AccuRadio Song Of The Day-Spice Girls

Artist:Spice Girls
Song:Say You'll Be There
Album:Greatest Hits





For a couple of years in the late 90s, Spice Girls were the most popular musical act in the world. It didn't last of course because they were a manufactured group. Say You'll Be There was their second single and second biggest hit. The idea behind Spice Girls was boy bands like Take That were popular in England at the time and Bob and Chris Herbert wanted to create a girl group to compete with that. They held auditions and all the girls chosen had entertainment experience though not necessarily as singers. The original five were Victoria Adams, Melanie Brown, Melanie Chisholm, Michelle Stephenson and Geri Halliwell. They were to be called Touch. They spent most of 1994 training. During this period, Michelle wasn't working out and Emma Bunton replaced her. The group name was changed to Spice. They recorded but record companies weren't interested. And in 1995, Spice Girls left the Herberts for Simon Fuller. And he immediately got them a deal with Virgin Records. There was already a rapper named Spice so the name was changed to Spice Girls. Most of the debut album Spice was was produced by the production duo Absolute (Paul Wilson and Andy Watkins). They brought Spice Girls to Fuller. They produced the debut single Wannabe which was their biggest hit. Say You'll Be There was the second single. It was produced by Richard "Biff" Stannard. He has produced plenty of hits. The harmonica solo is by session musician Judd Lander. Both singles topped the British charts. Wannabe topped the Billboard Hot 100 and Say You'll Be There reached #3. One of the things I didn't like about Spice Girls was having all five sing lead in the same song. It makes their music disjointed. Ideally, each song should have one lead singer. I assume the egos in the recording studio was the main reason Fuller allowed this. The album Spice sold 23 million copies worldwide. Spice Girls got songwriting credit on all the songs. And that's one of the reasons they left the Herberts. They wouldn't listen to their ideas. Fuller was smart enough to listen to them. So now Spice Girls were the biggest thing in pop music. Of course it was all downhill from there. The biggest problem was personality clashes, not surprising considering the girls didn't know each other before being thrown together. That's the inherent problem with manufactured pop groups. After recording three albums, Geri and then Emma left Spice Girls in 1998. Emma returned for the 2000 farewell album Forever and that was the end. They had a great cottage industry for a while. They even made a movie. But it was never going to last. Spice Girls were only around for four years. It seemed much longer. You can get all their hits on this budget comp. Of course the girls have gone on to individual things with mixed success. They reunited for a tour in 2007. They released a single but no album. They reunited again in 2012 to promote the Spice Girls musical Viva Forever and they performed at the Summer Olympics. There was a 20th anniversary planned but it didn't come together. Here's the video for Say You'll Be There by Spice Girls. This video is based on the 1965 Russ Meyer cult film Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!.