SPICE GIRLS - "HOLLER/LET LOVE LEAD THE WAY"
"i want to make you holler," begins the new spice girls single. and i'll be damned if they don't make you do just that. holler to stop? holler to call it a career? yes. holler for more? oh, no. i do believe the less said about this half of the single, the better, so i'll try to keep it brief.
the spice girls have decided to step out a bit and go for a bit of r&b flavor, calling in producer rodney jerkins. it's a good match, in a way, because jerkins is nearly as played-out as the spice girls themselves. when he first broke onto the scene, he appeared to be an exciting young producer, creating hits for a number of artists, each with their own unique sound. but beginning with the mega-success of "the boy is mine," jerkins seemed to discover what sound "worked," at least in a commercial sense, and stuck with it. i didn't like that song and i haven't liked anything he's produced since then, but even dreck like "if you had my love" is favorable to "holler."
if there's any group less "urban" than the spice girls, i demand that someone bring them to my attention. the thing is, even if you named me a group, i'd bet that said group wouldn't make some half-assed attempt to become "urban" or "street" or whatever word you want to use. their voices are definitely not equipped for the sound -- melanie c., or adequate spice or sometimes on-key spice, has developed into an atrocious singer, while emma, EMMA!, of all people has gotten halfway decent -- and jerkins does them no favors with the dull, lifeless tune and beats he provides them with (sure sign that a producer has lost all sense of judgement: copious voiceovers). they truly picked the wrong one-word title for this single; if i had to pick one word to describe it, it'd be "SUCK."
meanwhile, on the aa side, there's "let love lead the way." and is there a more spice girls title out there? they must feel at ease now what with celine dion in retirement: that bitch probably kept stealing all of their song names. the spice girls, despite all indications to the contrary, are not stupid. they realize that their experiment, "holler," might not take off, so they pad it with the spice-by-numbers "llltw."
there are many questions surrounding the spice girls at this stage in their career. all of that uncertainty manifests itself in the opening minute of "let love lead the way," in which 8 questions are asked. what we can gather from those questions is that the spice girls are unhappy with the state of the world. they're answer: just let love lead the way. it's as simple as that.
the spice girls have never been philosophers despite their girl power doctrine, so i'm not going to judge them on lyrical content. the song is melodic and has "chart hit" written all over it. the production is very tasteful -- take that as you will -- with a rich keyboard line on the chorus and some interesting drum programming closing the song. so what i'm saying is that there'll be no new converts, but the faithful should enjoy at least half of the single, though if you're still "faithful" to the spice girls, you'll probably like both halves. rephrase: if, in the past, you enjoyed a spice girls single or two, you may like half of this single.
here's the problem with the spice girls, as i see it: they were never great singers or anything like that; in fact, the reason that they had a handful of enjoyable songs was due largely in part to their unprofessional nature. they were sometimes endearingly guileless (that is, until the apotheosis of their caricatures in spice world) but now they're just trying so hard to be mature and adult. perhaps it can be traced to geri's leaving or the changes their lives have gone through -- babies, marriages, divorces, etc. the new album is called forever which is an awful sign , an album title usually reserved for artists obviously at the end of their career or for artists who never really had a career. for example, artists who've used the album title forever: john stamos, jimmy ruffin, kool & the gang, kiss, lisa lisa, night ranger, and puff daddy, and that's just j-p! to avoid a similar fate, i leave a parting piece of advice to the girls: it's okay to grow up, just don't grow old
(c) 2000 - fred solinger -
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