Jump to content

Melanie C - Who I Am: My Story

-Jay-
in Spice Girls

Featured Replies

When are the book charts out?

This Sunday, I think.

  • Replies 333
  • Views 42.3k
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

I don’t really get what he actually said?

Throughout the clip or just at the end of it?

 

Thanks.

 

Do we have an idea how well it will chart?

People within the industry probably know.

  • Author

Another mistake:

 

“I went home to Liverpool for Christmas 1999 […] Northern Star hadn’t set the world alight. It had charted at four in the albums charts […] Not a flop, not a resounding success either.”

 

At that point in time it had gone no higher than #10. It didn’t reach its peak of #4 until August 2000, at which point it was considered to be a resounding success…

 

Well done to the editor(?) for making her highest charting album peak come across as being disappointing lol. :drama:

 

It’s weird because only three pages before this, it more accurately describes the album as going Top 10 in October 1999 and then says how Never Be the Same Again pushed it up to #5 in March 2000, which is also true.

 

Am I being picky, maybe, but they’re basic mistakes and I think details like this should have been fact checked before going to print. Takes less than a minute to look up Northern Star’s chart run on Official Charts. I’m surprised there’s more mistakes in Melanie C’s book than there were in the previous girls’ autobiographies.

 

~~~~~

 

Edit: I’ve read further and there’s certainly some selectivity and revisionism when it comes to her recalling the events of 1999 re: the Spice Girls. Maybe it suited the narrative of this part of the book better to not mention that the Spice Girls did anything together in 1999, but that’s far from the truth! The Christmas 1999 tour isn’t mentioned at all, and it’s implied that she hadn’t started work on Forever by Christmas 99. However we know they began that in August 99. I feel like all of this would have been notable to mention in regards to her reticence to going back to work with the Spice Girls?

 

Spice Girls stuff that was mentioned from the 1994 auditions right through to the 1998 Wembley shows was very specific and accurate. While there were mistakes like saying something happened in 1998 instead of 1997, at least particular events being described is actually what had happened. So I’m surprised that 1999 hasn’t had the same approach.

 

 

Edit 2: I just wanted to make it clear that my above qualms are with certain factual inaccuracies. All of that is far removed from everything she writes about her mental health and other struggles, which are very harrowing and I really admire her honesty and bravery in these parts. Obviously this aspect of the book is very important and it does overshadow inaccuracies about dates. I don’t want to seem like I’m trashing the book as a whole!

Another mistake:

 

“I went home to Liverpool for Christmas 1999 […] Northern Star hadn’t set the world alight. It had charted at four in the albums charts […] Not a flop, not a resounding success either.”

 

At that point in time it had gone no higher than #10. It didn’t reach its peak of #4 until August 2000, at which point it was considered to be a resounding success…

Maybe she got confused with the single of the same name, as it charted at #4 at the time.

Melanie is featured in the latest edition of Woman magazine. Click to enlarge:

 

FB-IMG-1664015433923.jpg

Edited by Voodoo

I hate all these mistakes !! Im not surprised she didnt mention the xmas shows!
Wow I cannot believe you see it that way. How many children, and especially in the 70's, were a child of divorce? Plus then had their father sell their childhood home and vanish for a year to travel the world, then after that decide to live abroad. Meanwhile mother was touring and leaving her with an unsuitable child minder resulting in her being left outside in the freezing cold and weeing herself as she could not go to the toilet, essentially child neglect.

 

It sounds like she had the toughest upbringing out of the 5 of them and you can see how early trauma plays a part in her future issues.

 

 

I think tbh in the 60s and 70s if you were poor or working class it was tough as a child growing up. My mum's dad died of cancer as did her sister and she was in care for a couple of years. My dad's parents split when he was young and he bounced between them depending on when his dad was away with the army or not.

 

I think if you ask a lot of people late 40s to late 50s who were relatively poor that growing up was tough they would agree. Dads often away with work for long periods, outside toilets, sexual and physical abuse rife. Not to downplay Melanie's childhood but I didn't see it as too much out of the ordinary for that time.

 

On a different note her promo has been better than when she releases an album tbh.

Edited by sammy01

Mel has a different memory of how they found Elliot Kennedy!

 

I am uk to the part where they have now signed for Virgin !

  • Author

In the chapter I’m currently reading, Melanie C mentions an interview with Frank Skinner (which aired on 20th November 2000) where she said “I’ve been luckier since I left… well, since I’ve been doing my own thing.”. She describes how the press has a field day with this slip of the tongue that seemed to imply that she had left the Spice Girls. She writes that the other girls were furious with her over this.

 

This is where it gets a bit confusing - she explains that this incident coincided with “Emma releasing her solo record”… but obviously we know that Emma didn’t start promoting her album until March 2001.

 

I searched for articles, and it seems to me that Melanie has combined two separate incidents into one memory? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/1210127.stm - this is from March 2001, and Melanie supposedly said this about the Spice Girls:

 

"I don't intend to do any more work with the Spice Girls. Really, I've not been comfortable being in the Spice Girls for probably the last two years. It doesn't really feel that natural to me any more. I've grown up and I just feel that I want to do things my own way and not compromise."

 

Could this be what the other girls were allegedly furious about, rather than her November 2000 comment?

 

Melanie writes in her book that she was persuaded to call the show CD:UK, during an Emma appearance, to reassure fans that the girls weren’t splitting up. I couldn’t find the footage, but I did find a transcript - if you select March 2001 and search CD:UK on the page: http://www.spicenews.com/html/archives.html - Also if you browse through the rest of the March 2001 page, there’s actually quite a few separate news updates regarding what Melanie said. I’d totally forgotten about all of this tbh. It’s a bit wild how they all went into damage control at this point in time, even though the group was clearly over with! Why were they so bothered?

 

So anyway, yeah, she’s definitely mixed up two different moments and combined them in her book. Not only that, but it also implies that it happened before they released Forever!

 

Melanie says in the book that her Frank Skinner comment resulted in a meeting with the other girls. She says that they decided they’d never officially split up, but notes that “relations were hostile” and “hit a real low in November”. Then she goes on to talk about Forever being released, the launch party, and the VMAs performance. But in reality, all of that happened before the Frank Skinner interview and obviously way before the March 2001 drama.

 

This is all incredibly jumbled up!!

 

I suppose it shows that her memories of this entire period in her life are hazy and mixed up. I assume that anyone else involved in the creation of this book just took her word for it, and didn’t realise that her recollections are not quite how things happened, chronologically.

 

Oh well! :kink:

It’s a bit wild how they all went into damage control at this point in time, even though the group was clearly over with! Why were they so bothered?

 

I think it's because it was only a few months after Forever was released, they still had a greatest hits collection they owed to the label and surely honestly didn't know the future of the group (even if they all felt it was a closed chapter). While the greatest hits wouldn't happen until 2007, that could've, by all accounts, have happened earlier if the label would have felt like it. Plus she did then say that they agreed to never officially to split up, so..

the VMAs performance.

See? It's very easy to mix things up, even for you. :)

 

It’s a bit wild how they all went into damage control at this point in time, even though the group was clearly over with! Why were they so bothered?

Maybe because both Emma & Victoria still hadn't released their debut solo albums, and for promotion's sake it was better to market them as active Spice Girls (rather than former members).

Edited by Voodoo

The Sunday Times bestsellers list

 

General hardbacks

 

7. Who I Am - Melanie C

What life was like as a member of one of the most successful pop acts of all time

 

Sales - 4,210

Go to topic listing

Recently Browsing 0

  • No registered users viewing this page.