Once upon a time, there was a girl group named The Spice Girls.
They were the greatest, most Girl Power-iest, most zig-a-zig-ahh girl group in all of the land, reaching the highest of heights in pop culture with only two albums under their little black dresses and Union Jack belts…until one member left, and then it all got dark very quickly. (We don’t have to talk about it. It’s hard, still.)
Now, out of nowhere, four demos from Forever, the final album recorded by the ever-iconic Spice, have surfaced on the Internet.
Post-Geri Haliwell departure, the girls were struggling to adapt to the rapidly shifting sound of radio, which quickly transformed from bubblegum Euro-pop (which they utterly dominated) to all-out American R&B. As a result, many of the songs they’d been working on while out on tour were scrapped or reworked in order to suit the sound of Y2K.
There are three new songs included in this miracle leak: The nostalgia inducing, classic ’90’s-sounding “If It’s Lovin’ On Your Mind,” “A Day In Your Life,” a fairly embarrassing, platitude-filled guitar jam (“Dance like nobody’s watching!”) and “Pain Proof,” a feisty, En Vogue-esque burst of rock-laced sass that could have really been an interesting turn for the girls.
There’s also the “Pop” version of Forever jam “Right Back At Ya.” The demo sounds like prime-era Spice and differs from the final version, which the song’s producer Eliot Kennedy allegedly disliked and found to be a “plodding, boring, bottom drawer R&B song.” (If a citation-less Wikipedia note is true, and I hope it is.)
This is all a very bittersweet #blessing, really.
The 20th anniversary of Spice would be 2016. Just saying, girls…friendship never ends.