As a 90s teenager I was not influenced by the Spice Girls!

Aaah VHS tapes of great videos and cassettes of recorded off radio tunes. Greatest times🤣🤣🤣

@Devilsmommy still exists! And they often do best of the 00s shows! I used to create VHS mixtapes of my favourite videos 😂

We are obviously the same age, god I miss Kerrang

Why is it when people express a dislike of anything mainstream & naff there's always certain members bleating about 'pick mes' or 'not like the other girls'?

Better than being bleating, mediocre sheep I guess.

Are you really still playing "I'm far too cool for the Spice Girls, I like Real Music" thirty years on? 🤣🤣🤣

Actually we were well into house and trance by then too like all the global underground stuff and garage was breaking into the mainstream. Spice girls is the last thing I think of for 90s music.

1996 was when wannabe was released so OP must've been a time traveller in 1993.

Most of us who were mid to late teens at that time (I'm including myself in that) weren't much into pop, most of us were into indie, alt rock and brit pop. It's nothing groundbreaking or unusual OP. Did you think you are unique?🤣

Thing is it was 1994 you weren't the target audience for the spice girls you were 13-14. Lots of younger children like them

Thank you for your post OP, the feverish and innaccurate responses have literally proven your point about the misguided hysteria that surrounds them

Im 41 and had a broad music taste all the way back then as I do now and just could not understand their appeal despite their huge success and I’m even more bereft at understanding now. Only 2 of their 5 voices are at best passable (the 2 Mel’s), their songs mediocre even by the standards of 90s pop and people forget they were literally finished by the time they split only like 3 years later (Holler era?). In the laddish late Britpop era, I’d have loved a talented female band to be a fan of, but these seriously weren’t it. All Saints were probably the closest and they couldn’t hold it together.

Nobody thinks they’re edgy for not liking the spice girls, they’re just bemused at the stranglehold they’ve had on British culture for the last nearly 30 years despite the actual evidence and the aggression they are literally always defended with.

You can slag off the likes off Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo etc all you want but if I had a teenage girl right now I’d be thanking my lucky stars they had them to look up to rather than a band of hero- worshipped, virtually talentless, manufactured pick-me faux feminists any day

Wannabe was the summer of 96 just as I was leaving primary school - I have siblings 3 and 6 years older and it wasn’t their thing at all.

whatever your age you can’t argue how iconic the girl power thing was at the time - if you look at the now cds released around that time and before you’ll notice there’s only one other girlband (Eternal) and a tiny handful of female singers (Gabrielle, Cher, Celine etc) among reams of boy bands - hardly inspirational for young girls.

I was at uni when they got really big and nobody liked them. They were for kids.

I thought Take That were shit, too. None of the teens I knew liked pop music back then.

I enjoy 90s pop now, as a nostalgia thing 😊

I was born in 1983 and I was too old to become a 'fan' and by that time was more into angsty women with guitars (or the occasional piano) but I'm always going to get up and dance to a Spice Girls track.

I'm the same age as OP and was a holier than thou indie kid when Wannabe came out and deemed it dreadful but by 1999 I was buying OK magazine for The Beckham's wedding photos and dancing to Stop Right Now at the student union.

What obsession? And why does what other people like in music annoy you that's a bit strange?

I'm younger than you and adored them, still do ✌️

They were for the kid/tween crowd. I loved them when they first came out. I was 11

Surely you were too old for them? I was 10 when they were popular and it was very much my age's obsession (not everyone, obviously) no way I would have been interested as a teenager, just as I wasn't interested in S Club 7, by the time I was teen it was 00s Kerrang that was by bag.

OP is not like the other girls.

So? Mel C can genuinely sing, most talent judges can't without auto tune.

I've got a lot of time for Mel B. Survived abusive relationship with cracking sense of humour. I can see why you would want her on a panel. Can't see any of the 90s cool band miseries cracking a joke.

Your not interested but still saying
'Yo, I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want'

I couldn't stand them either. I'm a similar age to you, OP and loads of my friends my age loved them! I found it deeply embarrassing 🤣

What ongoing obsession? I literally haven't seen a spice girl anywhere for donkeys years.

I'm a decade younger than you and was really into them... So more my age group than yours I think. I wouldn't have been interested by my teens, that's when I too was going through my edgy grungy "not one of the cool kids" phase. I've since grown out of that, thankfully.

Why haven't you yet grown out of the idea that not liking something popular makes you cool and interesting? You're in your 40's.

I was also 13 in 1993 and Spice Girls were not for my age group when I was growing up. We were much too busy being cool.