Mr.X

No Wasting My Time or Let Love Lead The Way?? Including Pain Proof and Give U What U Want??? THOSE BSIDE MATERIAL SONGS??? BSIDES ARE BSIDES FOR A REASON (Mel C voice)

and the original version would have fitted much better in the album too! What a shame... I often play it like this: Right Back At Ya (Pop) Holler Tell Me Why Let Love Lead The Way Get Down With Me Wasting My Time Goodbye WOMAN (live - cos we dont have another version!!) Weekend Love Time Goes By (though I pretend it is a piano-led ballad lol) If You Wanna Have Some Fun Oxygen

Bless her, I love her. Also, I think we forgot one detail about the girls who might be preventing them from going on tour: menopause. Mel B is going through it and apparently so is Emma. I would imagine the other girls, who are around the same age, are all going through it to some degree. It's an interesting conversation and one we shouldn't shy away from. It does dis-regulate women's emotions and changes their bodies in ways men will never comprehend. I remember when my mum went through it and she was a totally different person during it and after. Obviously she is not a multimillionaire like the Spice Girls are who can afford health care that helps them, but I remember she was in so much pain, both emotional and physical... Sometimes she would turn on her friends on even us because she was in so much pain and would lash out. So yeah... this is another piece of the puzzle in the current SG saga..

Mel B: Why I gave up LA for LeedsThe former Spice Girl, Melanie Brown, 50, on her third marriage, menopause and life in Yorkshire Melanie Brown, aka Scary Spice, appears on my Zoom screen like an alien, her face concealed by a huge, white LED mask that apparently boosts collagen. “It’s my morning routine,” she explains in her broad Yorkshire accent. “What I like is, you can walk around and talk while wearing it. I do 17 minutes a day.” At 50, Brown still radiates the raucous, teenage zig-a-zig-ah energy with which she and the Spice Girls burst unapologetically into the world in 1996, preaching Girl Power. Thirty years on, a lot’s happened: three marriages, three children, near bankruptcy, now the menopause. Yet Brown’s irrepressibility is identical to those days of platform trainers and leopard print, both of which she still wears. “The stuff I wore when I was 19 has come back in fashion. And it fits,” she adds with a jokey smirk. Did she have any wobbles turning 50 last year? “Definitely not! I was more worried turning 30, because I’d thought at 30 you’re old and I was going to have my life sorted, a house, kids.” In fact, she was single with one child and a divorce under her belt. “But I’ve never been afraid of my age. I don’t know what 50 is meant to feel or look like.” Mask now removed, hair in tight bunches around her make-up-free face, she’s talking over Zoom from the San Fernando Valley in California, where she’s in the middle of judging America’s Got Talent (AGT), alongside Simon Cowell. What most surprised my friends when I told them I’d be talking to Brown is that one of the most famous women in the world lives not in London, like the other Spices, let alone Los Angeles — her home for 15 years — but her native Leeds. Or, to be completely accurate, an area of outstanding natural beauty just outside the city. “It’s half an hour from my mum’s, ten minutes from my aunties and cousins.” The £2.2 million farmhouse she shares with her third husband, 37-year-old hairdresser Rory McPhee, is surrounded by 15 acres of forest, with two goats, fifteen chickens, eight ducks and two rottweilers. “And we’re about to get two horses.” Does she stomp around in wellies? “Yeah and my hi-vis — the workers laugh at me because I don’t want to get covered in poo.” In a couple of weeks one of her best friends, the comedian Ruby Wax, is coming to stay. “Last time she visited she raided my wardrobe and took two of my Spice Girl leopard-print coats.” Brown made the decision to relocate in 2019, having finalised her divorce from her “horrible, coercively controlled” marriage to the film producer Stephen Belafonte, the subject of her 2018 bestselling memoir, Brutally Honest (he has strongly and repeatedly denied her claims that he was abusive). “My father was dying, and I hadn’t seen or spoken to him or my mum or anyone for a good part of nine years,” she says. “So I flew to England. My dad was in the hospice at death’s door, but thankfully he waited for me before passing away." She brought her children, Phoenix, now 27 (from her first marriage to the dancer Jimmy Gulzar), Angel, now 18 (from a relationship with the film star Eddie Murphy) and Madison, now 14 (Belafonte’s daughter), with her. When it came to returning, “Angel said [Brown affects an American accent], ‘Mommy, why are we going back to America when all your family’s here?’ I’m like, ‘OK, good point. But you’re all California kids, do you really want to move to London with all the different weather?’ They were like, ‘Yeah! But not London — Leeds!’” The younger two went to school in Leeds — “and it was brilliant. They found the weather funny: ‘Oh my God, there’s snow!’ It was quite sweet.” Brown claims that after her expensive divorce and alleged financial abuse during her marriage to Belafonte she had only £700 to her name, so initially she had to move into her mother’s bungalow with her children and dog. “It was perfect, because then I had no choice but to mend the relationships with my mum, my sisters, my friends who didn’t know what I’d been going through. So it put our family back together.” Since then she has rebuilt her career. “I’ve worked my arse off. I’m a working-class girl and I love earning my own money,” she says. She has competed in several international versions of The Masked Singer, the Netflix reality show Celebrity Bear Hunt and is now on her second — presumably lucrative — stint as an AGT judge. She also rallied three of the other four Spice Girls (Victoria “Posh” Beckham was the only one who stayed away) to reunite for a 13-date reunion tour in 2019, culminating in three sold-out nights at Wembley Stadium, its highest grossing engagement of the year. All the same, Brown’s estimated wealth still lags far behind the other “girls” — an estimated £7 million, compared with Beckham’s £500 million with her husband, David; Geri Horner née Halliwell’s £440 million with Christian Horner, the former Red Bull Formula One team principal; Emma Bunton’s £24 million; and Melanie “Sporty Spice” C’s £24 million. Unsurprisingly, Brown was said to be keenly pushing for a 30th anniversary reunion tour. Details were reportedly almost finalised, then last week she posted an Instagram clip of herself walking away from the camera in a thong bikini, captioned: “I’m walkin’ away from the NOISE… So if that’s what you’re bringing you can kiss my [peach emoji].” This was interpreted as Brown’s response to tour plans falling through — news subsequently confirmed by Mel C. “I wasn’t saying that. I was just flashing my bum because I’m 50, so why not?” But the tour’s definitely off? “Nothing’s happening,” she confirms flatly. She puts the fact she’s still on bum-flashing form down to the product she’s promoting today: Revive Collagen Menopause Max, which comes in tiny purple sachets she takes daily. Brown had just got back on her feet, post-Belafonte, when she was clobbered by the menopause: “I got hit with the brain fog, the doubt in yourself… night sweats.” Did she consider HRT? “No, I mean, I spoke to Emma [Bunton aka Baby Spice] about the menopause a few years ago, and she’s saying she’s got this really good consultant who helped her balance her oestrogen and progesterone, but that’s only because she has the money and the time to do that." But HRT is available on the NHS? Brown doesn’t seem to accept this as a solution — pointing out few GPs have formal menopause training and many may be unsympathetic. “Anyway, I don’t think I need [HRT], because aside from Revive, I’ve got a Himalayan salt sauna, infrared shower, an ice bath, it all helps,” she says. “Me and my husband even got a mattress with different sides, and mine’s on freezing cold." She and McPhee married last year at St Paul’s Cathedral with Bunton in attendance (Mel C attended a subsequent ceremony in Marrakesh). After what she’d been through, was a third marriage a huge leap of faith? “Well, I’ve known Rory all my life, long before I was a Spice Girl. He’s a family friend.” Still, it took her until around 2018 to clock him. “All my aunties and uncles were like,” her tone gets incredulous, “‘Quiet, safe Rory?!’ He keeps to himself. But he’s a very sweet guy, he’s from the same village I’m from, we’ve got the same humour, the same accent. Heidi [Klum, the supermodel and close friend] told me, ‘I’m getting married again’, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, what?’ But she met a guy from her village, they speak the same German [dialect]. I get it, it works." Not that wedding bells were on the cards from the start. “When Rory and I [got] together, I said, ‘I’m not your girlfriend. I’m never getting married again and I’m never going to have kids. So if I were you, I would look somewhere else — but we could have fun.’” Undeterred, McPhee proposed, first going to Brown’s father’s grave to ask for her hand in marriage. “I went, ‘Did he respond?’” She chortles. “Rory said, ‘No, but I felt like he was accepting.’” McPhee was the first to read a draft of Brown’s bestselling memoir Brutally Honest, about her marriage to Belafonte, which came out in 2018. “He was like, ‘I can’t believe a man could treat a woman like that.’” Numerous publishers rejected the manuscript, saying they’d only publish such a book if the author “had come out the other end [of the trauma]. But I’ll never come out. I’ll live side by side with this my entire life. I now have tools in place so I no longer jump if a door slams or someone yells at me.” In 2022 Brown was made an MBE for services to charitable causes, specifically her work supporting survivors of domestic abuse. She’s a vocal patron of Women’s Aid. “It took me ten years to figure out how I got there and why I couldn’t leave. I worried it would end my career. It’s embarrassing. I was riddled with so much shame and guilt. I’m a mother — how could I do this to my family? I preach girl power, yet I was girl powerless.” Yet now Brown has rediscovered her mojo and has a new female cause to champion. “Since I was 19, my thing’s been supporting women and lifting them up. Menopause is something we should be talking about. My mum’s in her seventies, she’s never spoken to me about it, but she barely told me about periods. I mentioned menopause to her a couple of weeks ago and she went, ‘Oh, no, we don’t talk about that.’ I’m like, ‘Well, why don’t we?’ I’m making it my mission.” Mel B is the new Global Ambassador for the Revive Collagen Menopause range; Mel B’s perfect weekend: Lie-in or workout? Workout Night in or night on the tiles? Night in. You’ll struggle to get me out of the house unless I’m being paid for it London or Leeds? Leeds Signature dish? I don’t cook Last thing you googled? Comedy on YouTube. Peter Kay and Victoria Wood are my go-tos Couldn’t get through the weekend without… …my husband

Plus, these books (not official merch) have just been announced. They are quite popular, so for any collector this might be a cool item to get: https://www.historic-newspapers.com/en-gb/products/the-story-of-the-spice-girls Historic Newspapers: The Story of the Spice Girls as Told Through Headlines (Friendship Never Ends 🙃) Since 1996.

2 Become 1 is the official song of the HBO Max x Now TV bundle https://www.facebook.com/NOWtv/videos/2992050357648609/

2 Become 1 is the official track in the HBO Max x Now advert https://www.facebook.com/NOWtv/videos/2992050357648609/

Some interesting tid bits from it: Emma says High On Love has a 'bit of Sade in it' and Im actually laughing.... where? lol it is further away from Sade as you can be lol Take My Breath Away was the first solo track she wrote for the album, and you can tell she just loves it. I will never understand why they released the remixed version of We're Not Gonna Sleep Tonight... for Christmas!! What a mess... and yes, A World Without You should have been the Christmas single and followed by Better Be Careful in the Spring alongside a small tour. Naughy Emma. It could have been a great era indeed. I also wonder when the tracks she did with Darkchild and Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis will leak 😜

A Girl Like Me documentary by Pop Underrated is now out on YouTube. PU put together quite nice documentaries with lots of rare footage usually so this should be a treat!

Sadly she is still doing her Heart FM show and her Unlikely Friends, the latest episode came out only 3 days ago... The biggest wasted talent...

Please refrain from this kind of language in the future otherwise I will delete the posts and give you a warning.

Oh I am more bitter about no new music than no new tour, specially since it would have been just more of the same with the same songs again. I saw them in 2008 and 2019.

This. Mel C also agreed with him, and Chris has also said before that there is plenty that she refuses to do behind the scenes. She just wants to tour, nostalgia and nothing else. They only talk of touring because it is the most financially profitable thing they can do and they get offers - even the recent The Times article stated that promoters are always trying to book them and offering in the region of £100million paycheck for them to tour.... But Geri and Victoria don't want to. Yet here we are. No touring and no new music. Just coins and pointless merch.

Mel C is pro-Touring and nostalgia only. Over the years she has been the main stumbling block to making new music. The Bond mention thing was during the lockdown, ages ago and she has since stated that she doesn't want to ruin the legacy when it comes to new music, or completely dismisses the idea. She consistently says that she just wants to tour. I don't mean she is the sole block of a new reunion, but it is very clear that she wants to tour, make her millions to fund her solo albums and that's it. The others have expressed at various stages that they would be willing to do more music. But Geri doesnt want to tour, although we could expect her to be interested in getting back to the studio with the group. So they are stuck. No new music and no new tour lol

Yeah I agree with everyone here... my interest is at an all time low... I can't quite believe there was so much anticipation - AGAIN - and for nothing to happen at all besides a coin and some Funko Pops which are just more merch. Fancy merch, sure, but still merch. I will always blame Geri and Mel C for f***ing this up, this time. The two of them, while essential to the band in their own ways, have consistently over the years either tarnished the band, flat out left it or refused to do anything with their supposed 'best mates'. Like, it's fine. It's what they want to do - Mel C only wants to do her own music and Geri only wants to write her books - but god damn I don't have to support either of those and as a fan I reserve the right to be dissapointed. I still listen to them every now and then but I havent bough any of Mel C's current album or previous album, and I wont buy another edition of Spice without proper incentives. That's it for me. Tour and make new music, or I am done. Since neither are happening anytime soon, if ever, then I guess for the time being I am out.

I think Geri and Victoria are over with touring, I'm sorry. And Mel C is too stubborn to either do a 3-piece reunion, make new music with the band or allow unreleased music to be published... So we're stuck between these three women not agreeing on what to do because they have no vision on what a Spice Girls could be in 2026. Don't want to make new music or tour? FINE but for f***s sake, like any other band of their caliber, do an anthology or some proper editions of your old albums with unreleased music. It's not hard and it is what every f***ing band does. But for some reason Mel C thinks this is below the Spice Girls. It pisses me off so much man...

Mel B is now a brand ambassador for Revive Collagen, a menopause-helping brand https://www.instagram.com/p/DWBRbGwDB1k

Mel has never been particularly kind to their music catalogue apart from the hits to be honest. I also feel like she only agreed to do 2019 tour because she realised that tapping into the nostalgia and 'camp' brand of the Spice Girls could bring in huge amounts of money while she would perform and not have to do new music. Just keep on the nostalgia trip... She's been against new music and new Spice adventures that don't rely on nostalgia since before like 1999 lol It sucks because it has prevented the group from moving forward. Geri and Victoria have been as much stumbling blocks to the group moving forward, don't get me wrong. This isn't a Mel C bashing thread. Just a moan that 1) they cant get their shit together - they don't even have a proper management team right now! 2) Mel C doesn't want to make new music, just going on tour - she keeps saying this, just touring. 3) Geri doesn't want to do anything (but one feels like if she was invited to make new group music, she would!) 4) Victoria has been hyping us up to sell her first her Netflix documentary and then to diviate from her own family drama's press. All of it is just awful in my opinion. Right now, if Mel C agrees to music and Geri agrees to a tour, we could easily have them back. Unless those two change their minds on it, then it's over forever, I think.

I've come around to this one, it's been on my mind and I often have the chorus in my head 😇 I might buy this one!!

So, a few reports today have claimed that ALL plans have been cancelled after the girls couldn't agree on what to do. At the same time, Melanie went on a radio show in Australia (Smallzy show, sorry can't find a link that is not Facebook) and said it 'there's no reunion' after spending months teasing one. She seemed quite deflated about it, bless her. At the same time, she went on another radio show and spoke about some of the Spice songs, and one thing came to light about her relationship with Spice Girls music overal, which made me think about the situation we/they are in. In this interview with Seany B, Mel C goes on a game where she picks Spice Girls songs against her own. She highlights the HITS of course, but then when it comes to Holler and WOMAN, it really shows how she changes her attitude. When it comes to Holler, she mentions that the song is amazing BUT she then straight up dismisses Forever as 'a side step little thing the Spice Girls did', whereas the 'proper Spice Girls' is in the pop/camp version of what we're used to. THEN she goes on and completely shits allover WOMAN, saying she hates it. I find this really dispiriting, because she talks about WOMAN as a shit song but they never finished it? IT was only a demo... why judge it like a finished song? Of course, the verses needed work, but tehy would have had to finish it later?... I find it baffling as an artist to shit on your own work, let alone work that you do that involves other members as well... really? It's the same way she has talked about unreleased songs before, seemingly only changing her mind about Spice-era unreleased songs. Beyond the appaling badmouting of her and her colleagues own' work, I think it shows that we have here a big stumbling block to any potential reunion anytime soon. Then, the other one seems to be Geri who has turned so much into a 'posh' version of herself that it would be hard to imagine her ever coming back to the group. She is often not sure about touring, it is not her element, but she does love music - and she even last year said she constantly writes music. If Mel C could relent on making new music, I could see Geri returning to make an album and then that would create more incentives for them to go on tour again rather than rehashing the same material over and over again... Poor Mel B and Emma though... they are really stuck in the middle of this... Thoughts?....

Not my intention, was just pointing out why she probably skips Portugal x

Some Canadian stats: Spice and Spiceworld are both certified DIAMOND, Forever is Platinum and Greatest hits is Gold. Goodbye is DOUBLE Platinum there! I remember reading it was like 11 weeks #1 there wow SPICE: OFFICIAL VIDEO VOLUME 1 is also certified 8x Platinum... Great Canadian stats. They could definitely tour stadiums there nowadays too Music CanadaGold & Platinum - Music Canada

Damn I would have LOVED a small theatre tour in 1996 - even Britney did it when she was starting to blow up lol... Half of me still thinks they would have skipped this track though lol I voted for Denying and Wasting My Time. They are excellent songs that I wished they would care for and do it live again. They all sound devine in the studio tracks and I think they would translate really well to a live setting! I gather that if they had done a Forever tour in 2001 as planned, Denying probably would have fitted really well on that set list! Also dont forget to actually vote @-Jay- lol

Every single one of their albums has a couple of songs, at least, that seem largely forgotten either by the group or by the general public. They are never used for any promo, are barely included in tour set lists or even social media posts. They are not well streamed at all (apart from Saturday Night Divas but that hasn't been performed since Istanbul!) So which ones are your favourites? you can pick multiple songs! I am not including Voodoo because it is on their greatest hits, not one of their main albums. I am not also using Something Kinda Funny, Do It or The Lady is a Vamp because those songs have appeared on most tours (and please, we have had enough, ENOUGH! of those songs on tour!!) When I mean underrated is an overall understanding of the song by everyone involved - the band, their team and the fans. SPICE Last Time Lover - Never performed, never acknowleged by the band at all. Naked - hasnt been performed or used by the group at all since the 1998 tour and seems largely forgotten since they became a 'pop nostalgia band' SPICEWORLD Saturday Night Divas - Performed ONCE at Istanbul, and beautifully so, it has never been performed since. It is used in Spiceworld the movie in a great pivotal moment and fans often use it, refer to it as a highlight of Spiceworld, but the band ignores it completely. It is also their SECOND most streamed album track, so it seems silly they never use it at all... Denying - Performed during the European leg of the Spiceworld tour, it quickly got scrapped once Geri left and it is never used in anything promo, social media, whatever. The fans love it though, there are quite a few of fan-made videos out there using the song! FOREVER First of all, all of Forever is underrated so I could have picked ANY track from it really but.... Wasting My Time - often considered a sort of marmite song, where some fans really love it or hate it. It comes on after back-to-back dance songs in the middle of the album, which some fans point towards it being a bit of a drag and that it is too similar in sound to the song that preceeds it - Get Down With Me. Time Goes By - often mentioned as the worst album track of their career (before Voodoo was released lol). The Spice Girls seem to love it, with Mel B and Emma claimed to be one of their favourite on the album, and Mel C even saying it should have been a single... the fans mostly hate it though lol Oxygen - Often forgotten by all, only shown love by the critics at the time of release and Emma randomly mentioning it as one of her favourite songs during her My Happy Place campaign. It only recently crossed the 1million streams mark on Forever, the last album track to do so. So which is your favourite?!!