Just when boys with guitars threaten to rule pop life – Damon’s all over Smash Hits, Ash are big in Big! and Liam can’t move for tabloid frenzy – an all-girl, in-your-face pop group have arrived with enough sass to burst their rockist bubble.

From Music Week, April 1996

I see that next week marks the 19th anniversary of the release of Wannabe. Coincidentally I came across this cutting while ferreting around my magazine archive: the first published interview with the Spice Girls, when they launched the promotional campaign for the single and I was a contributing editor at industry publication Music Week.

I remember quite a lot about my encounter with the five of them at Virgin Records hq in Ladbroke Grove, not least that they afforded opportunities for digs at the full-of-itself British rock cabal which had grown out of the damp squib which was Britpop.

//It wasn’t me. From Wannabe//

And I genuinely liked them; so much more fun to interview than somnolent dance acts, arrogant trip-hop nobodies, creaking “heritage” bores and dull guitarists. Musos to a man (and yes they generally were men).

The Spice Girls, on the other hand, looked great, were visually aware, mildly talented, didn’t really care about the music, had a winning way with a phrase and didn’t take any crap. Oh and I soon tired of them, which makes them proper pop stars in my view.

//The pay-off to my piece//

I’m also quite proud that I was on the money in terms of their impact on the music scene. A quick search around the net has revealed that Stuart Maconie recorded my piece as “prescient” in his 2014 book The People’s Songs. There we go.

Here’s the video for Wannabe. A confused older relative – who referred to the group as “The Spicer Girls” – would not be shaken from the conviction that I make a cameo appearance in this clip; I had a pair of vivid green trousers and matching shoes at the time and so does one of the cast. Look out for the bloke who isn’t me at 01.20:

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