14 March 1997
This is a double-A-sided single of two halves. ‘Who Do You Think You Are’ is a down-the-line disco banger that plays to the Spice Girls’s strengths: it allows them to be energetic, fun, smart and assertive, without too many demands on the singing front. Notably, it’s their first single where one member comes to the fore: just by dint of being the only strong singer in the group, Mel C almost inadvertently becomes the lead vocalist here, and she gives the record much of its appeal and forward momentum. We’ll see her feature on more Spice Girls singles from here on, and in truth even carry them.
More telling, though, is that ‘Who Do You Think You Are’ was released on this single as the official song for that year’s BBC Comic Relief telethon, a pretty accurate signifier of nebulous UK mainstream celebrity. British pop has always felt the gravitational pull of Saturday night light entertainment, perhaps as a hangover from the days of music hall and end-of-the-pier cabarets; The Beatles telling the royal box to rattle their jewellery was actually conforming to this, not subverting it, and we’ll see this most egregiously again with the career arc of Robbie Williams. The ’00s even sees British chart pop and British prime-time Saturday night TV become the same thing. Here, the Spice Girls were now quantified as a set of five family-friendly cartoonish personas; they even had a catchphrase. The music would become secondary, and would sound so too.
Onwards to the second song. At this stage we can take it as read that Girl Power’s only relationship to real-world feminism, if any, was as a reductive commodification. Testament to that is ‘Mama’, a musical Hallmark card of a song released in time for Mother’s Day in the UK. Before a note is heard, that prospect is ominous enough. Press ‘play’ and the immediate wave of schmaltz is overbearing – bland R&B ballad rhythm, corny music, watery vocals. Still, the song shows a consistent Girl Power worldview by conferring on Everymama the ultimate Girl Power order of merit: friend. “You used to be my only enemy”, it starts, setting out the crux of the issue, before finding its resolution in the chorus: “Mama, my friend / You’re my friend”. When I recall how the Spice Girls project was seriously discussed at the time as a sort of post-feminist new era of apolitical female empowerment, and see today how women’s rights are being eroded by conservative politicians and hijacked by appalling anti-trans and anti-immigrant scaremongering, then 1997 seems like quaint times indeed.
