the high fructose corn syrup of pop music? Have nefarious scientists found a way to inject The Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way” into our breakfast cereals, into our processed meats, and now our livers and spleens and kidneys are forever coated in boy band and girl group earworms? Wasn’t infecting our brains enough?
Clearly, the proper response is to stop resisting.
I did see (in the theater!) the parody film that The Lonely Island produced in 2016, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, though. Which I quite enjoyed. And I caught most of the references, so perhaps I wasn’t as ignorant of the genre as I’d believed.
I have read through the lyrics to “Wannabe” a couple dozen times, hoping to find some clues as to why this song, more specifically, the first verse (which is almost identical to the 2nd and 3rd verses), decided to poke about in my brain as an uninvited welcome to the year 2024.
Yo, I'll tell you what I want
What I really, really want
So tell me what you want
What you really, really want
I'll tell you what I want
What I really, really want
So tell me what you want
What you really, really want
I wanna (Hey!), I wanna (Hey!)
I wanna (Hey!), I wanna (Hey!)
I wanna really, really, really wanna "zig-a-zig", ah
It’s tricky to list out the lyrics without adding which Spice is singing which line, but, in general, every two lines switch vocalists. Its call-and-response style, clearly referencing historical African cultural tribal traditions.
The use of repetition is intriguingly utilized here, with the Girls of Spice emphatically and confidently announcing over and over that they are going to tell us what they want, what they really, really want. Yet, after reiterating this claim at least a dozen times, I’m not sure any of them ever actually specify what they want.
Taken at face value, it appears they want to “hey!” and they really really really want to “zig-a-zig ah” which I’m pretty sure means have lots of sex. But I was living on a farm, knee-deep in compost, when this song was written. It could mean driving a car really fast. I was, and still am, ignorant of British slang from the mid-90s.
Well, reader, hold on to your topper, as Earworms and Song Loops’ detectives have tracked the answer to this decades-long mystery to an April 2023 issue1 of Marie Claire UK.
I was going to try and summarize, but I’m not sure I can. So here’s an excerpt from Marie Claire:
One of Wannabe's co-writers revealed that it was inspired by a saying on set: 'Shit and cigars.' Apparently, the Spice Girls shared a recording studio in Shoreditch with a famous musician and decided to give said celebrity this nickname.
Why? Well the anonymous co-writer told The Sun: "There was this one eighties pop dude who hated us for encroaching on what he considered 'his turf' which was boy bands and girl bands.
"This guy had this nasty habit of taking a dump in the shared khazi while smoking a cigar, so we took to referring to him as 'Shit and Cigars'."
So 'zig-a-zig-ah' might sound like nonsense, but in fact the girls were using it as a statement against the sexist figureheads in the music industry.
Girl Power.
Wannabe or Wannado?
Should I be considering smoking a cigar when I take a shit?
I think that Marie Claire article was a red herring.
Perhaps “Wannabe,” in its unique UK girl group lingo, is asking me to consider what I’d like to manifest in 2024. The lines “tell me what you want/what you really, really want” — they are aimed at me. The Spice Girls want to know what I want. They want to better understand me. They are saying to me (and by extension you, but really just me), “You don’t have to go about this all alone. We are listening, and we wanna help.
My sense of the word “wannabe” is that it’s used to describe a person trying to act like someone else to fit in with them or a larger group of people. A wannabe is a person who “wants to be” cool or part of the in-crowd. A person uncomfortable being themselves.
There’s nothing in the lyrics, though, that leads me to believe this is the song’s meaning.
The Spice Girls are subverting the more common “wannabe” definition, turning it on its head.
Their “Wannabe” is actually a response to an ever-growing culture of “Wannado.” It’s a more concise framing of the popular quote: “I am a human being, not a human doing.”
Its nocturnal appearance might, in fact, be my subconscious telling me to take the time to reflect on what would bring about deeper ‘being’ in my life.
The song knew that I hadn’t stopped to reflect on 2023: what I’ve accomplished, what I ought to be proud of, and what I could have paid more attention to. Similarly, I hadn’t stopped to contemplate what I want to manifest in 2024.
This, I believe, is what the Spice Girls are trying to teach me. To slow down. Take a few deep breaths. Consider what I wannabe.
Pushing back from the constant noise and chatter and the sense of responsibility that permeates so much of my waking (and dreaming) life, I now see what I wanna be this year.
Connected. Kind. Vulnerable. Present. Generous. Patient. Accepting. Goofy.
And to manifest a shit ton of zig-a-zig. Aaah.
I hope the appearance of the Spice Girls didn’t dissuade you from reading the first earworm exploration of 2024. 😛 If you are reading this now, I hope any reservations you had were squashed.
Favorite girl group or boy band? We are taking confessions in the comments section.
And most importantly, what do you wannabe in 2024?
Happy New Year to you all!
https://www.marieclaire.co.uk/news/celebrity-news/spice-girls-zig-ah-meaning-521860
The thing I remember most about "Wannabe" is that when it was released, I was working for a company that ran various entertainment forums on Compuserve. We were able to get the video of the song so that users could download it and play it offline on their computers. And despite the fact that probably 95% of the users had a dial-up connection (which meant it took hours to download), we had a couple hundred thousand people download it.
"I hope the appearance of the Spice Girls didn’t dissuade you from reading the first earworm exploration of 2024." Don't pander to the Spice Girl haters Steve! They deserve a ton of credit for being so massively popular in a sea of boy bands at the time. An all-girl pop group was an anomaly in 1996 and I think they represented the genre well. Even if pop groups aren't your thing, they made some catchy tunes that I think aged pretty well.