Published on Jun 16, 1998
It’s highly fashionable to bash pop acts and revere white female
folk singers these days. And dumping on the Spice quintet is always
supremely in vogue. But what’s more dangerous; popular music or
popular thinking?
If it was as simple as throwing five aesthetically pleasing
females together, Virgin would not be the only record company
making millions off this method. The various knock-offs like
pseudo-R&B All Saints and bland ass Solid Harmonie will never
equate Spice Success because they lack … what? … “personality.”
The we’re-so-cool posturing the All Saints foursome makes me
nauseous. The Spice Girls don’t need to do that; they KNOW they
are. How many people can truly say they know themselves enough to
be secure before millions?
Bob likes to say that the
Spiceworld movie is something equal to the moon turning
blood red. A lot of people agree with him. Bizarrely enough, most
of these people I’ve noticed have not even bothered to see the
movie itself. Pop music doesn’t rot the brain but P-R-E-J-U-D-I-C-E
definitely contributes to cerebral decay.
Their earlier album sounded vaguely Cretaceous-Janet-Jackson;
trying to hard to fill in the beats with a tiny little voice. But
in
Spiceworld, they are doing what they should’ve done; letting
the harmonics of their voices take over the center and life of the
song. One of the few vocal assets they have is their seamless
harmony (something harder to pull off than it sounds) and
appropriate grooves according to ambience can be built around this
foundation. They do not have strong voices (Victoria: “We aren’t
five Mariah Careys.”) but they sure sound like they do in “Do
It”.
Though “Spice Up Your Life” makes the same mistake of
fill-in-the-blanks singing, the past ends there. They hit
follow-ups like “Stop” and “Too Much” with artfully layered vocal
arrangements. “Too Much” is lyrical enough to the point of
effective a cappella, if they chose to do so.
Sheer vocal dedication leads the groove in “Saturday Night
Divas” and makes up half the layers in “Never Give Up On the Good
Times” and still manages to sound club. “Do It” is the signature of
the Spice Girls with its upbeat motivational
let’s-Reebok-Stepladder theme. In all the layering, Mel C (the
sporty one), the only Spice Girl with a technique, occasionally
stems off to improvise; all they really need is a voice sampler and
a drum machine.
But sometimes it doesn’t pull through; forced Pepsi anthem “Move
On” lacks heart for some reason, repeating the words “Generation
Next” over and over again without conviction. “Denying” overdoes
the freedom of expression thing, again done without conviction.
Without conviction, the Spice Girls are five people singing
commercial jingles.
“Mama” from the earlier album hinted at what they could do with
ballads. The breathless “Viva Forever” uses Spanish influences to
create “sunset horizon” atmospheres a la Walter Afanasieff. It’s
strange how there aren’t more ballads on the album.
One song made me smile and think, “This is so COOL.” From the
foray in jazzy R&B in “Too Much”, they delve deeper into old
jazz radio with “The Lady is a Vamp”. Love the horn section.
Alternating a name-dropping theme (Elvis, “Seven Year Itch”) with a
nineties review (Charlie’s Angels, ladies on top), they make a
no-encores-please exit with … dare I say … style.
With
Spiceworld they’ve done the best with what they have, which
turns out to be more than one can expect from all the negative
media. They’ve participated in writing all the material, they don’t
lip-sync, they don’t pretend to be more than they are, and they’re
deserving of respect overall. Since when was participation in
Lilith Fair some sort of prerequisite for artistic validity?
This may come across as too Spice Girl-ish but girls just wanna
have fun. They’re having it, too.