Songoftheday 1/23/21 - When you're feelin' sad and low, we will take you where you gotta go...

"Spice Up Your Life" - Spice Girls

from the album Spiceworld (1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #18 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 15

Today's song of the day comes from the British female pop vocal group Spice Girls, whose debut album Spice had gone to #1 and spun off three top ten pop hits in America with "2 Become 1", "Say You'll Be There", and the #1 smash "Wannabe". "2 Become 1" peaked on the charts in September of 1997, and a month later Baby, Sporty, Scary, Posh, and Ginger Spice returned with their new single "Spice Up Your Life", from their upcoming second album Spiceworld as well as their musical comedy movie of the same name. Written by the group with their producers Richard Stannard and Matt Rowe, the song had a frenetic samba beat with some vague allusion to dance moves and a general call to party and be upbeat while fleetingly name-checking 70s hits "Dancing Queen" and "Kung Fu Fighting" for no reason. And you know, while the song is a bunch of fun, it's just SO MUCH. The production just hits you like a wall and doesn't let up, as if they were required to fill in every millisecond of space with sound. Looking back it just doesn't hold up to their other songs as well (for me lol). And speaking of too much, the no-holds-back budget music video screams late 1990s in its desire to outdo whatever CGI tricks were already out that day...

I mean, it's obvious the directors loved the movie Blade Runner, but the whole thing is so damn dark and depressing for what's supposed to be a party song. Which is why the UK didn't mind, I guess...

While "Spice Up Your Life" became the Girls' fifth top-40 pop hit in the U.S. in November of 1997, the single missed the top ten by a big margin. The song did provide the group with their biggest club hit, peaking at #4 on Billboard magazine's Dance Club Play chart, their only single to make the top ten. Internationally, the song was massive, though, going to #1 in their native UK, as well as in Iceland, Hungary, and Romania, and reached the top ten in Canada (#2), Spain (#2), Sweden (#2), Ireland (#2), Belgium (#2W/#4F), New Zealand (#2), Denmark (#2), Finland (#2), France (#3), Italy (#3), Norway (#3), the Netherlands (#4), Switzerland (#5), and Australia (#8). The Spiceworld album, released in November as the single was at its peak, came in at #3 on the Billboard 200 sales chart in America, going on to be the 10th biggest album of 1998 on Billboard's year-end tally. The Spice World movie, which came out in December in Europe and January in the States, was also just as successful, grossing 151 million dollars off of a bare-bones budget of 25 million. Not bad at all.

(6/10)

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Here's the "Carnival Club Remix" of the track by David Morales that helped the song reach the top five on the dance chart....