Why the Spice Girls’ third album ‘Forever’ deserves more love

Words: Sam Rigby

20 years on, there’s still a lot of love out there for the Spice Girls, proven when they last performed as a fivesome on top of taxis at the London Olympics in 2012.

For many of my generation, our childhoods were defined by the likes of ‘Wannabe’, ‘Who Do You Think You Are’ and ‘Spice Up Your Life’.

I can’t listen to ‘Stop’ without conjuring up the image of my sister and I performing the whole routine for everyone at a family BBQ. (I was Baby and my sister was Posh, in case you were wondering).

However, the Spice love rarely extends as far as the group’s third album Forever, a record that swapped bubblegum pop for slick R&B beats and Darkchild-produced numbers – and had a distinct lack of Halliwell, arriving two years after Ginger Spice quit the group.

It seems harsh to describe Forever as a flop – it did go platinum and produce a number one single – but it’s fair to say the reaction to the project was decidedly mixed.

By the time Forever was released in November 2000, the girls’ hearts weren’t really in the group anymore, but had things been different the whole era could have been so much greater.

A release for the amazing ‘Tell Me Why’ was planned, but scrapped. The defiant ‘Right Back At Ya’ would also hav made a great single.

Can you imagine how good some of these songs would have sounded on tour? Anyone who witnessed the frankly epic performance of ‘Holler’ at The Return of the Spice Girls shows in 2007-8 can vouch for the fact that a Forever tour could have been special.

To those who accuse Forever of lacking Spice magic, I present ‘If You Wanna Have Some Fun’, a track that could easily have been lifted from their 1996 debut.

It includes the lyric, “wink wink, nudge nudge, tell me do you like the rude stuff”. Emma described it as “cheeky” and I’m inclined to agree.

Forever was, and still is, a really strong offering from the Spice Girls, and it’s a shame that pop music fans largely ignore it.

Okay, perhaps it wasn’t the right album to relaunch the group in 2000: The girls continually emphasised that Forever was a more “mature” sound for them, but that wasn’t necessarily what fans wanted at the time.

However, you can’t help but wonder what the reaction to the album would have been like had they released a ‘spicier’ third album beforehand. If the era hadn’t been cut short, we could have seen more of this…

Watch the video for the Spice Girls’ ‘Holler’ below: