Spice Girls’ ‘Wannabe’ is still a girl power anthem
To mark the 20th anniversary of the British release of The Spice Girls’ debut single Wannabe tomorrow (July 8), Spotify released some statistics on the track.
One of British pop’s pervading anthems from the ‘90s still remains relevant to many girl power flag-bearers. It has been streamed 94 million times on Spotify. That’s an equivalent of a thousand years of listening, according to the service.
37% of the 1996 track’s streamers are male, which disproves the theory that the band and the track appealed only to females.
Spice Girls fans make up 2.6 million monthly Spotify listeners. Their songs have been added to 6.7 million playlists. London is the city where the track is streamed the most, followed by Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Santiago and Los Angeles.
In terms of countries, the United States leads, followed by United Kingdom, Brazil, Germany is fourth and Mexico at fifth.
In Australia, Wannabe was at #1 for eleven weeks and was certified 2 x platinum. It was the fifth biggest hit in this country in 1996.
According to a Spotify survey released last year, Australians streamed it third most out of acts from the ‘90s. It was beaten by TLC’s Waterfalls and Third Eye Blind’s Semi Charmed Life.
Wannabe has had more resonance than the biggest hits by other girl groups as Destiny’s Child’s Say My Name (68 million streams) and All Saints’ Never Ever (10 million).
In the UK, Wannabe debuted at #3 six days after release, and jumped up to #1 the week after. It stayed at #1 for seven weeks. As of 2012, it had sold over 1.32 million copies, the biggest-selling single by a female group in the UK
While the Spotify data is released to coincide with its British release, Wannabe was released two weeks earlier in Japan and Southeast Asia, as their record company wanted to launch them as a global act. In fact, the Spice Girls were one of the first ‘90s acts to break into non-English speaking countries because of their strong image and colourful visuals.
This week a celebrity remake of Wannabe was uploaded to YouTube for the United Nations’ supported Project Everyone campaign. It pushes a series of UN global goals including education, gender and wage equality and an end to violence against women. It encourages girls to share a photo of themselves holding up a sign with what they want for the future, using the hashtag #WhatIReallyReallyWant.
Featured on the video are British girl band M.O., Taylor Hatala from Canada, Larsen Thompson from the US, Gigi Lamayne and Monoea from South Africa, Seyi Shay from Nigeria and Bollywood actress Jacqueline Fernandez from Sri Lanka.
“This is about modern day girl power,” said the video’s director MJ Delaney. “The Spice Girls were about a group of different women joining together and being stronger through that bond. “These differences are what we want to celebrate in this film, while showing there are some universal things that all girls, everywhere, really, really want.”
Mel C said she was “Flattered and honoured that our crazy song is being used so beautifully.” Victoria Beckham added, “Twenty years on — Girl Power being used to empower a new generation. So proud of The Global Goals.”
Plans for the band’s reunion for its 20th anniversary world tour is pushed back to 2017 as two members have decided not to be involved.