Happy 20th Anniversary to Geri Halliwell’s second studio album Scream If You Wanna Go Faster, originally released May 14, 2001.
In five years, Geri Horner (née Halliwell) had gone from one-fifth of the biggest girl group on the planet to a solo superpower in her own right. This dramatic transformation was, to a degree, unintentional. Launching out of the United Kingdom in 1996, the Spice Girls brought the world to heel with their singular brand of pop music. As the quintet went from strength to strength, Horner exited the group to the shock of her four peers on May 31, 1998. While there had been occasional tensions that arose within the Spice Girls, nothing prepared them for Horner’s abrupt departure.
Craving autonomy, Horner thought it best to break rank when she did. Those first few months alone saw her deconstruct her “Ginger Spice” persona into a simpler form and pursue everything from philanthropic entreaties to penning her first memoir If Only. Soon enough, she returned to her first love: music.
Horner actioned Schizophonic via EMI Records on June 7, 1999. Penned and delivered with panache by the former Spice Girl, the effort was a resounding commercial success in the United Kingdom and other select international territories. Upon Schizophonic’s close with its fourth (and final) single “Bag It Up” in March of 2000, Horner took a brief respite prior to brainstorming her next long player. Yet, behind this flurry of activity was a woman in crisis; Horner’s battles with a series of eating disorders had reached a flashpoint.
She entered treatment to address her illness and it was in one of those therapy sessions that the seedling of a new song for her follow-up to Schizophonic was planted. Looking back in her second memoir Just for the Record (published in 2002), Horner spoke about the real-life core of “Scream If You Wanna Go Faster,” the eventual title track to her then forthcoming sophomore collection, confiding, “It was about all the things to avoid staying still and dealing with my feelings.” Seeking professional help had not only aided Horner in beating back her inner demons, it provided her with the clarity and confidence needed to level up her craft on Scream If You Wanna Go Faster.
While she maintained ties to Andy Watkins, Paul Wilson and Tracey Ackerman—co-creatives integral to the creation of Schizophonic—for the Scream If You Wanna Go Faster workshops, Horner also expanded her recruitment pool: Rick Nowels, Peter-John Vettese, Stephen Lipson, Ian Masterson, Jörgen Elofsson, Wayne Rodrigues and Gregg Alexander (of New Radicals renown). It was an accomplished cross-section of writer-producers.
Once again, Horner’s fealty to pop—in both classic and contemporary configurations—fueled Scream If You Wanna Go Faster in the same way it had on her debut. This time, the selections were cast in far richer musical detail than anything found on Schizophonic, a purposeful tactic on Horner’s part in regard to how she directed the gathered tunesmiths.
Bookended between the surf rock revivalism of “Scream If You Wanna Go Faster” and the lush pop-soul of “I Was Made That Way” is an eclectic spread that included funk kitsch (“Shake Your Bootie Cutie”), Motown pastiche (“Don’t Call Me Baby”), a rollicking George Michael “Faith” homage (“Feels Like Sex”) and much more. This didn’t even take into account five outtakes—“Brave New World,” “New Religion,” “Breaking Glass,” “Destiny,” “Getting Better”—so strong in their sonic variance that they featured as B-sides to the consequent singles Scream If You Wanna Go Faster produced when it was released.
The genre hopscotching at work on the record might have failed in the hands of a lesser artist, but Horner keeps everything together because of the superlative quality of its songwriting and performances.
Concerning her songwriting game, Horner took no prisoners—she leads on eleven of the long player’s twelve compositions. Additionally, she exported one of her specific devices from Schizophonic: thematic song groupings as remitted by a sleeve notes legend. On Scream If You Wanna Go Faster there are five classifications: “for the heart,” “broken heart,” “for the mind,” “sexy,” “to make you move.”
Prescient musings and occasionally humorous anecdotes on female empowerment, romantic politics and the toxicity of fame are ensconced within the respective scripts of “Strength of a Woman,” “Lovey Dovey Stuff” and “Heaven and Hell (Being Geri Halliwell).” These three tracks are part of the larger narrative arc of Scream If You Wanna Go Faster where Horner embraced introspection and playfulness in equal measure—all with hooks to spare.
Horner’s vocal limitations remained a point of criticism she had to endure; that did not stop her from tasking to improve as a singer. The album’s material is engagingly structured around Horner’s expressive contralto, but where she impresses is with four of its balladic sides: the previously cited “I Was Made That Way,” “Love Is the Only Light,” “Circles Round the Moon” and “Calling.” Across these four compositions the sounds range from throwback 1970s A.M. radio vibes to earthy acoustic tones and ephemeral chamber pop to aptly demonstrate how efficiently she could navigate downtempo fare regardless of any respective aesthetics.
What makes this quartet of recordings seminal for Horner is how she blends her intuitive prowess with just enough technical know-how to highlight the sensuous-to-sensitive traits contained within her voice. On “Calling,” the centerpiece of Scream If You Wanna Go Faster, Horner conjures both of those vocal qualities due to what the song required of her—it remains an uncontested peak in Horner’s solo repertoire.
In January 2001, Scream If You Wanna Go Faster was in the final stages of being mixed and mastered. The completed project stood as an accomplished exercise in artistic furtherance for Horner, but just as she and EMI queued up “Feels Like Sex” to introduce the long player, an unexpected opportunity presented itself.
Eric Fellner, an emissary of Working Title Films, reached out to Horner and the appropriate parties at EMI to gauge interest in her cutting a cover of the Hi-NRG firestarter “It’s Raining Men”—originally tendered (to camp effect) by The Weather Girls in 1982—for the soundtrack to Bridget Jones’s Diary. Beginning life as a satirical column written by British author Helen Fielding for The Independent in 1995, Fielding transformed the column into a best-selling novel in 1996; the book was now being adapted into a movie vehicle for American actress Renée Zellweger. The companion album, hosted by Mercury Records, was to house content from old and new school talent—Fellner thought Horner was an ideal fit for the latter category. And it did not hurt that she was a self-confessed fan of Fielding’s column and book. Bridget Jones’s Diary was due to open in major markets on April 13, 2001 with the LP preceding it on April 3, 2001.
After negotiations were arranged—which allowed “It’s Raining Men” to appear on the Bridget Jones’s Diary soundtrack and Scream If You Wanna Go Faster as its inaugural single—Horner and producer Stephen Lipson (one of the principals from her second album) rushed back into the recording studio to lay down her rendition. Lipson retains the Eurodisco flair of the anterior version of “It’s Raining Men,” but he injects Horner’s take with an orchestral charge that lends it an air of sophisticated drama that doesn’t cut into the song’s whimsical nature.
Previous bouts with old school pop chestnuts such as “Live and Let Die,” “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” and “Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps” proved that Horner straddled reverence and reinvention superbly. However, those covers had been restricted to the B-sides of her own hit singles from Schizophonic—Horner had never gone ahead with a single that was not hers. It was a gamble that paid off when “It’s Raining Men,” issued on April 30, 2001, exploded.
Horner not only notched up an unprecedented fourth sequential number-one in the United Kingdom—where it remained for two weeks—“It’s Raining Men” also became one of the biggest smashes that year throughout most of Europe. Contributing to the hype was the eye-popping video for “It’s Raining Men” that dually tributed the 1980 and 1983 celluloid phenoms Fame and Flashdance, while showcasing an extremely blonde and athletic Horner.
Scream If You Wanna Go Faster emerged on May 14, 2001 to secure solid showings in the United Kingdom and abroad; it quickly certified gold at home for Horner. The British music press continued to deny Horner the critical praise owed to her given the strength of the album, but undeterred, she kept promoting Scream If You Wanna Go Faster up through to November 2001. Two singles were pulled forward in that interval with the title piece and “Calling,” excellent picks that provided Horner with two more U.K. Top Ten hits. Unlike “It’s Raining Men,” which attained a gold certification, neither “Scream If You Wanna Go Faster” or “Calling” repeated this feat despite their lofty chart positions.
Such commercial softening suggested that “Spice fatigue”—down to an unintended oversaturation of product in the British marketplace—was a very real problem that all five Spice Girls were facing in some way or another in that period. Three years would come and go before Horner returned with Passion (2005), an album whose troubled genesis somewhat overshadowed its many creative merits. Other personal and professional pursuits have since transpired for Horner and culminated in Rainbow Woman—the ambitious multimedia excursion that kicked off in late 2020 has seen her share new music sans the traditional industry mechanics.
Two decades on from its initial reveal, Scream If You Wanna Go Faster has not only shown itself to be the best out of the ternary of albums Horner has released, but it is also the ultimate expression of her free-spirited ethos as a true pop craftswoman—and it is deserving of reappraisal.
Quentin Harrison is the author of Record Redux: Spice Girls, the first written overview of the Spice Girls’ collective and individual canon which was originally published in 2016. He is currently working on an overhauled volume of the book to be made available for purchase in Summer 2021; the first edition has been discontinued in lieu of the forthcoming issuance of the revamped book. Harrison has published four other books in his 'Record Redux Series' on Carly Simon, Donna Summer, Madonna and Kylie Minogue that are currently available physically and digitally.
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