While I love I want you back, Feels So Good is the best Melanie B song for me, that should have led the album easily, it sounds like the start of an epic era. I think that, and a release date a couple of months earlier in the summer would have seen Mel secure a top 10 album at least. She did release in quite a competitive period in the last quarter.

I love seeing all the positive comments about I Want You Back!

Do you guys think the album would have done better if it was executive produced by Missy? Then maybe it would have had a more cohesive sound?

 

It's an interesting 'what if'.

 

My general feeling is...the album's issue isn't cohesion. It's just that there were ten new tracks given to us in 2000, and roughly half of them weren't good enough for Mel/the project. I actually think the variety of collaborators is sometimes a strength. Jam and Lewis captured her vibrant positive side with Feels So Good. The Darkchild team allowed her to vent her love life frustrations with Tell Me. Mel's a complex enough person that it made sense to have several collaborators play to the different sides of her.

 

But then you have several tracks in the mix that are personality-free...and wrong enough for Mel's range that session singers do much of the heavy lifting. The Teddy Riley songs mainly. So. While I think the variety of collaborators was a good idea...it needed to be all collaborators who were unified in trying to make the project good.

 

Of course, I wish Missy had at least contributed some new material. With I Want You Back, Missy clearly understood Mel's range and persona. That song fits her like a glove. I did wonder why they didn't work together again.

 

But to Spiceboy's point, yes...releasing just before Forever was going to tank Hot no matter what. To me, Missy's involvement isn't a question of 'would the album be more successful?'...it's a question of 'would it be a better album?'

Yeah I agree, that in general the album is filled with songs that are just lacking somehow, and that they were obviously 'given' to Mel B without much of her input, and it does feel like the producers gave her their least interesting music at the time.

 

Feels So Good is obviously the stand out and should have been the lead, but then again there isn't much more in the album that lends itself to be a single.

 

Jam & Lewis did manage to capture the best of Mel and the best of the Spices at the time.. It is a shame that in both albums they only contributed one or two songs rather than more focused approach. Maybe if both albums had done well enough, they would have continued to work together?

 

Missy and/or Timbaland producing the album would have been the prefered option, in my opinion and it is wild she never got to work with them after I Want You Back / Word Up / Sophisticated Lady. Those songs are some of her best, so it is weird they didnt follow up on that collaboration.

 

I think the sound of Hot was "too American" and Mel was of course not a kind of diva like Brandy or Monica for example.

Maybe an European sound, a mix of pop and R&B was better.

Word up doing abysmally for the time (first non top 5 Spice single - #13) probs paid dust to any more involvement with Timberland.