Spice Girls - Wannabe

Now, here is something I DID listen to in the 90's...

Ah, the Spice Girls. The group acted as a bonding agent between my two "hometowns" - Meacham and Meadow Lake. I remember doing an "Air Band" (where you get up on stage and lip-synch to a song while doing the dance from the music video) to Wannabe while in school in Viscount (when I lived near Meacham) and then gathering in the halls of my junior high in Meadow Lake to listen to the Spice Girl's new cd...

Music groups and celebrities are amazing in their ability to bond people together. Even today, if somebody tells me they like folk music, I know we'll be friends! And, we won't even have to talk about music that often in order to maintain that friendship. It's almost as if the music creates this instant bond that we don't have to communicate to one another through several conversations. It's immediate - oh, you appreciate the same music as ma, you probably have a similar temperament and philosophy guiding your life, I guess we're friends now...

That's why music is so important to young people. And pop music, too. Especially when you're living in a small town when the only other option is country. Not to berate country, I can appreciate it now. But listening to pop music when we were young teeny-boppers was partly our way of fitting in with one another, while maintaining some difference from our parents. Or, perhaps it was even a way for us to connect with the world outside of our small town... When you're young, you need to fit in. Ages 11-15 are all about "fitting in." That's why there are so many cliques and groups and social divisions being created at that age - we are sorting out the pecking order. Clinging to a pop music group, such as the Spice Girls, became the one common denominator among all of those cliques, though...and I guess that's why there will always be pop music, and it will always be appreciated more by young teenage girls than by music snobs...

This is an interesting thought, I'll have to think more on it and expand over the next few days. Until then, back to the Spice Girls...

When I moved to Meadow Lake, liking the Spice Girls, BSB, and other pop music groups helped me make my group of friends. Sadly, by the time their second album rolled around and we were all headed towards high school, having sorted out the pecking order of junior high, I could no longer appreciate "pop music." This second video of the Spice Girls features a song I hated! I didn't murder the lines as we sung along to it at dances (as I did to Britney Spears), but deep down inside, my body groaned from agony whenever my friends HAD to listen to Spice Girls' new cd while we got ready for the dance... Somethings, I learned, should stay in junior high...

Now, I actually kinda like this song... It's nostalgic!




Also, watching these videos as a twenty-something woman, I have a better appreciation for what the artists were going through in their life. Unlike the pop music of today, these songs are aimed at an older audience. I'll clarify that. They make no reference to school or class in their lyrics, and could therefore be appreciated by people (ie. adults) who no longer have to contend with those things in their lives. Part of it is probably nostalgia, but I will always like 90s pop music more than pop music produced in my adult life.

Just as an example:

Last weekend, I heard Katy Perry's "Peacock" song as I was riding along in my sister's truck. "How can artists put out music like this - that's so suggestive - to an audience as impressionable as teeny-bopper girls?"
"Well, they don't actually say any of the words, Jodi? What is it that YOU think they are referring to?" My sister tried to make me feel bad for the obvious interpretation of the song.
"Yeah, fine, you're right...." I conceded and a conversation regarding the censorship of sex over violence ensued. As I re-watched the first video of the Spice Girls posted here, I flashed back to listening to it as a young, impressionable girl myself. Yeah, I knew what they were referencing with "ziggy-ziggy-zig-ya" AND that was part of the APPEAL of the song. Granted, it talks about being the woman being respected in the relationship and having the option of saying "no" and "goodbye" if the other person in the relationship was "boring," or respectful to her. This "girl power" is what made the Spice Girls so famous, and accepted by the censors. So, this then makes me wonder, does Katy Perry carry the same girl power with her songs? Or, do we just assume that impressionable young minds don't understand what a "peacock" means?