My problem with Wasting My Time is it just refuses to end; like, literally wasting my time!

It's my least favourite track in Forever (sorry @Mr.X ); Although, it's a testament to how highly I rate the entire album.

14. Walk of Life

Score: 7,27

The sun goes down and the lights come up
So we move on to a club
Surround yourself with the feel-good groove
People dancin' everywhere

BuzzJack's favourite b-side is Walk of Life, one of the most lauded and loved b-sides by the whole fandom at large. This raggae-pop number sees the girls paying homage to London, perhaps continuing with the whole 'cool britannia' shtick they had going on during 1997. Somehow the lyrics make it sound like they don't know London at all LOL it's just platitudes and random scenarios, but alas, it kind of works as a whole.

While it is a bit of a vibe and cool summer number, even providing one of the most fun bridges with Mel B's "Zing-zing-zinga, zing-zing-zinga" lyric, it also provides one of the worst moments in Spice Girls discographies: Victoria's voice in her verse, where she tries to sing on a higher register and sounds completely off. It's pretty awful from the queen of harmonies and pre-choruses!

Interestingly, this song was meant for the album, just like Outer Space Girls and Step To Me. It was included in promo CDs for the album right after Move Over but it was demoted to b-side ultimately because they wanted to keep the Spiceworld album to 10 tracks just like their previous one. Was it a mistake?

13. Last Time Lover

Score: 7,45

We got up and down to it (Oh yeah)
Like the dirty bass in the music (Uh)
I got my major chords strumming
Took some time and then we're really buzzing
First bite whet my appetite (Mmm)
Second helping's always better (Ah)

Horny Spice strikes again! This sexy, sultry number was the most r&b of the Spice album, and saw the girls - well, mainly Mel B, Emma and Geri - give true girl power in chasing a man and having fun with him all night long, until they are done. It also gives us Geri's first solo rap in on the album (the second being If You Can't Dance's).

It is another great example of how Absolute really took the girls down onto a cool, sexy, moody version of the group, which was later kind of ditched for Spiceworld since they were aiming to appease their mainly pop-audience but later revived for Forever. It has also been said that it sounds a bit like a TLC song!

Two fan facts:

• Up to this date, this is the only song from the first two albums to not get a single performance, not even a mimed one! A shame as I would have loved a performance of it.

• This is probably the first GEM song 😅 It's literally just Emma, Geri and Mel B here, with Mel C and Victoria on very background-background vocals on the chorus only.

12. Move Over

Score: 7,90

We're sowing the seed (Seed), Every colour, every creed (Creed)
Teach, never preach, listen up and and take heed

An iconic 90s song, that the whole world got to listen to as part of their Pepsi merchandise deal. In fact, the song borrows from the Pepsi adverts jingle to make a full song out of it. In retrospect, it is WILD that they were so embedded in comercial deals that a Pepsi advert jingle got to be ON THE DAMN MAIN ALBUM!!! This was very much a point of criticism at the time and perhaps around this time it was when the backlash started against too much merchandise and deals instead of them focusing on the music.

Still, it is an iconic BOP and quite anarchic as a song, having a very loose structure and the girls' energy at the highest point ever, shouting-singing throughout it! The girls battling in the verses and then randomly shouting words in the bridge will never not be iconic. It is also one of their most memorable album tracks! The performances of it in Istanbul became iconic but later ditched after the initial run of Spiceworld Tour in 1998. It appeared again in a video-segment intro to Holler in the 2019 tour.

11. Tell Me Why

Score: 8

What made you think that without me
Your life would be so much better?
But now you see that without me your hopes and dreams
Will never be as good as what you had with me

The second song from Forever is also the one with the hardest-hitting beats and angriest lyrics. Opening with an iconic and beautifully sang verse by Lady Beckham, it was slotted to be the album's second (third? fourth?) single in March 2001 before it got cancelled as the group disbanded at the time.

Art work was commissioned and a few promo CDs and vinyls were sent out to radios with remixes by Jonathan Peters and Thunderpuss, which are to this perceived at some of their very best, with one even showing up on their Greatest Hits. It is a shame they never got officially released.

Recorded in Miami, USA, in Spring 2000 after the band decided to go full r&b, the song is lauded as one of their best from the era by fans and critics alike. Still there is a bittersweet part to it, which is that this was one of the songs recorded during a time when Mel C refused to go in the studio with the rest of the girls and 'sang her parts later'. She doesn't appear in the writing credits and quite frankly she sounds detached from it all, only appearing half-way through the song with ad-libs slotted in and doing the bridge. I am not sure she is even in the chorus at all?...

Edited January 2Jan 2 by Mr.X

As I said before "The Lady Is A Vamp" is only one Spice Girls song, which I really like.

So before we enter the final Top10, here is a little breakdown of what's coming:

We have 2 songs left from Forever

There is 1 almost-single that has been performed in three of their tours!

3 songs from Spiceworld to go!

4 songs from Spice to go!

10. Step To Me

Score: 8,01

Now it's time, come prove your words to me
If you think you've got what it takes

There's no time for your insecurities

I'm gonna wipe that smile off your face

First recorded during the Spice era sessions with Elliott Kennedy and produced by Absolute, this pop-rock-funk number has had quite the curious trajectory in Spiceworld.

The sister song to Move Over, it was first included as a Pepsi-exclusive quasi-single where you had to collect a number of cans in order to get a free CD single with it - and which included three other remixes. Apparently it sold around 600,000 copies in the first couple of months of the promotion, which is incredible and could have led to yet another #1 for the band in the summer of 1997, but it was not chart-eligible even though it was all over radio across UK and Europe. However, it provided the perfect bridge between the pop-r&b mood of Spice to the more hyper-pop-focused Spiceworld! Sadly, even though it was considered for the album, it only made it as an exclusive in the Japan edition of Spiceworld. Another missed opportunity in Spiceworld for sure!

However, it was so successful in fact that even though by the end of the summer you couldn't get it anywhere, it was performed in the Istanbul concerts in 1997, the European leg of the Spiceworld Tour in 1998, a TV performance at TFI Friday and YET AGAIN in the Christmas in Spiceworld Tour in 1999! All of these performances were iconic, and seemingly the band loved it! It certainly provided a boost of energy to their catalogue and it was MAD that it wasnt included in their Greatest Hits since it seems like a central point in the band in their mainstream success era. By 2000 however, it was pretty much forgotten by the band and seemingly everyone else, and it did not even make an appearance in the 2007 and 2019 tours, sadly. Maybe as they matured, they didn't want to perform it anymore as it is too rocky?

It was only in 2022 that it became available on CD, Vinyl, Cassette and Digital when it was released as the first offering of the 25th anniversary of the Spiceworld celebrations, to much fan-fare and appreciation. It is a huge fan favourite and provides quite great girl-power lyricism and a pretty iconic pre-chorus from Baby and Posh! Let's hope they do it again live when - if - they ever tour again!

9. Oxygen

Score: 8.09

Make sure you're there to answer when love
Comes around
Don't be surprised
When true love knocks at your door

Quite a surprise this one is so high here, but it is a welcome development for sure. One of their most underrated ballads and overall songs. It is Emma's favourite in the album too (she said so in 2019!).

A stunning ballad produced by the iconic duo Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, it was critically acclaimed when the album was released and provides one of the most intimate and revealing moments in their discography, with all the girls writing and singing about how they interpret love. Knowing what we know about their love lives back in 2000, it makes it even more intimate and beautiful. When Emma sings 'you're in every breath I take', it just floors me..

Beautifully sand and written, the band took a new approach to writing, where they each went off on their own in the studio and wrote their respective verses from their own perspective and then came together to write the chorus. The production is simply stunning, like a timeless ballad. Had it been released as a single, it could have been up there with their most famous, in my opinion. I would venture to say that it would have been a better Double A Side to Holler than Let Love Lead The Way, even!

As many have mentioned, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis seemed to work really well with the band, tapping into their pop sound and elevating it to new hights, bringing a 70s vintage quality to it. It works pretty well here, with this being their most unique ballad to date, in many ways, while also having a timeless quality to it.

I know some fans get quite annoyed by the 'water drop' sound production element but it was quite unique at the time, and personally it doesn't bother me at all anymore. I love it, it sounds like they are literally dripping with love.

Pure stunning and thankfully, justice has been done to it here, at least.

Edited Sunday at 02:445 days by Mr.X

Was Step To Me performed in the European leg of Spiceworld tour, or was it North American leg?

Now we’re getting to the cream of the crop.

Walk Of Life is so different from anything in their catalogue. It’s a shame more people don’t know about this song. It still hasn’t reached a million streams on Spotify.

Step To Me is classic Spice Girls. I remember watching their Instanbul concert on Fox Kids in early 1998 and got so excited to hear a brand new song from them. I was always disappointed this wasn’t on Spice or Spiceworld as a kid living in the U.S.

Oxygen is probably their most underrated song within the die hard fan base. I’ve always thought this was the best ballad on Forever. It sits perfectly next to the rest of their classic ballads. Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis did such a great job with maturing their sound, but still keeping the music pop friendly. I would love for Oxygen to get its flowers on the next tour.

13 hours ago, Yousee said:

Was Step To Me performed in the European leg of Spiceworld tour, or was it North American leg?

You are right, it was in the North American tour, which is even more crazy since it was more popular in Europe??

10 hours ago, Sideout said:

Now we’re getting to the cream of the crop.

Walk Of Life is so different from anything in their catalogue. It’s a shame more people don’t know about this song. It still hasn’t reached a million streams on Spotify.

Step To Me is classic Spice Girls. I remember watching their Instanbul concert on Fox Kids in early 1998 and got so excited to hear a brand new song from them. I was always disappointed this wasn’t on Spice or Spiceworld as a kid living in the U.S.

Oxygen is probably their most underrated song within the die hard fan base. I’ve always thought this was the best ballad on Forever. It sits perfectly next to the rest of their classic ballads. Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis did such a great job with maturing their sound, but still keeping the music pop friendly. I would love for Oxygen to get its flowers on the next tour.

I never really got the love for Walk of Life. It's fine, but it is not album worth it. It sits, for me in the same braket as Outer Space Girls - perfectly great bsides where the girls attempted some specific genres they hadn't yet up to that point, but didn't quite manage to make those songs great, just fine.

Oxygen is a GEM of a song and totally agree with you and yes one of their best. This is what 'mature Spice' was to me, whereas LLLTW was a more r&b attempt at replicating the magic of Goodbye.

I could totally see Gerita also getting in the Oxygen performance on a future tour, though sadly I don't think it will happen at all...

8. Denying

Score: 8.10

You think you're quick
But I'd like to see you keep up with me
You think you're slick
But I'd like to see you pull a trick on me

Spiceworld's most r&b number, Denying would have sat perfectly well both in Spice and in Forever. It provides a perfect bridge between the two, and marks what is perhaps the band's most solid r&b track, providing the perfect segway on the album to Viva Forever.

Moody, with a vibe full of gritty girl-power, it is quite a subdued anthem with clever verses which sees four girls - Emma, Victoria, Mel B and Geri bouncing between them to take on a 'big man who thinks he is smart', reminding him that most of what he says is actually GASLIGHTING and everyone can see.

The harmonies? PERFECT. The lyrics? PERFECT. The vocals? PERFECT. The storyline, PERFECT! Mel C leads the ad-libs throughout and it is truly a shame that this gorgeous song was the only performed for half a world tour once and never again, as it would have fitted really well with the rest of their more r&b tracks on stage.

JUSTICE FOR DENYING!!

7. Something Kinda Funny

Score: 8.12

Wherever you're going, high or low
Remember to sure enjoy the show
So climb aboard my journey deep inside
Better late than dead on time

Something Kind of Funny was one of the first songs the band did with Absolute and also the one that they performed for Simon Fuller when trying to convince him to take them on as their manager. It worked! And the rest is history.

The band has a special relationship to it, having been performed on every tour (apart from the Return tour), and one can imagine why as it was written to showcase their blend of personalities and ethos: girl power, sassy and empowering, while singing about how they have 'something special' together.

It is funky and jazzy - perhaps their first release that showcases this side to them, proving how versatile they could be. Emma sound absolutely divine in it, with her adlibs and background vocals leading the song. Just like in Viva Forever, she is all over the song doing backing vocals to all while taking the lead in the bidge, chorus and some verses. Perfect!

Edited Sunday at 03:165 days by Mr.X

6. If You Can't Dance

Score: 8.18

Now we got the flavour, the bad behaviour
The rhythm, the melody, the juice for you to savour
We're rockin' and vibin' but somebody is jivin'
You need to take a tip, sort it out, get a grip

The iconic - ICONIC - If You Can't Dance sits just outside of the top5 here, and it is safe to say that this is one of the girls - and the fans - favourite tracks. Sampling the Digital Underground's "The Humpty Dance", the track closes the Spice album in incredible cool fashion. Cool is indeed the word here, as the album closed with two back-to-back moody and experimental tracks, which was rare for a pop girlband of the time. It is also the only experimental pop track that Matt & Biff did with the girls, sounding more like an Absolute track than anything else...

It's production is immaculate, the lyrics outstanding and the two main verses by both Mel B and Geri, alongside the bridge by Mel C and Emma, are sublime. I don't think it is an exageration to say this. It was so well loved that they even opened two of their main 99's tours - Istanbul and Spiceworld Tour 1998 - with it, and the performance at Istanbul became an iconic moment in pop history back in 1997! The only time they didn't perform it was in the 1999 tour and it was definitely missed then. The song came back for the 2007 Return tour and the 2019 tour, but it is safe to say that in both times, it was sadly received a bit 'flat' overall, with the 2007 version being the biggest let down as they only repeated the 'if you can't dance' bit over and over again over the sample...

A few fan-facts of interest:

• Gerita Halliwell recently said If U Can't Dance was her favourite Spice Girls track

• A few of the girls mentioned that Geri's mum co-wrote most of the Spanish verse

• Sadly, Victoria is nowhere near this song, I don't think she turns up at all not even in backing tracks. She does do chorus live, but just like most Biff & Matt productions on the album versions (2 Become 1 and Wannabe for instance), she is nowhere to be found..

• It is their most streamed album track on Spice album even though it is the last on the tracklist.

In hindsight I think they moved on from Spice too soon. Especially when you take into consideration they only had time to release 3 singles in America.

Pushing Spiceworld back 3 or 4 months to February/March 1998 would have given the group a much needed break between albums.

If U Can’t Dance would have been a great single in June 1997. It would have given the group a much needed edge after WDYTYA/Mama.

^ what they needed the release for the film and xmas sales and 2nd xmas number one!

3 hours ago, Mr.X said:

6. If You Can't Dance

...

A few fan-facts of interest:

• A few of the girls mentioned that Geri's mum co-wrote most of the Spanish verse

That bit about Geri’s mum co-writing most of the Spanish verse honestly surprised me 😅
She’s Spanish, and… sorry, but the Spanish in that song is rough. It’s not a case of “oh, it sounds a bit foreign” or slang being cheeky, in Spain we’re VERY familiar with rude language and that’s not the issue at all.
It’s just badly constructed. Some of the phrases are plain weird and not things a Spanish person would naturally say. The grammar and flow feel off in a very non-native way.
So yeah, I really struggle to believe her mum actually signed off on those lyrics. If anything, I can imagine her helping with how to say one specific word (🍆), but writing or approving the whole verse? I’m not convinced.

57 minutes ago, Sideout said:

In hindsight I think they moved on from Spice too soon. Especially when you take into consideration they only had time to release 3 singles in America.

Pushing Spiceworld back 3 or 4 months to February/March 1998 would have given the group a much needed break between albums.

If U Can’t Dance would have been a great single in June 1997. It would have given the group a much needed edge after WDYTYA/Mama.

I totally agree with this, and there were even rumours that If U Can't Dance was slatted to be a single but I don't think it was ever confirmed.

15 minutes ago, ilovepollo said:

That bit about Geri’s mum co-writing most of the Spanish verse honestly surprised me 😅
She’s Spanish, and… sorry, but the Spanish in that song is rough. It’s not a case of “oh, it sounds a bit foreign” or slang being cheeky, in Spain we’re VERY familiar with rude language and that’s not the issue at all.
It’s just badly constructed. Some of the phrases are plain weird and not things a Spanish person would naturally say. The grammar and flow feel off in a very non-native way.
So yeah, I really struggle to believe her mum actually signed off on those lyrics. If anything, I can imagine her helping with how to say one specific word (🍆), but writing or approving the whole verse? I’m not convinced.

you do have to remember that while Geri's mum was fluent in Spanish, she was already in the UK by a long time by the time this verse was written PLUS she was not a song writer lol so for all we know it could have made sense to her

But I do think there is some exaggeration in this yes

36 minutes ago, vibe said:

^ what they needed the release for the film and xmas sales and 2nd xmas number one!

They could have pushed the movie back to April 1998. Too Much still could have been released as the 1997 Xmas single. Then release Spice Up Your Life as the 2nd/lead single in February 1998.

5. If You Wanna Have Some Fun

Score: 8,27

Now you're standing real close to me
I feel your heat, you wanna get with me
Wink, wink, nudge, nudge
Tell me, do you like the rudest stuff?

When the Spice Girls were on tour in 1998 in North America, two iconic music producers Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, came to see the band play and decided to introduce themselves to them. Clearly interested in the group, they suggested they should work together. This was a unique invitation since Jam & Lewis hadn't at this point worked with non-USA acts and they often produced and wrote everything whereas this time, knowing the girls wrote their own music, they were open to collaborate. Jam & Lewis are some of the most recognised and venerated producers in music history having worked on seminal and legendary records with the likes of Janet Jackson, Prince, Luther Vandross, Mary J Blige and Chaka Khan. You can't get more legendary than that!

All the girls were big fans of course and jumped at the chance. Once the tour was over, Mel B and Victoria took some downtime to rest due to their pregnancies, while Emma and Mel C travelled to Dublin to work with Matt & Biff and then to Nashvile to work with Jam & Lewis. Demos were made, and they bonded so well that they decided to finish two songs out of the five they worked on then. However, this work wouldn't be completed until September 1999 in London - a rare feat as the producers had never travelled outside of the US to work (this is the same with Darkchild, who did just that in January 1999 to work with them as well.

From all of these sessions, we only know of possible 3 that were eventually released : Christmas Wrapping with Matt & Biff, and If You Wanna Have Some Fun and Oxygen. Of course there are more that we have no idea about, but we have some insights into at least how If You Wanna Have Some Fun came about. Emma mentioned at the time a song called If Ya Do, which is now part of the Forever lore but for all we know this could have been an initially working title for what the became the full song. Also, a track called Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (A Night To Remember) was registered on ASCAP which could be another demo for the song, since the final track includes a sample of A Night To Remember and the 'girls just wanna have fun' line could very well be an initial lyric of the song that then got transformed/changed.

Sadly, it seems like we will never know if all of this is just rumours/misunderstandings but most of it point towards the process of the song being made. AND WHAT A SONG! Initially tauted as a possible single from the album, it was also one of the few that was met with critical and fan-acclaim upon release. Emma and Victoria mentioned it was their favourite in some of the interviews back then. Certainly, one of the main points of praise is its production that seems to tap into the Spice 90s pop sound, blend it with 70s Disco and elevate their sound to a new level of maturity, in similar ways to what Oxygen did with their 'ballads sound'. The nods to flirting, being in command of a possible one-night stand, girl power, it's all there and it is sang beautifully. Jam & Lewis seemed to really understand and love the girls, and it shows!

The track is obviously the most loved out of the fans, and often people call for it to be eventually performed live. Back in 2001, a promo CD of it was sent to radios and industry players, and it got some radio rotation in promotion for the album. It was taunted as a possible single (perhaps if the campaign extended for the summer after Tell Me Why!), and it is considered in the Spice fandome as one of their biggest misses in terms of 'could have been a hit!'. A promo video even was sent to TV channels back in late 2000, with footage from the band's history and Spiceworld tour, but it seems to have gotten lost in the vaults!

A cute fact is that in this rate, the only two songs from Forever to make the Top10 were the Jam&Lewis tracks. Should they have gone with them for the full production instead of Darkchild once they chose to go more 'American r&b' in late 1999? Seemingly, it seemed like it was a match made in heaven!

We hope we get a performance of this song one day! It was a really missed opportunity in 2019 not to include this in the 'disco section' of the show. It would have been PERFECT instead of them doing another cover of We Are Family!

Definitely some choices in this for me, Oxygen at 8, and Time Goes By so low should have been the other way round imo but yeah !

Tell Me Why should have also been top 5 😂

4. Naked

Score: 8,47

Undress you with her eyes
Uncover the truth from the lies
Strip you down don't need to care
Lights are low exposed and bare

Now THIS is a nice surprise! Moody, experimental Spice strikes gold again thanks to the boys at Absolute. I'm ever so glad as a fan that they were not just this teen-pop act but instead they created really interestin, nuanced and experimental music like this. Naked is perhaps the best example of this side of the girls, the big sister to Take Me Home, for sure. A very somber number with a narrative about a girl who is trying to stand on her own, in power, and in control of her sexuality and body in the face of the mysoginy she endures throughout her life.

The verses go from soft spoken by Geri, then the pre-chorus is sang in a haunting way by Emma and Mel B, then the chorus is Emma, Mel C and Victoria belting out and interchanging the lines between them. There are two bridges technically, with the first being a unique production trick by Absolute, where we hear Emma on an eerie phone call where she proclaims that she would 'rather be hated than pitied', before Mel C comes in and belts out the second bridge.

Lyrically, it is stunningly well written, one of their very best on the record, as it gives us a full and very vived narrative of the character's behaviours, what is done to her and how she deals with it.

Even though it created iconic moments in both Istabul and the Spiceworld tours, sadly it hasn't been performed since 1998, and personally I would love it if they brought it back. They don't need to pretend to be naked for it anymore like then, just treat it as a song about a girl standing on her own against her demons, perform as you would any other ballad, with a bit of theatricality thrown in.