walking upstream…
Spice Girls
photo: eric mutrie · cc by 2.0 ↗Spice Girls
In March 1994, five aspiring singers answered an open audition at a London dance studio, brought together by a management duo chasing a female answer to Take That. Calling themselves Touch, they were, by Melanie C's own account, "pretty bland — we felt like we had to fit into a mould." They fired their managers, hired Simon Fuller, signed to Virgin, and rebuilt themselves as the Spice Girls. "Wannabe," built from a drum loop and five voices chanting over each other, topped the charts in 37 countries in 1996; the album Spice sold more than 23 million copies, still the best-selling record by a female group in history. Geri Halliwell's exit mid-tour in 1998 barely slowed the momentum before the group paused, at the end of 2000, for five separate careers. Their real invention wasn't a sound — it was refusing to pick a lead singer.
the sound in question
1996
WannabeSpice Girls
walk the tributaries ↓
Madonna1980s-90s · Pop / Dance-pop / Dance / Electronic
By the time they signed with Simon Fuller, the group had already spent hours studying one artist above all. "We all had different artists that we loved," Mel C told the Guardian in 2018. "Madonna was a big influence and TLC; we watched a lot of their videos." Two years before that, in the band's first music-press interview, Geri Halliwell had made the ambition explicit, telling the trade paper Music Week they wanted "to bring some of the glamour back to pop, like Madonna had when we were growing up." That instinct for image as argument runs straight through "Wannabe."
listen: upstream & heresource: The Guardian — "We caught the zeitgeist" ↗
1989
Express YourselfMadonna
1996
WannabeSpice Girls
listen forListen for the demand stated up front in both. Madonna's hook doesn't ask, it instructs — "don't go for second best, baby," delivered like a house rule over a stomping, gospel-choir-backed groove. "Wannabe" runs the same trick faster and blunter, opening by laying out exact terms — "if you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends" — as a chanted ultimatum, not a plea. Same bluntness of address, compressed into a nursery-rhyme hook built for five voices instead of one.
TLC1990s · R&B / Hip hop soul / Pop
Mel C named TLC in the same breath as Madonna, singling out their videos as formative. TLC's 1995 single "Waterfalls" folded a blunt warning about unsafe sex into a chart-topping hook; the Spice Girls tried the same balancing act on "2 Become 1" the next year. "As a writer, 2 Become 1 is one of my favourite moments," Mel C said in 2018. "It's a beautiful song and it had an important message... to be a young girl band mostly shouting and being a bit chaotic, and then to have a safe-sex message in your song, I feel very proud of that now."
listen: upstream & here
1995
WaterfallsTLC
1996
2 Become 1Spice Girls
listen forListen for the same balancing act: a hard warning smuggled into something soft enough for daytime radio. "Waterfalls" rides a warm, murmured R&B verse before its chorus turns caution into comfort. "2 Become 1" makes the same handoff a beat slower — a hushed, string-laced verse building to the bridge's plain instruction, "put it on, put it on," a safe-sex line delivered as tenderly as a lullaby rather than a lecture.
Diana Ross1960s–70s · Soul / Pop / Disco / Rhythm and blues
Diana Ross wasn't a discovery for the Spice Girls — she was family history. "We had so many influences, and there'd been so many incredible women that had gone before us, and Diana was one of those women," Mel C told PEOPLE in December 2025, tracing the connection to her own mother's record collection: "I personally grew up in a lot of Motown as well. My mom was a huge fan." The group caught Ross live early in their career, before their own fame, watching how a former backing singer could command a stage entirely on her own authority.
listen: upstream & heresource: PEOPLE via AOL — Mel C says Diana Ross was one of the 'incredible women' who inspired the Spice Girls (Diana Ross/Motown testimony) ↗
1980
I'm Coming OutDiana Ross
1997
Spice Up Your LifeSpice Girls
listen forListen for the same brassy self-announcement. Ross's 1980 reinvention rides a driving groove built by the disco group Chic, its horns underlining the title line rather than merely backing it — "I'm coming out," delivered as fact, not confession. "Spice Up Your Life" works the same trick seventeen years later: blaring horns, a chanted roll call of the group's own nicknames, and a chorus that treats arrival itself as the whole subject.