Happy 20th Anniversary to the Spice Girls’ third studio album Forever, originally released November 6, 2000.
Ambition was never in short supply with the Spice Girls and the British quintet’s “can-do” attitude had certainly served them well. In just two years, the group had secured two multi-platinum albums—Spice (1996) and Spiceworld (1997)—and took that same moxie to the next space they sought to conquer: the concert stage. Kicking off on February 24th, 1998 in Dublin, Ireland, the Spice World Tour confirmed that the Spice Girls had the goods as a live act. It was amid the hustle and bustle of gigging that the five-piece briefly intimated ideas for their follow-up to Spiceworld in a television interview that spring.
What they revealed wasn’t anything other than a rough sketch, but it evinced that the Spice Girls were ready to challenge themselves. However, Geri Horner’s (née Halliwell’s) unexpected defection weeks removed from the interview briefly cast a pall over any future plans they held.
Without missing a beat, the remaining four Spice Girls—Victoria Beckham, Melanie Brown, Emma Bunton, Melanie Chisholm—not only completed every date for the North American leg of the Spice World Tour, they also actioned the initiating sessions for their third album, to be designated later as Forever.
Out of those inaugural writing-recording bouts emerged “Goodbye”—a touching ode to beginnings and endings inspired by Horner. As 1998 closed, the triumph of that single in the United Kingdom and abroad was proof positive that the power of the Spice Girls had not been diminished by Horner’s exit.
Eleven months passed before the public received any more music from the quartet—they broke their silence with the Christmas in Spiceworld Tour in late 1999. The U.K.-only event took in a total of eight shows from December 4th to the 15th; it was during those dates that the Spice Girls debuted three songs from their forthcoming long player: “Right Back at Ya,” “W.O.M.A.N.” and “Holler Holler.” The triad went down like a storm with the crowds and signposted that a maturation of their already expansive pop vibe was underway.
The tracks were drafted across several intermittent studio exercises throughout 1999, slotted in between individual projects that each Spice Girl began to pursue. The decision to balance collective commitments and solo engagements was mutually agreed upon by all four women and denoted a change in their working relationship.
A polite demarcation between these joint and stand-alone endeavors was mostly maintained. Some overlap occurred though when a number of prominent tunesmiths tasking alongside Melanie B on her record were considered for Forever. James “Jimmy Jam” Harris III, Terry Lewis and Rodney Jerkins—with his support clique of Fred Jerkins III and LaShawn Daniels in tow—won over the Spice Girls as a unit; they enthusiastically onboarded all five gentlemen. “Holler Holler,” or “Holler” as it was to be known, was one of the highlights born out of their time spent with Jerkins and his crew; additional co-writers that the Spice Girls wrote with hailing from Jerkins orbit included Harvey Mason Jr., Robert Smith and Mischke Butler.
The Spice Girls had also been scripting stock in earnest with Matt Rowe, Richard Stannard, Eliot Kennedy and Tim Lever. Except for Lever—a former member of Dead or Alive turned writer conscripted by Kennedy for “Right Back at Ya”—Rowe, Stannard and Kennedy represented the “old guard” from the group’s two anterior sets. Brainstorming bouts with Stannard-Rowe remitted “Goodbye” and “W.O.M.A.N.,” with the latter selection becoming one of the most sought-after Spice Girls compositions among the quartet’s devotees.
At the midpoint of its construction, there was an even divide of production/co-writing duties among both the established and new collaborationist factions on Forever. Sessions that carried over into the incipient half of 2000 saw the Spice Girls pivot toward Jerkins and his boardsmen to keep exploring the progressivist thrust definitional of their work together. The cuts built with Jam and Lewis were safe from being tabled in lieu of this shift. Unfortunately, nearly all of the Stannard, Rowe and Kennedy material was shelved—only “Goodbye” (from two years prior) and “Right Back at Ya” managed to escape the axe, respectively.
Under instruction from the Spice Girls, Jerkins extrapolated and punched up the existent urban-pop details in Kennedy’s original to suit their advancing tastes. That lack of compositional kick in Kennedy’s version of “Right Back at Ya” likely pointed to the reason why the Spice Girls decided to withhold their output with him. On February 10th, 2015—fifteen years after the issuance of Forever—a clutch of unfinished demos from the Spice Girls and Kennedy workshops leaked onto the internet: “Pain Proof,” “A Day in Your Life,” “Give You What You Want (If It’s Lovin’ On Your Mind)” and the pre-Jerkins variant of “Right Back at Ya.” With this batch of tunes, one can hear the Spice Girls trying to search for fresh sounds and refine familiar ones—ultimately, Kennedy’s approach was too light for the direction the Spice Girls wanted for their third LP.
Forever was both a continuation and an evolution—not a departure.
One of the primary components within the Spice Girls’ musical matrix—from their earliest days—was rhythm and blues. Their inaugural effort Spice—a saucy pop variation on the kinetic soul put forth by the likes of Eternal, En Vogue and TLC—attested to this fact. They return to the explicit R&B-pop grooves of that first record—albeit with a (then) contemporaneous electronic sheen—on “Holler,” “Wasting My Time” and “Weekend Love.” The Spice Girls also court a clubbier edge via “Get Down With Me” and “If You Wanna Have Some Fun”—an attentive ear will detect a late ‘80’s stylization to the keyboard and bass playing on these two entries that echo R&B legend Janet Jackson and stateside girl gang Exposé incidentally.
Seven of the eleven tracks contained on Forever are unflinchingly uptempo, still, the Spice Girls leave room for ballads with “Let Love Lead the Way,” “Time Goes By,” “Oxygen” and “Goodbye.” The downtempo medium was one that the Spice Girls used effectively in the past and these pieces promised to carry on in that tradition of excellence. Not only does this tetrad demonstrate that the Spice Girls can pen sensitive songs and coquette anthems, these tracks also function as luxe vehicles that showcase Beckham, Bunton, Brown and Chisholm as solid vocalists.
Primed for a fall reveal by Virgin Records, Forever was ready for the world.
On October 23rd, 2000, the Spice Girls sent out “Holler”/“Let Love Lead the Way”—a double a-side single—as the opening salvo from Forever; they were promptly awarded with their record-setting ninth number-one single in the United Kingdom. The release of “Holler”/“Let Love Lead the Way” was little more than a drop in the bucket in an almost twelve-month span during which seven singles and two albums—from each individual Spice Girl and the group as a whole—would impact or had impacted the British charts.
Although no one could question the superlative quality of this output, the sheer volume of it was plausibly causing marketplace fatigue. The consequences of this unintended oversaturation manifested in the tepid sales of Hot (2000), Melanie B’s glossy, urban affair set forth several weeks ahead of “Holler”/“Let Love Lead the Way” and Forever. While the threat of excessive exposure loomed, soft promotion was an equal hazard.
Upon its disclosure on November 6th, Forever laid bare that even with some of its piecemeal assembly, the Spice Girls hadn’t lost their chemistry creatively when they came together. Yet it was undeniable that their interpersonal dynamics were in a state of flux. Flush with the success afforded to her from Northern Star (1999), Melanie C wasn’t willing to sacrifice but so much of her newfound independence; further, ongoing mental health struggles swayed her decision to participate solely in a front loaded promotional stump for Forever. Suddenly, Beckham, Brown and Bunton were on one side with Chisholm on the other end—they donned their best public face to parse out a path ahead. But there was another complication awaiting Forever too: mischaracterization of its sound.
Snarky press pundits, fussy fans, select record label personnel and others took turns browbeating the foursome for supposedly “rejecting their pop roots” to “go R&B.” It was an absurdly ahistorical criticism given that—as stated—R&B and soul often factored into much of the Spice Girls’ previous music; it was even apparent in a considerable cross section of the solo work that went out in the lead-up to Forever. That this recurring artistic axiom was being willfully ignored spoke to the lack of a substantive dialogue in addressing how black music principles featured regularly in a broader pop (white) music context.
Sensing that there might be trepidation from some critics and listeners, the Spice Girls made the mistake of going on the defense in a multitude of press situations surrounding Forever; instead of standing in their truth that Forever was an expansion on a fixed sonic motif, they demurred that the LP was merely a “slight departure” from known territory. That telegraphed uncertainty versus confidence and cynical reviewers roundly pounced on that PR misstep—it translated into mixed notices.
All of these elements made for a perfect storm predicting a commercial underperformance; a steady string of gold and platinum certifications were gifted to Forever from a host of global charts, but it was seen as a far cry from the figures generated by Spice and Spiceworld. It was subsequently dismissed as a disappointment. Plans for succeeding singles in “Tell Me Why,” “If You Wanna Have Some Fun” and “Weekend Love” were scrapped. The dawn of 2001 found the Spice Girls enter a sort of suspended animation rather than formally disband; even though solo affairs rolled onward, the group wouldn’t reconvene again for seven years—two more reunions followed in 2012 and 2019.
For a time, Forever looked to be lost underneath a mass of misinformation—today, this body of work is finally getting its proper due as attitudes toward the blending of pop and R&B music are changing. No doubt this development has been catalyzed by a much-needed conversation on how race and culture influence art. That nuanced reassessment has helped this long player take its rightful place within the Spice Girls’ canon. While it is tempting to imagine what could have been with Forever if circumstances were different, the album endures now as a cohesive final statement of the indefatigable pop method that propelled the Spice Girls to worldwide renown—and that truly is forever.
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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