Time once again for all things niche and pop with Pop Essays. And this week: we argue the case for the most misunderstood of the solo Spice Girl projects…
- Artist: Victoria Beckham
- Song: I Wish
- Released: 01/10/2001 (on “Victoria Beckham” album)
- Writers / Producers: Eugene Wilde / Carsten Schack / Kenneth Karlin / Peter Biker
- Highest UK Chart Position: #10 (on Official UK Album Chart)
- Chart Run: 10 – 35 – 85 – 67
News this week that there are rumours – albeit unconfirmed – that Simon Fuller is proposing an avatar style concert for the Spice Girls, akin to ABBA’s hugely successful Voyage extravaganza in London – now into its third year – has been met with excitement to equal parts incredulity online amongst their fans and the media.
Since the quartet of Geri Halliwell, Emma Bunton and Mels B and C embarked on their hugely successful Spiceworld stadium tour of the UK and Ireland in the summer of 2019, landmark anniversaries for their albums have come and gone with accompanying reissues, all largely without the input of Victoria Beckham, who had long turned her attention to fashion after her last public performance to date with the girls, at the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics.
One could argue that they are all still in a position where they could realistically tour together again, and aren’t yet at the stage where, like ABBA, they need to make an avatar of themselves a feasible option. But on the other hand, given the way Victoria has largely spent the last quarter of a century trying to forget that she ever was a singer in the first place, one can’t help but think this is a case where the media have made their own beds, had a shit in it, and are now kicking off at having to lie in it.
Let’s rewind and deal with the facts. Victoria was the last of the girls to launch her own music outside the band. And given her status as one half of one of the most photographed and talked about couples in the public eye, and who had – unfairly – the biggest question mark drawn over her abilities, she was not really given a fair crack of the whip as the others had.
The huge whirlwind of publicity and hype that surrounded her guest appearance on “Out Of Your Mind” for True Steppers and Dane Bowers in the summer of 2000, proved to be the peak where public interest matched up with sales; to this day, it still has the highest first week sale for any solo project from outside the Spice Girls of around 180,000 copies.
But from the moment that single missed out on number one to Spiller and Sophie Ellis-Bextor, until the release of her final single, the double-A-side of “This Groove / Let Your Head Go” in December 2003, there seemed to be more interest and speculation in what the records would sound like than interest in the music itself when it was released.
That she was the only one of the girls not to land a number one single away from the band is telling, in so far as even then, she probably couldn’t have done right for doing wrong. Any wonder, then, that the endless media barrage took its toll to the point she publicly concurred with the narrative they had driven, meaning she spent the whole of the 2012 Olympics performance looking like a startled cat in a sink.
But let us suspend reality for a moment, if only to try and be one of the voices of reason where Victoria was concerned as a solo artist. Firstly: she could sing. It was different from how, say, Mel C or Emma Bunton sounded, or even Geri or Mel B sounded, but she didn’t need to be them. It was a pleasant voice, perhaps more rooted in her extensive musical theatre training (she went to the prestigious Laine Theatre Arts, and prior to the band had the lead role in a musical, Bertie. And lest we forget her audition piece for the group was “Mein Herr” from Cabaret) but that didn’t mean it was a lesser voice.
Secondly, the decision to pursue a cooler pop sound with a slight feel of US R&B for her self titled and only commercially released debut in the autumn of 2001 was a canny one; in fact, it wasn’t that far removed from the route the Spice Girls themselves had pursued on their most recent album, Forever, where they had worked with the likes of Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.
Admittedly, the choice of “Not Such An Innocent Girl” as the first single was a baffling one, if only insofar as it’s message of not judging a person by their seemingly innocent demeanour (“Don’t wrap me up in cotton wool, upon a pedestal / I’m not such an innocent girl”) was a case of mistaken identity that surely, applied more to Baby Spice than it did Posh. (Although its Jake Nava directed “Good Posh vs Bad Posh” concept video remains an absolute serve, and that’s a hill we’ll commit to).
But a closer inspection of the self titled album reveals some potential singles that, in our alternate reality, where she had established herself as the British equivalent of say, Jennifer Lopez (and we say J.Lo because she was perhaps the closest example of a huge multimedia figure who’d crossed over into music successfully whilst pursuing a similar sort of sound), would have absolutely smashed.
“I Wish” is chief among these. The song was produced and written, in the main, by SoulShock and Karlin, a Danish hailing production team who were based in Los Angeles, and whose CV reads like a who’s-who of the cream of superstars: Whitney Houston, Toni Braxton, Brandy, Luther Vandross, Boyz II Men and Madonna. They’d even remixed one of the Spice Girls‘ singles before (“Too Much”), and would later go onto write and produce hits for the likes of JoJo (“Leave (Get Out)”), Jamelia (“Thank You”), Alesha Dixon (“Breathe Slow”) and JLS (“One Shot”).
It starts with that clipped, pizzicato harpsichord sound that just screams R&B influenced pop from the early 00s, with a slightly phoned in set of ad-libs that give way to the verses: “I saw you outside, getting out your ride / A CLK 430, you got style / As soon as I checked you out, a ladies’ man no doubt / From head to toe you’re all class, and I like it”.
There’s a bit of call and response with the BVs on the bridge – “(How about you buy me a rose cause I think) / This is gonna get a little interesting / (Let’s see where this conversation goes) / I’m not sure that I want you to know” – before the chorus hits: “I wish I could right now / Wish that I could show you how, I’m feeling you / Boy I try, I can’t hide / How badly I want you tonight, I gotta fight it”.
It’s immensely catchy the more you hear it. Furthermore, there’s a sense of playfulness in the game of flirtatious yet aloof cat and mouse that’s being described in the lyrics. And the world being painted around it of classy, champagne lifestyles was a little bit closer, we would argue, to what people’s preconceptions of Victoria were.
Indeed, Virgin Records initially seemed to concur, as “I Wish” was being lined up as the third single to follow “A Mind Of Its Own”, in what would have been a remixed single version featuring guest vocals from Robbie Craig, who’d had success with Artful Dodger on their hit “Woman Trouble” (their one and only performance of it together on Ian Wright’s talk show is the one we’ve embedded here for the purpose of this blog).
But Victoria announcing her pregnancy with her second son, Romeo, not long after this performance, plus mounting costs from the production of the album that hadn’t translated back to sufficient sales (it barely cleared 50,000 copies all told) meant her and Virgin Records parted ways in June 2002.
No one can say that Victoria Beckham didn’t try her best or put in any effort at all to making her own music work. But it is almost as if the teams around her were just giving into the tide of media antipathy and not providing her with even a fighting chance before she’d properly got going. Perhaps if “I Wish” had appeared first, maybe we wouldn’t now be in a situation 25 years later where she is actively forgetting – and in some cases trying to erase – that this time of her career and life even existed.
Don’t forget to follow our Pop Essays playlist on Spotify, which includes this and all the songs we’ve written about. What are your memories of this week’s featured song or artist? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below or message us on our Instagram.
The Niche Reference 