Twenty years on: ‘what I really really want’

In 1996, Britain’s popular music scene was a man’s world. Moody male Britpop was battling it out in the charts with former members of Take That. During the first six months of the year, female vocalists were crowned Number 1 for just six weeks.

That is, until 20 years ago today. On July 8th 1996, the Spice Girls released their first single: Wannabe. The track started with the sound of laughter. And then, in a burst of exuberant energy, ‘Scary Spice’ belted out the line that started a pop revolution: ‘Yo, I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want…’

It was a hit across the globe. It was the UK’s Number 1 for seven weeks, and it sold 7m copies around the world. In 2014, scientists officially declared it the catchiest song of the last 60 years.

Its message — that friends are more important than lovers — also made it an anthem for the Spice philosophy: girl power. It was ‘girl power’ that they declared while making jaunty peace signs; ‘girl power’ that their fans chanted at concerts; ‘girl power’ that helped them sell everything from Pepsi to Chuppa Chups. And it paved the way for the girl power pop that followed: Britney, Girls Aloud and Little Mix all owe some of their success to the Spice Girls.

And yet they did not invent the phrase ‘girl power’. That was another girl band, Bikini Kill, with a far more radical message. The rock group formed in 1990, and quickly inspired an angry feminist punk movement: riot grrrl.

Bikini Kill and their fellow riot grrrls were not singing about how ‘friendship never ends’. They were singing about oppression and abuse, while telling girls to ‘stand up for your rights’.

In comparison, the fluffy, Spiceworld version of girl power does not seem quite so revolutionary. And for serious feminists of the 90s, Posh and the gang were not the start of something; they were the end.

Zigazig-ah

When the author Caitlin Moran looks back on the Spice Girls, she laments that this was the moment when the world started thinking that ‘the fight had been won’ for women’s rights. This was a mistake, say some. Women still faced violence and inequality at that time, just as they do now. Shouting the words ‘girl power’ does not make the world a better place — it might even make it worse.

But the Spice Girls were not singing for grown up women, say their defenders. They were singing for young girls — and those girls were lucky to have role models who talked more about friendship and having fun than finding a man or looking good. They were loud, they were confident, and their five distinct ‘characters’ meant that everyone felt included somehow. They deserve to be celebrated as much now as they were 20 years ago.