Shoulda been huge: Mel C’s ‘Think About It’
By Will Stroude
You might think Mel C is the Spice Girl with the least gay appeal (well, to gay men at least), but all that changed in 2011 when she made the biggest musical contribution to the homosexual community by a girlband survivor since Geri’s Bag It Up: her criminally underrated über-banger Think About It (7th Heaven Radio Edit). It’s a song gayer than Cher’s wig closet.
Released in 2011 as the second single from Mel’s fifth studio album The Sea, the original version of Think About It was a peppy pop-rock ‘living for the moment’ song in the vein of P!nk or Kelly Clarkson, and sounded like it could be her biggest hit in a decade. Yet it was only when the track got remixed by the boys at 7th Heaven that its full potential was realised.
This isn’t your typical Eurodance genero-banger, though – its combination of exhilarating synths and spunky vocals combine to give Think About It an unparalled hedonistic buzz: “If there’s a chance we’ll break / I want to smash into pieces,” Mel belts euphorically, before bringing us back down to earth with the unapologetic refrain: “But I don’t wanna think about it / I don’t wanna think about it!”.
Whether it’s an endorsement of one night stands and/or infidelity is up to you (it probably is though), but moral quibbles aside, this ode to doing something you probably shouldn’t surely provides the lyrical theme tune to gay bars at closing time the world over.
And then there’s the video. OK, so it’s not going to win a VMA anytime soon, but that’s hardly the point. Mel looks better than she has done in years – perhaps ever – and knows exactly what she’s doing with the strobe-filled, catsuit-heavy promo clip – why distract from the all-encompassing musical thrill by including pesky details like other people or, yeah, a plot? The video for Think About It sees her in full-on solo party mode, and features so many bend n’ snaps, slut drops and booty pops (compiled in the handy graphic above), you wonder whether Mel’s still seeing a chiropractor three years later. The video concludes with Sporty actively ripping items of clothing from her own body – as you’ll want to when your hear it.
Which leads me to the song’s relatively unknown status: I mean, just look at the incensed reaction from the YouTube community:
I know 28jimbod, I know. The fact that Mel’s career highlight has passed by largely unnoticed is a tragedy of incomprehensible proportions. Despite admirable promotional appearances on Loose Women and The Alan Titchmarsh Show, the original version of Think About It could only limp into the charts at number 95. And while the 7th Heaven Remix did feature on some kind of iTunes bundle, sadly a grassroots crusade to make it into a hit never materialised. These days, even the song’s appearances on gay bar video screens seem to be few and far between.
Yes, Mel is probably still a beer garden girl at heart, but Think About It showed just what the former Spice Girl could achieve when she set her mind to it. And at least we can now imagine her wrapped around a pole with a warm Woo Woo in her hand – perhaps the song’s greatest achievement. Surely in the age of chart streaming, we can all return the favour and get this absolute banger the chart position it deserves, right?
More ‘Shoulda been huge’ on attitude.co.uk:
Shoulda been huge: Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s ‘Heartbreak (Make Me a Dancer)’
Shoulda been huge: Spice Girls’ third album ‘Forever’
Shoulda been huge: Madonna’s ‘Girl Gone Wild’