90's DANCE PARTY!!!

Every month at my 90's Dance Party in Houston, there are a couple songs that consistently get requested that one, I either ignore, or say I will play and then never do.  This is one of them.  But, I'm not really sure why I am so adverse to "Wannabe" because unlike the constant flow of Britney Spears requests that I get without fail, I actually like this song.

The video takes a while to get started, 15 years ago (?!?) when it came out, attention spans were longer, and a good video for a song that you liked became a mini event every time it came on.  Plus, the minute before the song dropped was the perfect amount of time to call your friend (landline, of course) so you could share the experience together.

What makes this song & video amazing is it has that feeling of total spontaneity.  Friends, crashing a party, with no rhyme or reason, just acting on what feels right and what feels fun.  Even the decision to use a fish-eye lens gives it that "I'm-there (and slightly drunk)" feeling.  Genius choice.

It's an interesting note that the song was in fact the product of a moment of spontaneity.

"Wannabe" was written in thirty minutes—mainly because the group had written parts of the song beforehand—in what Melanie Brown (Mel B AKA Scary Spice AKA Eddie Murphy's baby mama) describes as a "sudden creative frenzy".

Where the song succeeds most -and the entire Spice Girl model, really- is that there is a lot going on in the song without being too distracting.  The beat and piano hook are simple, but the singing is constantly being juggled between the five girls, and that makes it feel like a party.  Which, if you think about, was the deciding factor of commercially successful songs in the 90's -and arguably any decade.  Party music is universal, and the best parties are unexpected ones.

Oh... and the video... all one take.  Amazing.