Top 5 Girl Groups

I discussed Boy Bands last week, so it's only fair to show the ladies some love.  Here's some of my favorite Girl Groups songs

5.  "Whatta Man" by Salt-n-Pepa featuring En Vogue

This is what was great about music in the 1990s.  An incredible rap girl group with one of the greatest female vocal groups of the time.  This song exudes confidence, fun and attitude and features an irresistible beat and an unforgettable hook.



4.  "Goodbye" by The Spice Girls


After Ginger Spice left, The Spice Girls recorded this heartfelt song about the transitions in life.  The Spice Girls invigorated pop music in the 1990s.  Recent tours have proved that they weren't just a flash in the pan and that their message of Girl Power truly had meaning (this earlier post discussed "Wannabe."


3.  "Celebrity Skin" by Hole


This movie trailer about the drummer from Hole reminds us the importance of this band. 


This was a great band and while "Celebrity Skin" may be one of their more mainstream songs, it's a delightful but dark confession by Courtney Love that was part of her come back after the death of her husband and rock legend Kurt Cobain.


2.  "Wide Open Spaces" by The Dixie Chicks


One of the comments people often say about the Dixie Chicks is about how well they can play.  I wrote this earlier post about their powerful song "Not Ready To Be Nice," about their controversial statements about President Bush (as well as this post about "Easy Silence").  My first exposure to this ladies was "Wide Open Spaces" a beautiful tribute to nature.  The most amazing thing about this song is musically it sounds so beautiful and open you can almost feel the sunshine.

1.  "There's No Stopping Us Now" by The Supremes


Most people know The Supremes from "You Can't Hurry Love" (which I discussed in this earlier post).  "There's No Stopping Us Now" shows Diana Ross opening up with the elegant Supremes providing Heavenly back-up.

Confusing Old Navy Commercials

Old Navy bringing back "Sister Christian"!!



Awesome.

And then there's:



which is a version of this:



This just feels kind of wrong.  I really can't explain why, but it just doesn't . . . um . . . sigh

You Can’t Hurry Love by The Supremes

If you ask me for advice on how to maintain a healthy relationship with someone you love, I have a couple of words of advice. Now I don’t think my relationship with my wife, Diana is the greatest thing EVER, but I am proud of the our relationship and the role we have play in each other lives. My experiences with Diana give me some perspective on what works and what doesn’t and I’m happy to pass on my thoughts subject.

Now if you ask me what’s the best way to find that special someone, I got nothing for you. Diana and I met her freshmen year (my junior year) at Northwestern University at marching band camp. Now marching band rehearsed Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and most of the time we had football games on Saturdays. We were also in the Alice Millar Chapel Choir which rehearsed on Tuesday and Thursdays and performed every Sunday. So it wasn’t exactly a challenge for me to find time to get to know Diana. I literally saw her every single day.

Diana and I have absolutely no illusions about the sheer luck, happenstance, or fate if you will that brought us together. Most people are not as fortunate as Diana and I and “You Can’t Hurry Love” by Supremes gives the sage advice that I pass on to my friends whenever they ask me for help finding that special someone.



I love “You Can’t Hurry Love.” It’s hopeful, innocent and simply a joy. I get so happy listening and thinking about this song. On a musical level, I totally geek out more over Motown music than many other genres of music. Every time I listen to a song produced in the height of Motown I find something new to be amazed about. If you’ve read this blog for any amount of time you know how excited I get about music, but with Motown I just get me giddy with joy.

It opens with baseline and tambourine. Then the drums come in and when Diana Ross starts singing everything drops out except for a relaxed, and hip guitar line accompanied by the bass drum of the drum set playing the rhythm of the bass line. Building up the instruments you get interested, feel the grove and by dropping out instruments right when Diana enters, it draws you into her voice like she is whispering you a secret.

Then there’s the colors. Motown is all about using bright vibrant musical color combination. Diana’s voice in the chorus is doubled with muted trumpets that are slightly whiny and vibraphone, which gives a little pop the beginning of each note. This arrangement of sounds just adds a layer of light to the sound bringing out the melody in a subtle and beautiful way.

Diana isn’t the greatest singer of all time, but the Motown producers wrote songs that perfectly fit her voice. The way she accentuates the ending consonants of the words works even though outside of the context of this song sounds just weird. She singing about getting advice from her mom and her thin yet bright voice captures that youthful spirit that so many people connect with.

In there anything sweeter than when Diana sings “keeps on waiting, anticipating” and hesitates in the middle of the word “anticipating,” as we wait for the end of the word. It’s a small thing but it’s SO exciting. The creativity and expression, not only having great words but singing in a way that makes you understand the meaning even if you don’t know the language. It’s awesome.

When you’re down and about to give up on love, you can’t forget how great love can be and how wonderful the idea of love is. Hope begets hope. By thinking about how great love can be, it makes you want to believe that it exists even more.

You can’t make love happen, but that’s what makes it so great. Be patient it’ll come. Now when do find that person let me know. We’ll see what we can do to make that hope a reality.

Easy Silence by The Dixie Chicks

. . . smuggled guns use in cartel hits . . . 3 killed when plane hits house . . . N.J. Man Tells Cops He Threw Baby Off Bridge. . . high school in lockdown over gun threat . . . Snipers Bedevil U.S. Troops. . . abuse, violence, neglect, pain, suffering, life, sometimes it’s just all too much to take.

It all just makes you tired sometimes. The way a dark, cold winter day saps away your strength, the darkness of the world tears at your spirit. Some days I don’t want to turn on the television or even leave the house so I don’t have to face all the terrors that are unfortunately part of the human condition. However, ever I day I get up, go to work do the best I can at my job and even though some days it’s more of a struggle than others I haven’t given up yet and I think I know why.

When the Dixie Chicks released Taking The Long Way, their response to the overblown criticism they received for making a joke about President Bush (W.) during the early days of the Iraq war their lead single was “Not Ready To Be Nice.” This incredible statement of strength and conviction is one of my favorite songs of all time (I reflected on this song and the controversy in this earlier post).



What opened their album Taking The Long Way, was not this forceful and passionate anthem but a personal, soft, love song, “Easy Silence.” This unique and touching statement of gratitude is one of the Dixie Chicks finest and most nuanced works and one of Diana’s, my wife’s favorite songs.



Finding her most personal expression not in belting but singing softly as a mother to her child, Natalie Maines lists of the pressures of the world. Starting with smooth alliteration, “calls and conversations, accidents and accusations, messages and misperceptions.” Maines reflects how these things “paralyze my mind.” The anger in the second verse builds to a need for something to believe in. Where she finds her sanity, her peace, herself at the end of the day is in this “easy silence.”

As Maines lists off all of the things that tear her down there is not so much anger but sadness. The steady guitar strumming creates a feeling of security in the predictability of the beat but also adds a level of tension as it never ceases like the world turning. Violin lines intertwine in the middle range of the instrument as they search for meaning within all of the madness.

At the core of this song is what Maines describes as her "easy silence." This moment is the security of being at home, being held by a loved one. It’s the sanctuary of faith, of hope. It’s knowing that the sun will come up tomorrow and that as much as people fall in the depth of the human heart there are many who raise above and continue to bring light into the world.

In the insanity of the world, the constant information, there is true peace in silence. Being there for someone isn’t so much what you say but your presence, not only physically but mentally and emotionally being there.

When someone is completely there for you and with you they create a place where nothing can harm you. It’s a place that pain can be felt, tears can be cried and where in this catharsis we find the strength to go on.

Through the magic of music the Dixie Chicks have created silence through music.

Shake A Tail Feather by The Five Du-Tones

It
Jelly

Back
Booty
Rump

Bottom
Groove Thang

Figured out what we’re talking about yet?

Throughout the history of popular music artists have come up with different words for the buttocks. Maybe it’s because “buttocks” is kind of a hard word to rhyme with or because using euphemism for this body part got around the censors. But it’s probably because using slang is simply more fun. And one of the first songs in popular music to sing about the buttocks was “Shake A Tail Feather.”

Most people know this song from the Ray Charles performance in The Blue Brothers.
There were many memorable scenes from this film, considered by many the best films inspired by a Saturday Night Live skit, but few capture the sheer joy of soul music like Ray Charles convincing the Jake and Elwood the quality of a second hand organ by singing “Shake A Tail Feather.”



The origins of this song begin almost twenty years earlier when the Chicago-based group the Five Du-Tones originally recorded “Shake a Tail Feather in 1963.



A joyous and carefree song, “Shake A Tail Feather” portrays a man trying to convince a girl to go out dancing with him. The four lines of first and only verse in this song act as an invitation to dance building up to the chorus.

The chorus starts with a bang on the word “Twist it” but then pulls the momentum back down building up from “bend over, let me you see you shake your tail feather” back up into the beginning of next chorus in an celebratory and infectious way.

The Five Du-Tones recording of this song is a mess, but it’s a beautiful one. It’s got a great groove but it’s not exactly steady and though the vocals are soulful they are a little out of control at moments, but all these shortcoming don't really matter. There’s an electricity and energy in the dirtiness of this recording that you rarely hear in music of today.

In the 1970s as part, Ike & Tina Turner included “Shake A Tail feather” as part of their famous touring review. While there is no doubt that Ike Turner was physically and emotionally abusive to Tina Turner, he was a musical genius polishing soul music up for the masses without loosing its grit and soul.




This recording of “Shake a Tail Feather” is ferocious featuring Tina’s voice, one of the most powerful in rock music. The hilarious exchange between Tina and her back-up singers goading each other on to shake each other’s “tail feather” is hilarious, fun and kind of dirty.

Then in 2003 came “Shake Ya Tailfeather” by Nelly featuring Puff Daddy and Murphy Lee, a rap song written for the Will Smith film Bad Boys 2.



Even though this song won the Grammy for best rap performance by a duo or a group, this song is a mediocre showing that completely drops the ball on an amazing musical opportunity. Instead of sampling “Shake a Tail Feather” or utilizing the phrase with any prominence, it is uttered at the end of the chorus. This song lacks any of the infectious energy that both Nelly and Puff Daddy often featured in their music.

Someone needed to record this song again and bring the song back to its original glory. It is a travesty that a generation credit a mediocre rap song for introducing the phrase "shake a tail feather." Someone had to do something about this and two years later one band brought this song back to its roots: THE CHEETAH GIRLS!!!

Yeah, you heard me right, the Cheetah Girls.

A rock group created for a Disney television film (ala Hannah Montana), the Cheetah Girls recorded a version of “Shake A Tail Feather” for Disney’s CGI remake of Chicken Little.



Their version is exactly what you expect out of a Disney pre-teen orientated rock band. It’s poppy, fun, 60s inspired with the Disney’s characteristic musical sheen. Now watching the music video and seeing the silhouettes of the girls with actually tail feathers is a little disturbing and honestly do these girls have to be singing so sensually?

Sigh, whatever at least we are getting back to the roots of this song . . . wait a second . . . now that I think about it, isn't comparing a girl to a chicken isn't exactly flattering. Also, isn't this song a little demanding? He doesn't so much invite the girl to dance but demand it. The connotations imply a specific gender paradigm in which . . . Tang! STOP your brain and just enjoy the song. . . geez. . .

Travelin' Soldier by The Dixie Chicks

"Travelin’ Soldier" live performance

Many people take the opportunity on this memorial day weekend to go on vacation, have barbeques and spend time with family. Memorial day also marks the end of the school year providing a feeling of freedom for children (and teachers) all across America. With all of this excitement, sometimes it’s easy to overlook the point of Memorial day.

Celebrated near the day of reunification after the Civil War, Memorial Day originally honored Union soldiers who had died in the America Civil War. After World War I, the American government changed the day to include all Americans who died in war or military action.

How do we honor all those have made the ultimate sacrifice? When I think of the magnitude of loss, it’s too much for me to comprehend. In World War II, we lost around 290,000, in Vietnam, 47,000 and in our current war in Iraq, we have lost 4,250 as of April 30, 2009. I have issues imagining what 4,250 people look like in as a crowd let alone 290,000. I don’t even have a chance of relating to the emotional power of this kind of loss when I have issues with simply picturing that many people.

Human understanding does not lie in groups but in individual connection and its through the stories of individuals, that we can get a sense of what this all means to who we are as a people. Often the stories that we hear about veterans are the heroic tales of soldiers who win purple hearts. The story is about a different kind of hero. It’s about a teenage girl, a chance encounter and the love of a traveling soldier.

Bruce Robison wrote and recorded “Travelin’ Soldier” in 1996. Ty England also recorded this song in 1999 but it was the Dixie Chick version off their 2002 album Home that became a hit. Home, their third album with lead singer Natalie Maines (sixth album as the Dixie Chicks) displayed a musical maturity not heard on their previous albums. The Dixie Chicks contrasted Home from their previous two albums fusing their pop sensibility with a more acoustic bluegrass sound, which is most notably heard on their second single “Long Time Gone.”

“Travelin’ Soldier” is the story of a teenage girl meets a soldier while working at a café. The girl notices he is a little shy, so she smiles at him and he asks if she has some time to talk. The soldier tells her that he doesn’t have anyone to write to and asks if he can write a letter to him. We don’t hear the girls response, instead the chorus flashes forward to a time when the girl has fallen in love with him.

The chorus is a simple but powerful description of teenage love. The first two words of the chorus “I cried” are followed by a declaration of commitment saying that she will never hold the hand of another guy. She states that their love will never end as she waits for him to come back. The chorus ends “never more to be alone when the letter said ‘A soldier coming home.’” With this notification that the soldier is coming home the melody descends and the instruments seem to pull into themselves like a shallow breath, foreshadow the end of the story.

The next verse follows the soldier’s letters and his commitment to her. He writes all the way from Vietnams and reminisces about the time they had together. He tells her of his heart and how “it might be love.” Even within the dire situation of war, this soldier is thinking of love and what it means.

The last verse is set at a football game. As part of the opening ceremonies, an announcer reads of a list of local Vietnam dead. As the rest of the crowd seems to move on with the game, the girl, a piccolo player in the marching band cries alone under the stands.

Her hopes were high. She found companionship in the soldier, in his letters and the promise of him coming home. In the eyes of a teenager, this means the world, and the loss of her soldier was not only a loss of companion and a love but loss of hope.

Often when we hear stories of teenage love, they sound trite, but Natalie Maines takes this story seriously. Maines scales back her voice, drawing in the listener as she carefully paints the lyrics with the colors in her voice.

The Dixie Chicks, set up the last chorus, pulling the instruments down to a moment of silence in the last verse behind the words “Vietnam dead.” After this silence, Maines enters on the word “crying.” She sounds almost angry when she sings about no one else caring, like she’s screaming at everyone to look at the girl, to feel her loss and to acknowledge what has been lost.

Part of me feels like I want to shake up our country and remind everyone the point of Memorial Day, but maybe it’s in enjoying, truly cherishing the freedoms in our lives that we honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice. Maybe it's enough, maybe it's not. And taking a moment to think about this leads us to the meaning of this day.

"I have never been able to think of the day as one of mourning; I have never quite been able to feel that half-masted flags were appropriate on Decoration Day. I have rather felt that the flag should be at the peak, because those whose dying we commemorate rejoiced in seeing it where their valor placed it. We honor them in a joyous, thankful, triumphant commemoration of what they did."
~Benjamin Harrison

Love Child by the Supremes

I took a sociology class my freshmen year at Northwestern University. One of the books I read for this class was Sidewalk by Mitchell Duneier. This book documented the life of homeless people in New York City and explained how they handled different aspects in their life like how they made money found food. One aspect that I never thought about was their romantic life. I just assumed that homeless people didn’t have boyfriends or husbands. I didn’t really think that someone who get their food from a trash could have a sex life, but they do.

Duneier discuss where homeless people find places to be romantic, make love and how these relationships in many way are not that different than the relationships of those of us who are fortunate enough to live comfortably. However, like most things for people who are in poverty, romance and sex is more challenging and in some ways is not as enjoyable.

Everything from fancy dinners, sexy underwear and romantic vacations all contribute to people’s enjoyment of each other. One of the less apparent advantages but important ones is birth control. Whether it’s condoms or pills, these things all cost money. If those things fail, people of means have much more resources and options when it comes to abortions and putting children up for adoption. The lack of options of people in poverty and the fear of an unwanted baby drives the narrator in “Love Child.”

I always found “Love Child” to be one of the most intriguing songs that the Supremes recorded. The Supremes set the standard for what it meant to be a girl group. Motown built up the Supremes with an image of high-class elegance singing some of the best crated pop songs in music history. Most of the songs are relatively light in their subject matter, contemplating idealized romantic love through a variety of situations.

After two failed singles, Berry Gordy the owner of Motown records got a group of songwriters called The Clan to work on a new hit single for the Supremes. What they created was not a song about romantic love but a song about a woman trying to explain to her boyfriend why she doesn’t want to have sex with him. Can you imagine pitching this song idea to a pop radio station? The subject doesn’t sound like something that most people would want to listen to but “Love Child” holds as the Supremes best selling single, outselling all of their other 45 releases. It was so successful it knocked off The Beatles’ enormous hit “He Jude” off the number one spot on the pop charts.

Diana Ross, the lead singer of the Supremes takes on the roll of a woman who was born a “love child.” This is another term for a child born to unwed parents. Her mother was poor and Diana’s character grew up in a tenement slum. She describe is the first verse how she never knew her father and that she carries the guilt from her mother about the fact that she has no name. In the second verse Diana, describe starting school in a second hand dress. There is pain in not having the things that her friends had but what is even more painful is the guilt that she carries.

This first hand experience as a “love child” motivates Diana’s character to try to convince her boyfriend to hold off making love because the possibility of creating a “love child” that they will both end up hating this child. Diana’s character asserts that if she has a illegitimate child that it will carry the same shame and guilt that she carries.

There are attitudes in our society about children born out of wedlock, but I wonder if the level of shame and guilt that Diana’s character experiences comes more from her mother than society. Diana’s character herself feels ashamed of her own existence and this is one of the most shocking things about this song. She talks about a “love child” as being “never meant to be” and if there is any doubt that she is referring to herself, she sings in the end of the first chorus “take a look at me.”

“Love Child” ends with a declaration of love. In an earlier section she explains to her boyfriend that she wants to please him and that she needs him which is followed by talking about a the love child they may create. So when Diana starts signing “I’ll always love you,” my initial thought was that she was singing to her boyfriend. In declaring that she loves him, maybe she is attempting to assuage his advances by expressing a level of commitment that would make up for not making love. The more I listen to this song, the more I think that she’s probably not singing to him, but to herself and to her child.

As Diana sings “I will always love you” it sounds more like a desperate cry than a declaration of romantic love. After telling herself and her future child how much she thinks they are both mistakes, she realizes how wrong she is and tries to convince them otherwise. Was she being so negative as a reflection of how she truly feels or in an effort to convince her boyfriend not to force her to have sex? Either way by the end of the song, with the back-up singers reminding us that the being a “love child” is on her mind, she sings about love, apologizing to herself and her future child.

Diana Ross stretches her dramatic abilities as a singer in “Love Child.” In earlier songs written for the Supremes, Diana’s thin, gentle and conversational voice worked in those songs. She doesn’t have a large range, or a great degree of variety in her tone but “Love Child” she approaches a level of rawness, expressing an internal struggle as she pushes her voice creating a level of intensity that drives the song as much as background instruments.

The Andantes, Motown’s session singers sang on this record instead of the Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong, the other two members of the Supremes. The Andantes begin the song singing on “oo” while softly rising. Then right before Diana enters they sing a high tense “ah” that comes across like a woman screaming. This happens a couple times during the song expressing the turmoil in the main character’s mind and makes it clear to the listener that there is a level of pain to be dealt with in this song.

Sometimes I wonder, what is the point of a song like “Love Child.” It’s not especially happy and it doesn’t put me in a great mood to listen to it. I’m sure some people who feel like Diana Ross’ character can relate to it, but I don’t really relate to most of this song. Is this song suppose to make me feel bad about poor people motivating me to go help them? I don’t think so, and that’s one reason why I like this song. It’s not preachy but instead it’s an interesting examination of a human conflict. These kinds of stories come from all different place, sometimes it’s from Green Bow, Alabama with a guy names Forrest and other times it comes from a tenement slum. What great stories do is help us know another person for a moment and in that experience we feel things that we don’t normally do, and get perspective on our lives.

It’s important that we are aware of the struggles of others, not so that we can feel guilty all of the time and spend our lives doing charity work. We all should work to help others but people’s choices about charity are their own prerogative. However, it is essential that we are aware of struggles like the one in “Love Child” because it is through understanding each struggle that we realize that there is no individual experience but only a shared humanity that binds us, challenges us and brings us closer to each other and ourselves.

Wannabe by the Spice Girls

"Wannabe" music video

One time I was helping chaperone a group of middle school students (5th or 6th graders) on a trip to a movie theater. As we were walking in the parking lot after the movie, I heard some of the girls talking about guys they thought were cute and how they wanted to get their phone numbers. I asked the group, “Well, once you do get the phone number of a guy that you like, what do you?” One of the girls responded, “Well, what you do is get their numbers, but you don’t call them, that would just be weird.”

Young girls have interesting and sometimes mystifying ideas about love and friendship. Almost all of the drama in the 4th graders I work with comes from the girls. There are fights over many topics including what to play at recess and who wasn’t invited to a birthday party. They conflicts are over the way they think they are perceived by their friends and not being able to work through misunderstandings. I’m not saying their isn’t drama among the male students but it’s different. With the boys I observe, the conflicts less emotional and there is more of a focused on solving the issue as opposed to understanding the feelings involved. I’m not saying that guys are smarter or dumber than girls. However, there are clear differences in the way that boys and girls socialize and mature and whether that is due to nature or nurture does not change the fact that it is apparent and prevalent.

When Elvis Presley broke out in the late 1950s, America witnessed something they had never seen before, pre-teen and teenage girls screaming in excitement. This escalated to hysterics when the Beatles became popular in the 1960s and artists and producers have since marketed music towards the pre-teen and teenage girl demographic. Pop groups that were created to appeal this audience included the Jackson 5, New Edition, New Kids On the Block and the Backstreet boys. Then in 1996, for the first time a pop group made of woman were manufactured and marketed for young female audiences introducing the world to the Spice Girls.

Don’t worry, I don’t think the Spice Girls are the greatest pop group of all time and I don’t think that “Wannabe” is a critical, and defining artifact in our cultural canon of art. However, “Wannabe” an insight into not only the minds of young girls but into the power that art can have in speaking to a specific audiences. And anyways, this song is just fun.

When the Beatles first came to America, the press gave them nicknames, John was the smart one, Paul was the cute one, George was the quiet on and Ringo was the funny one. This inadvertently helped market the Beatles to girls as each Beatle now represented different types of guys and because of this, there seemed like there was a Beatle for every type of girl. The Spice Girls took the idea a step further and made it more personal. Instead of helping girls identifying and define the kind of guy they liked, their Spice Girl personas were something that girls could identify their own personalities with. If you loved sports, you had Sporty Spice. If you loved shopping, there was Posh spice. If you were a little cutesy, there was Baby Spice. I guess some girls like the idea of being Scary Spice (I don’t claim to completely understand the minds of young girls), and well honestly, I’m don’t have a clue what kind of girl is Ginger Spice (maybe it’s a British thing).

The Spice Girls released “Wannabe” as their first single, which was their opening statement on their term “girl power.” In the song, the girls explain what they want and what someone would have to do to become one of their “lovers.” Once upon a time like most kids I thought that lover was just a term for someone that you loved. It wasn’t until I watched the trailer for the Ellen DeGeneres’ film, Mr. Wrong, which featured Bill Pullman describing Ellen’s character as his lover and make a thrusting motion that I realized that lover meant “sexual partner.” I was fourteen years old when I came to this realization and I think most kids don’t really understand the full context of the word “lover” and I don’t think that the Spice Girls are really talking about sex. Some of the lyrics have sexual overtones like “I won’t be hasty, I’ll give you a try” but it’s followed by “If you really bug me then I’ll say goodbye.” This line makes it seem like she’s giving the guy a try as a boyfriend, not a sexual partner as most people have figured out if the person “bugs” them before taking them as a lover (we hope).

Like the girls I talked to at the mall, the Spice Girls have a sense of what relationships mean but they don’t really know what they want. The song opens with Scary Spice singing about how she will tell us what she wants. And after listening to her tease us for 15 seconds about what she wants she tells us that what she really wants is “zigazig ha.” That’s exactly the kind of thinking that the middle school girls I was talking to me displayed. They do things to get a guy but they are devoid of understanding of what they really want from a guy once they got one.

Young girls may have already developed a desire for boyfriends but they may not have developed their self-esteem and an understanding of what they deserve as a girlfriend. The Spice Girls help girls understand what kind of standards to have with some simple guidelines:

Your past should not be your boyfriend’s focus. Relationships should never feel like a waste of time. A boyfriend should make an effort to be friends with your friends. A boyfriend should enjoy giving things to you and you should feel the same way. Be patient with boys, give them a chance, but if they are annoying it’s ok to dump them and um. . slam your body down and wind it all around . . . fall on the ground and wind up into a ball? (I never said that this was a perfectly interrelated song).

These ideas are not only important for girls to understand but are good advice for boys. The album that featured “Wannabe,” Spice sold over seven million copies in the United States, so I’m sure that some guys bought it, I mean, I couldn’t have possibly been the only guy to buy that album.

The singing in this song is unremarkable. The first verse starts after the whole “zigazig ha” thing. Sporty Spice begins the verse with her closed and thin nasal voice and is followed by Baby Spice who has a pleasant voice but lacks much tone and energy. Scary Spice follows singing with great energy her singing technique more resembles yelling than singing and Ginger completes the verse barely able to define the pitches she is singing. It’s not good and we are spared the worst singer of the group Posh Spice (Mrs. Victoria Beckham) singing a solo line but if you really want to know what she sounds like by herself check out “2 Becomes 1” and slide to the middle of the second verse (1:27). Seriously, who thought it was a good idea to give her a solo during a slow song?

The Spice Girls are not exemplary singing models but that’s ok. Most middle school girls do not have the vocal capacity to emulate an opera singer or even Beyonce. The Spice Girl’s voices are not threatening. They sing in a way that young girls cannot only relate to but can also imitate. There’s a level of accessibility to the music when people can not only understand a piece of art but replicate it and the Spice Girls create this for not only young girls but for people of all ages.

When there is music that you don’t understand, try to find out who does get it. Musicians often create music for a specific audience and often art will make more sense when you see it through the eyes of the intended audience. With this perspective, will you instantly enjoy the song? You might, but even if you don’t you will understand just a little bit more about that audience.

Now here’s the answer to the most important question.

God knows I am not coordinated enough to be Sporty. Scary, yeah right I’m about as scary as a My Little Pony, Baby, seriously maybe when I WAS a baby. I still don’t know what Ginger is and even if I go with the South Park definition, I don’t have freckles or red hair. So that leaves, Posh.

If I was a Spice Girl, I’d be Posh Spice.

I can live with that.

“Slam your body down and wind it all around!”