Melanie C 'Here It Comes Again'

Chart Peak: 7
YouTube

'Here It Comes Again was the lead track from Melanie's 2nd solo album Reason, the follow-up to her multi-platinum 1999 debut Northern Star... Looking back on her days in the Spice Girls, she says, "I was the one who was most serious about my music and the most driven."

As of 2003, people had officially started talking about the Spice Girls in the past tense, even though they hadn't officially announced a split in the way that Take That did and four of them had returned to the group after the first wave of group activity. So Melanie Chisholm will have approached her second solo set as her main creative outlet, though it's hard to tell whether this in practice meant greater personal expression or more commercial pressure. It does seem a bit made-by-committee in places, with various big-name co-writers and producers called in for various tracks, although oddly the collaborators here were both members of the Blow Monkeys. 'Here It Comes Again' is a song that I remembered as having a rather lovely chorus and it is indeed pretty good, but slightly messed up by the crunchy rock guitars low in the mix, as if it's trying too hard to hedge its bets. In the event it didn't do as well as expected, entering only at 7 and hastening the end of her major-label contract.

Also appearing on: Now 44, 45 (with "Left Eye"), 47, 55
Available on: Here It Comes Again

Geri Halliwell 'Scream If You Wanna Go Faster'

Chart Peak: 8

YouTube

The title track from her second album was also her first single to peak lower than 2. She claims to have written this song under the infunce of Led Zeppelin. Much as I consider them an over-rated group I still think they deserve better than to be blamed for this frankly awful record, which certainly isn't any kind of blues or rock. The lack of machismo isn't unwelcome, but the lack of melody or rhythmic interest is, and so is the poor singing and performance. And the less said about the lyric "Gimme some sweet FA, have a nice day as Americans say" the better, frankly.

This is hardly the only track on this album that isn't any good, but it stands out for the sense that the people involved think it is, somehow.

Also appearing on: Now 43, 44, 45, 49, 51, 60
Available on: Scream If You Wanna Go Faster

Victoria Beckham 'Not Such An Innocent Girl'

Chart Peak: 6

YouTube

The video for Victoria's first solo single 'Not Such An Innocent Girl' featured the Spice star in a dual role - "Good Girl" going head-to-head with "Bad Girl" in a "futuristic world of Yin and Yang"... Commenting on the message of the song Victoria says "There's a good and bad side to everybody so don't judge a book by its cover."

The sleeve notes are clearly too polite to mention it, but when this single was originally released in the same week as 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head', at least one of the tabloids thought this would be another great chart battle like the one that had ensued when Beckham's collaboration with True Steppers went up against Spiller's Groovejet. They promised to keep their readers updated on which record was doing better throughout the week - and it lasted about two days before they realised there was no contest. In the event this got no higher than six and wasn't even the second-highest new entry, outdone by Alien Ant Farm's cover version and a Shaggy single nobody remembers. This album sequences them way apart anyway, and for good measure doesn't put it right next to another solo Spice either.

I hadn't actually seen that video until I came to write this post and it's a bit bigger-budgeted than I'd expected, considering the generally rather cheap air of this record (and the album cover). Beckham was the last member of the group to release any records outside it, and conspicuously didn't do so on the same major label. Virgin were evidently not too bothered by the risk of a rival outfit getting this, and they were probably right, as the album lost a fortune and Telstar went bust a couple of years later. It doesn't entirely seem like she was that interested either. Far be it from me to accuse anyone of misunderstanding their own song, but the lyrical tone of "if you touch me I won't break, I'm not such an innocent girl" doesn't really suit a 27-year old married mother-of-one. Oh yeah, and the singing's rubbish too.

Also appearing on: Now 47 (with True Steppers and Dane Bowers), 51
Available on: Victoria Beckham

Emma Bunton 'Take My Breath Away'

Chart Peak: 5

YouTube

In the sleeve notes, Emma Bunton seems very proud of this song which it's noted that she actually co-wrote (with veteran pop producers Steve Mac and Wayne Hector, the latter of whom has formed a long and lucrative partnership with Simon Cowell and his various contestants). I'm sure she was being entirely sincere, but the lyric - which I'd presume is her contribution - isn't really anything to crow about. Musically, the track completely fails to go anywhere and isn't even particularly catchy. It's not unpleasant and it's far from the worst thing ever released by a solo Spice Girl (in fact, not even the worst solo Spice track on this compilation) but it's a bit of a makeweight at best.

Also appearing on: Now 44 (with Tin Tin Out), 48, 55, 56, 57
Available on: A Girl Like Me

Tin Tin Out featuring Emma Bunton 'What I Am'

Chart Peak: 2

YouTube

I was quite surprised, when I first got a chart reference book to look it up in, to discover that 'What I Am' by Edie Brickell & The New Bohemians only got to Number 31 in the UK. It seemed to be everywhere when it was out, but maybe it was disproportionately popular in London.

Either way, it probably looked like an opportunity to Tin Tin Out, the low-profile production act who managed no fewer than nine Top 40 hits between 1994 and 1999. And what better way to help this single along than to enlist Emma Bunton, for her first release outside the Spice Girls? Well, I'm sure that was the plan, but it flounders on the sheer familiarity of the original, which emphasises how little imagination seems to have gone into this, right the way down to the note-for-note replication of the original guitar solo. Anybody who didn't like the one version wasn't going to like the other; and this is probably why you don't often hear this one now.
However, since EMI decided to release this and the Geri Halliwell record on the same day to launch the inevitable Spice battle, it's hard to resist the comparison. Against that, this can at least claim to be a memorable (if potentially irritating) song, and Bunton's vocal, though not outstanding, at least projects more personality and some sense of enjoyment instead of heavy breathing. Nonetheless, an air of pointlessness pervades the whole exercise, which is as good an explanation as I cna think of for this one coming in second.

Tin Tin Out also appear on: Now 30 (with Espiritu) 38 (with Shelley Nelson)
Emma Bunton also appears on: Now 48, 50, 55, 56, 57
Available on: A Girl Like Me

Geri Halliwell 'Lift Me Up'

Chart Peak: 1 (1 week)

YouTube

I suppose if there's one distinctive feature of this particular era in chart history, it's the media-amplified battle for Number One. Of course the mother of all these was Blur v. Oasis in 1995, but with hindsight it was very much a product of the times when virtually all Number Ones entered at the top so the loser had little chance of claiming the same glory later.

This and the track that follows it on the album were at the time hyped as just such a battle, not least because of the link between the acts involved, but it's fair to say that it hasn't exactly gone down in pop history as a major event. Much of the blame here must lie with the records themselves, because this one is as painfully thin as Halliwell looks in the video (which, incidentally, I'd never watched all the way through before - Hmmm, even aliens seem to go off the idea of abducting her once she starts singing to them). This is obviously an attempt to project the softer, more romantic side of her, but with trite lyrics set to a melody that's all but non-existent, the focus is on her not-really-much-cop vocal. What single could be lame enough to lose a chart battle to this? Find out tomorrow...

Also appearing on: Now 43, 45, 49, 50, 51, 60
Available on: Schizophonic

Melanie C 'Northern Star'

Chart Peak: 4

YouTube

And still they come. 1999 was something of a gap year for the Spice Girls with no new material from the group, but hits for three of the four members (and the one ex-member, of course).

For good or ill, Melanie Chisholm seems to have been the one who's taken her solo work most seriously, continuing to pursue it even during the Spice reunion. What this means is that she's covered more stylistic ground than most of the others, and opened her solo account with the ill-advised psuedo-rock of 'Going Down'. This follow-up found her on more familiar ground, once you got used to the idea of her singing a whole song on her own. She's probably the best singer in the Spice Girls, and certainly the one who found the most distinctive style. She's not really good enough to sell this song though - it still sounds like somebody trying to prove too much, or at least to prove that they have something to prove.


Also appearing on: Now 45 (with "Left Eye"), 47, 54, 55
Available on: Northern Star [Bonus Tracks]

Geri Halliwell 'Mi Chico Latino'

Chart Peak: 1 (1 week)

YouTube

Dear oh dear. It's a long time since I've heard this all the way through (if indeed I ever have) and it doesn't appear to have improved with age. Geri's second solo single after quitting the Spice Girls picks up on the year's vogue for "Latin" music - it was in fact deposed from the top of the chart by Lou Bega - and to be fair to her she did actually live in Spain before she was famous so she can at least speak the language. This doesn't excuse the fact the the song is pretty much 'La Isla Bonita', nor the painfully thin vocals. And speaking of painfully thin, why do we have to look at everyone's ribcage in the video there?

Of course, this record did what it set out to do: it gave Geri a solo Number One single and doubtless satisfied some urge on her part to prove that she had a future outside the group. But it's a pretty joyless experience for the rest of us.

Also appearing on: Now 43, 45, 49, 50, 51, 60
Available on: Schizophonic