this is essentials on apple music spice girls melanie c music's most influential artists and the stories behind their songs mel c melanie c self-titled album stunner came through smashed it life lessons meets great collaborators and music and all of a sudden it makes sense right self-titled it had to be you know what i'd contemplated it before but it was never right and i'm so pleased i didn't use up my goal because
you only get one go it yourself titled album to me it is a life's journey this album that's what's really incredible about it everyone's albums to tend to create a moment in time that you'll reflect upon later in life or fans will
reflect upon later in their lives we're going to go through various songs on your essentials right here that you put together a combination of your work with spice girls as well as your journey as a solo artist the legacy
started with a simple laugh from ginger spice from jerry and from there it just dropped a hammer on the world i mean talk about a first statement there's no intro no four bars just up straight in no if and about and um and i think back to that moment when the world first saw you as a band and it was so quick and so instant and you think back to that that that probably that moment when you shot the video was probably one of the last
moments that your life felt normal it was so exciting it was so new it was so different and once that song dropped once that video dropped yeah everything changed it was amazing i think the thing with wannabe
was we knew that had to be the first single or it would never see the light of day because it couldn't follow anything else you know it was the introduction it's like we're the spice girls we're a little bit crazy and this is what it's all about
you know so we went out there and i think we felt really aware that we may be seen as a novelty band you know this might be a one-hit wonder but we knew we had a beautiful record and some great songs to follow that up yeah
to become one is the moment i think where even the most cynical music fan had to acknowledge and everyone who was quote unquote cool who was listening to the verve and oasis and all these bands they were all just like that's a tune
two become ones is that you know that accent it's a choice but it really was one of those moments and i think that that song is is is as close to a copyright as the band has ever recorded um can you tell us the story about making that particular song which fell on the same album as all these really fun really as you say could have been seen as novelty hits but this showed a real future well to become one was our first uk
christmas number one which is a big deal you know it was always a big deal and this was also co-written with matt and biff who we'd written want to be with you couldn't get two more different songs could you yeah yeah i know it's nuts right so i remember going into the studio and matt was a beautiful pianist still is a beautiful pianist and he'd just been playing around and he had this lovely lyric of candlelight and soul forever
and it was time you know we wanted to write a ballad we wanted to get romantic and yeah that's how to become one was born and we felt like we we had this opportunity we had a platform we we quite early on encountered some sexism in the music industry and that gave us something to shout about we wanted to talk about equality we wanted to talk about girl power and to become one is about safe sex you know it's about having love and
romance but being sensible and being careful which is a very important message for young people the world over and um yeah i love that it's a beautiful ballad and that that message isn't kind of you know there's lots of terminology i don't want to use because it sounds like an innuendo you're gonna you could get yourself caught up in a roundabout of in your window i don't want to rub it down your throat [Laughter]
but it was very sensitively put you know not everybody would immediately get what the song was you know was truly about what the message was from the song you know it's funny because at that moment in time um you're really going through it you know you've got your first christmas number one all your dreams are coming true and fast and i mean people forget i mean it happens fast now in the streaming world but back then when you were
the subject of of everyone's attention it's just a whole other world and and i wonder kind of if you could give us an idea as we're about to play uh say you'll be there um just what that experience was was kind of like looking back on it being someone who's come through that that washing machine those first couple of years when you're trying to leave a positive message and inspire young people yeah i mean the washing machine is a
great image actually because your world is turned upside down and it's so hard because it's everything you ever dreamed of but nothing can prepare you for that you know as a young person in the 90s you weren't used to people
throwing their opinions at you criticizing you the way you look the way you dress the way you behave your talent or lack of it we live in a very different world now you know things like social media give everybody an opportunity to
criticize each other constantly but it was something i wasn't used to and i'd grown up in an environment you know i was a performer i was a dancer i'd auditioned many times i'd had many disappointments but um that was hard and you start to be treated differently and not only you it affects everybody in your life you know your family your friends that's been the hardest thing at times has been how it affects everybody else
around you and you know i've spoken a lot about you know the struggles that i've had and i and i sometimes feel like that's talked about more than how amazing it was and you can't take away from it it was amazing and life is complicated there's good and there's bad in everything but it was a lot to get your head around so it was this mad ride we were in a bubble we spent probably two years our feet didn't touch the ground
you know we were away from home our families our friends but we were on this mad adventure this crazy ride so i wouldn't change any of it i think that you have been incredibly honest through your life about what you're going through and now
we find generations being far more open about this experience thank goodness and so i guess the question is you know during those moments when you feel lost and you feel unsure what gave you the bravery to want to
share i feel emotional when i talk about this um in the right space um i was diagnosed with depression in 2000 and i was suffering with that but i was also battling an eating disorder and i had been for a couple of years when i talked about it for the first time i don't think i was ready actually i felt like i was in a time in my life as a spice girl where my life wasn't truly my own you know i felt like i had this duty to
reveal everything and then i spent many years regretting that i'd spoken so soon because people always want to talk about it which is good and it's important but everybody who hadn't done the work everything i was going to i was ashamed i was ashamed because the control had gone i'd lost my self-control so i had to tell everybody i had to make my excuses and as time went on and i realized that people had actually benefited positively from
me being open and honest i started to feel good about it and i started to get stronger and i started to heal and i'm so happy to see we do talk about it more openly i i want to take away the shame i want to take away the stigma because we're humans at the end of the day we are human beings we all want and we all need and we all deserve the same things you know we all deserve to be happy we all deserve to be loved and to love
and that's it that's the be-all and end-all um okay number one album boom excellent great thanks for coming where you go time for somebody else you're not having it you're not having it in fact you know what we think it's a spice world that's what we think and you were right i mean it went absolutely bonkers again and you you did the unthinkable you put out a movie relating to a band and you you did 100 million in the box office no one
did that but that's where that's where artists fall flat that's where you jump the shark as fonzie would say and you didn't and so i wonder at this moment in time as you're nearing toward a new millennium fast your second album is coming out whether or not you're starting to wonder about the mortality of the band when the second album comes out whether it's even dawning on you looking back on it how long can this last you know i don't
think we did at that point and it's pretty crazy that we never thought beyond the band you know or maybe some members of the band did you know maybe some people had a bit more of a game plan personally i was like in it for life you know spice goes for life we wrote a lot of spice world in a mobile studio on set on the movie it was crazy and a lot of that album was inspired by what we'd experienced and we really had traveled the globe in
all the times that you've gotten back together with jerry for the reunion tours for the friendships for the cups of tea to go and see the family just the social time that you have as friends that we don't get to see how do you approach her departure how did you get to a place where you understood her thinking yeah there was mixed emotions about it i think we were shocked at the time and obviously hurt and upset
but in all honesty we did understand you know we were in this pressure cooker and she needed to get away and as hard as it was it was what she had to do and even though at the time it was hard for us you know we had to respect that we got to get to a song like stop which i can imagine we're in greatest tits territory now i mean talk about the guinness book of records of the fastest greatest hits ever created in the history of music
when it comes to playing that song live i can imagine that in the reunion tour last year when you see on the set list and you know something's coming up you know it's about to go crazy because that one comes with all the movements and so you get to see people kind of start to choreograph back with you is that is that just a real high point for you when it becomes a three-dimensional experience with the audience and not
just two-dimensional it is the best i mean there's nothing better than having people singing your song back at you but then yeah incorporate some moves into that and it's just amazing so we did the encore we started with stop at the stadium shows last year and this was the thing when we got into rehearsals we were rehearsing we were going through the set and i would literally actually on a nightly basis forget i'd go oh my god we haven't even
done stop yet we haven't even done mummy yet we haven't even done one of it yet and it's it's so true we've just to quote the late great prince i have so many hits i mean what do you want i have so many hits i'm i'm what a place to be i mean yeah thank you thank you everyone who made that possible but yeah i mean stop is so much fun and there's a song called goodbye last song album i mean it was like talk about writing the script
talk about creating an environment where if we're gonna go out we're gonna press all the buttons we're not just gonna evaporate we're going to make sure you know we know it's the end so how did you know i feel jerry's departure was the beginning of the end obviously the spice girls will live on forever but it was the end of that phase it was the end of the the craziness and goodbye was completely and utterly inspired by
jerry's departure i think that's very clear for the listener it was really difficult to sing it still is actually it was interesting performing that song on stage with her she gave us her her big public apology at wembley stadium last year which we didn't expect but um yeah it's a beautiful song again another mountain biff um wonderful collaboration and songwriting at pop songwriting at its best whenever spice girls come back there is this
momentary hush of anticipation of is this going to be the moment where it's going to be one two three four five and and i wonder kind of how you personally feel knowing that this celebration is not even about your ego or the or the legacy of the band but this is that it's a celebration it's a moment for you and fans to enjoy and she's just not a part of it yeah it's hard we found it hard last year and we did really miss her but
you know you're right we're still really close and it's so important to us that she is happy with everything so she was very involved in the creative and everything that we were doing in the show and i think she really found it difficult that first night when the pictures were beamed all over the world it was hard for her and we're hoping it was hard enough to bring her back that's a plan i have to say i think i feel like she's coming around
so um we'll keep working on her but just between you and me [Laughter] mel last question and then and it's going to be the hardest question you're going to have to answer because so i've left it to the end so you can just hang up on me if you don't like it would you would you do it again would you make an album it's one thing to get on stage would you get in the studio with the girls and would you do it again would you find a way
to mature the experience and put it through the lens of who you are now and people can say you're not girls anymore but guess what beastie boys weren't boys either and i loved him every second i had him oh my goodness yeah what a band um spice girls we talk about it and we would never want to force anything but if it felt right like everything we've ever done if it felt like it was the thing we should do then i'm sure we would do it you