20 Landmark Songs Of The 90s

9. The Spice Girls - Wannabe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJLIiF15wjQ The Spice Girls, aka Scary, Posh, Ginger, Baby and Sporty, marked the advent of two things in pop, the embracing of shrewd marketing to shape an off the shelf, mass market product, as well as kicking the door down for girl groups in the 90€™s in a format that is still very much alive today. They may not have written the best songs of the genre, but they certainly shouted the loudest. When €˜Wannabe€™ emerged in the summer of 1996, it was armed with a formidable budget and marketing plan. With hindsight they€™ve been dismissed as a manufactured group, which of course they were, but inherently, they were following the same path that the Monkees did in the 60€™s; put a group of ambitious people together and see if they would stick. And stick they certainly did, €˜Wannabe€™ was an enormous success, and a very British proposition that would dominate not just the UK Charts, but a multitude of countries, most crucially the US charts. €˜Wannabe€™ was set up to tell the story of being a woman in the 90€™s who was audacious, independent and a million miles away from the demure wallflower of The Ronettes €˜Be my baby€™, and this tale had a profound effect on the future of the girl group that ushered an era of musical equality with the boy bands. It certainly wasn€™t their best song - €˜Say you€™ll be there€™ was by far and away the most sophisticated piece of music they released, but it was the most effective. Unlike their boy band equivalent Take That, the Spice Girls hit the ground running and love it or loathe it, presented their manifesto of girl power - independence and huge ambition from day one.