“Clearly, the proper response is to stop resisting.” Truth. 🤣
This is a terrific exploration of a song I probably wouldn’t have thought to explore deeply. Love it! And also makes me think of how I need to be specific about what I wannabe manifesting in 2024.
I was also somewhat off the grid in 1995, working at a residential drug treatment program in Hudson Valley New York that was extremely conservative in terms of staying inside their evangelical bubble. Plus I was in a small town in the country with no car, so it was difficult to get out to see movies or buy music.
Great post. Loved the song (and the girls) as a kid, still love them now. They are ingrained into British pop culture in a way that, perhaps, only the Beatles and Oasis are.
Loved your reflection on what it is you might really, really want. I was going to suggest perhaps all you really want is to take a shit and smoke a cigar in peace, but you beat me to it 🤣 Happy 2024!
Their follow-up album (same title as the film) has some really terrific production and, for my money, catchier songs. “Never Give Up On The Good Times” is one of the best 90s pop songs most people have never heard. 🤘😊
Peeing in the garden. Smoking in the khazi. Waxing philosophical about Wannabe. Quite the banger to kick off 2024! Now excuse me while I go scrub my ear to get this damn worm out!!
I unashamedly love this song. And they do say what they want! They're addressing a potential lover and outline the crap they won't put up with.
"Forget my past." Too many dudes focused on how many guys you've been with before.
"Don't waste my time - get your act together." Don't lead me on - piss or get off the pot.
"Get with my friends" You're not going to separate me from them and isolate me.
"You have got to give - taking is too easy." Oh the stories every woman can tell about dudes who take but don't give.
This was radical in 1996, when it seemed every hip hop dude was talking about what they were going to take from their women and seem to have no respect for them. This was why it resonated so soundly. Plus, it slaps!
I have to say my fave boy band is Backstreet Boys but there's a huge legacy of both girl and boy bands.
And I wannabe more fully me - getting back to performing, being of service in joy. And having enough stamina to dance again!
I remember choreographing a dance with my 11 year old babysitter to this song. And you should definitely watch spice world for how bad it is :) happy new year!
"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.
My goodness.....where does one start? From a pedestrian mid-'90s existence for our hero to the very embodiment of "pop music" excess and crass commercialism of that era....to (wait for it) a Marie Claire citing?!?🤯Is it any wonder we, your devoted following, can't wait for your next delivery? Surprises around every corner (and most sentences)! Nice!
Confessions: Loved Dream Street, who only existed on the boy-band planet for the first couple years of this century, but were fun to watch dance (and listen to), and had a tragic loss of one of their members impossibly early (Chris Trousdale). As for other boy bands (N'Sync, Backstreet Boys), I had little use for them, except for Nick Carter's bro, Aaron (another ultimately tragic figure) and his early career, which was fun and curious to watch.
Also, at the turn of the century, I was writing comedy pieces for a comedy compendium called "Corduroy Galaxy," which was a website run and populated by a gaggle of my hilarious high school youth groupers from my late-'80s turn as a pro L.A.-area church youth minister. I once wrote a piece touting the fictitious counterpart boy-band theoretically created by the management of the Spice Girls....The Herb Boys, with similarly adjective-filled names (i.e. Posh Spice, Sporty Spice) like Petulant Herb, Cranky Herb, Slovenly Herb, etc. I wish I could dig up the whole article, but I never saved it, and Corduroy Galaxy has been wiped off the 'net.
I've had Spice Up Your Life as an earworm since it was in a recent Dr Who episode. I was sat at a table near theirs at the Riverside Studio in Hammersmith in the '90s and they were tiny- especially Ginger Spice, though what she lacked in vision she more than made up for in sound!
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.
“Clearly, the proper response is to stop resisting.” Truth. 🤣
This is a terrific exploration of a song I probably wouldn’t have thought to explore deeply. Love it! And also makes me think of how I need to be specific about what I wannabe manifesting in 2024.
Glad I found you on the notes thread, Steve!
I was also somewhat off the grid in 1995, working at a residential drug treatment program in Hudson Valley New York that was extremely conservative in terms of staying inside their evangelical bubble. Plus I was in a small town in the country with no car, so it was difficult to get out to see movies or buy music.
Well in The ZugHaus we sing "I wanna ziggy-zug-AAHHHHHH..." because who WOULDN'T wanna Zug? Zug means to be on the move!
If I were to rank my girl band favorites I think it would be:
1) Wilson Philips (HOOOOOOOLD OOOON FOR ONE MORE DAAAAY)
2) The Pointer Sisters (were they considered a girl band?)
3) The Bangles
4) The Go-Go's
Great post. Loved the song (and the girls) as a kid, still love them now. They are ingrained into British pop culture in a way that, perhaps, only the Beatles and Oasis are.
Loved your reflection on what it is you might really, really want. I was going to suggest perhaps all you really want is to take a shit and smoke a cigar in peace, but you beat me to it 🤣 Happy 2024!
Their follow-up album (same title as the film) has some really terrific production and, for my money, catchier songs. “Never Give Up On The Good Times” is one of the best 90s pop songs most people have never heard. 🤘😊
Peeing in the garden. Smoking in the khazi. Waxing philosophical about Wannabe. Quite the banger to kick off 2024! Now excuse me while I go scrub my ear to get this damn worm out!!
I unashamedly love this song. And they do say what they want! They're addressing a potential lover and outline the crap they won't put up with.
"Forget my past." Too many dudes focused on how many guys you've been with before.
"Don't waste my time - get your act together." Don't lead me on - piss or get off the pot.
"Get with my friends" You're not going to separate me from them and isolate me.
"You have got to give - taking is too easy." Oh the stories every woman can tell about dudes who take but don't give.
This was radical in 1996, when it seemed every hip hop dude was talking about what they were going to take from their women and seem to have no respect for them. This was why it resonated so soundly. Plus, it slaps!
I have to say my fave boy band is Backstreet Boys but there's a huge legacy of both girl and boy bands.
And I wannabe more fully me - getting back to performing, being of service in joy. And having enough stamina to dance again!
Just a titanic, boss level earworm.
Girl group: The Runaways.
I remember choreographing a dance with my 11 year old babysitter to this song. And you should definitely watch spice world for how bad it is :) happy new year!
"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.
My goodness.....where does one start? From a pedestrian mid-'90s existence for our hero to the very embodiment of "pop music" excess and crass commercialism of that era....to (wait for it) a Marie Claire citing?!?🤯Is it any wonder we, your devoted following, can't wait for your next delivery? Surprises around every corner (and most sentences)! Nice!
Confessions: Loved Dream Street, who only existed on the boy-band planet for the first couple years of this century, but were fun to watch dance (and listen to), and had a tragic loss of one of their members impossibly early (Chris Trousdale). As for other boy bands (N'Sync, Backstreet Boys), I had little use for them, except for Nick Carter's bro, Aaron (another ultimately tragic figure) and his early career, which was fun and curious to watch.
Also, at the turn of the century, I was writing comedy pieces for a comedy compendium called "Corduroy Galaxy," which was a website run and populated by a gaggle of my hilarious high school youth groupers from my late-'80s turn as a pro L.A.-area church youth minister. I once wrote a piece touting the fictitious counterpart boy-band theoretically created by the management of the Spice Girls....The Herb Boys, with similarly adjective-filled names (i.e. Posh Spice, Sporty Spice) like Petulant Herb, Cranky Herb, Slovenly Herb, etc. I wish I could dig up the whole article, but I never saved it, and Corduroy Galaxy has been wiped off the 'net.
I always favored Posh, but some pretty-guy soccer player beat me to her.
I've had Spice Up Your Life as an earworm since it was in a recent Dr Who episode. I was sat at a table near theirs at the Riverside Studio in Hammersmith in the '90s and they were tiny- especially Ginger Spice, though what she lacked in vision she more than made up for in sound!
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.