Melanie C, ‘Northern Star’: The plain one at the back

Melanie C
‘Northern Star’

Highest UK Top 40 position:
Number 4 on November 28, 1999

1. They tried to catch a falling star

The race for Christmas Number One is one of the most thrilling chart battles, even these days when charts barely matter and the winner no longer gets to do a Christmas Day victory lap on Top Of The Pops. As recently as 2022, we saw an epic battle between reigning champion Ladbaby and a song about how all Tories (including Ladbaby) are c***s.

What makes this race is so thrilling is that it’s so unpredictable. Previous victors have included festive classics (“When A Child Is Born”, “Merry Xmas Everybody”) and singles that don’t mention the season at all (“Earth Song”, “Long Haired Lover From Liverpool”). We’ve had trashy novelty songs at the top (“Two Little Boys”, “Ernie, The Fastest Milkman In The West”) and beloved classics (“Bohemian Rhapsody”, four different Beatles songs). Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick In The Wall” and Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me” were Xmas Number Ones in 1979 and 1981. Between them, in 1980, the top song was ‘There’s No One Quite Like Grandma” by St. Winifred’s School Choir.

Apart from an early period of Beatles dominance (and current Ladbaby hegemony), no one act has ever been big enough to dominate the Festive top spot. For example, Take That utterly dominated 1993 and bookies wouldn’t take odds on ‘Babe’ being Number One, but they were pipped at the last moment by ‘Mr Blobby‘. It’s a lottery.

Or at least it was until the Spice Girls arrived. Spicemania swept the world in 1996 and the fever lasted long enough to propel them to a Christmas Day Number One with their ode to safe sex, ‘2 Become 1’. A year later, they retained the title with another ballad, ‘Too Much’ and got the hattrick in 1998 with ‘Goodbye’.

‘Goodbye’ is especially notable as the band had spent the year in crisis mode. The five women had been growing apart: Geri wanted out, Victoria was becoming a media personality in her own right, and Mel B was (allegedly) clashing with the other members. The plan was to record a third and final Spice Girls LP allowing each member to showcase their individual talents. This would eventually lead to the band winding down and, hopefully, finding success as solo artists.

But this plan was blown out of the water in June 1998, when Geri Halliwell’s solicitor announced that she was leaving. The other four promised to continue, but veteran pop fans knew what this meant. The Spice Girls, like Take That before them, couldn’t survive as a four-piece. They were over. Now, the race was on to see who would become a solo star, the next Robbie Williams.

This also raised another minor question… who would be top of the charts in December 1999? Who would get the Millennium Christmas Number One if the Spice Girls were gone?

2. Thinking that she had gone too far

While Geri was on a mission to become a solo star, two other Spice Girls had already beaten her to the charts.

Melanie Brown (aka Mel B, aka Scary Spice) had scored an unexpected Number One in October 1998 when Missy Elliot approached her with a song called ‘I Want You Back‘, a slick R’n’B number that sounds absolutely nothing like Spice Girls. ‘I Want You Back’ feels like a conscious attempt to break Mel B in the States (it even has a Hype Williams video) and, though it was as success around the world, it failed to reach the Billboard charts.

Meanwhile, Melanie C (aka Melanie Chisholm, aka Sporty Spice) had bumped into Bryan Adams while Spice Girls were touring America. Adams had written a song to duet with Sheryl Crow, but Crow wasn’t returning his calls. Would she step in? Chisholm said yes and ‘When You’re Gone’ became a big UK hit. Bryan Adams and Melanie C came vaguely close to usurping Spice Girls as the 1998 Christmas Number One—they were still at Number 8 when the festive chart came around.

Although ‘When You’re Gone’ didn’t top the charts, it made quite an impression (at 34m YouTube videos, it remains one of the most popular solo Spice Girls singles). Virgin liked it enough to offer Melanie C a solo deal, with an album slated for release in late ’99.

As successful as ‘When You’re Gone’ was though, it didn’t help to solve the biggest problem in Chisholm’s career: she’d always been perceived as a supporting character. Chisholm doesn’t have a vocal solo in ‘When You’re Gone, instead playing her usual Spice Girls role: adding a bit of flare to a more pedestrian singer.

Chisholm’s position as a Spice Girl had always been tentative. She’d failed the initial round of auditions when the band was assembled in 1993, only becoming an official Spice Girl when another singer (coincidentally also called Melanie C) dropped out. A few months later, after she got in a drunken argument and told Victoria to fuck off, the management let Chisholm know that they’d sack her in a heartbeat if she upset the less replaceable talent.

(The same management said they were “surprised she could do backflips with thighs like that”, a cruel comment that contributed to Chisholm’s disordered eating issues in later years.)

Spice Girls were built on the concept that each member should have a unique personality, but those personalities weren’t formally codified until a Top Of The Pops Magazine feature in 1996. The writer dashed off some nicknames that became as firmly fixed as the Wu-Tang Clan’s rap identities: Victoria Adams looked like a Gucci model, so she was Posh Spice; Emma Bunton was small and cute, so she was Baby Spice; Geri Halliwell became Ginger Spice because of her red hair (and because the editors nixed her other potential nickname, Old Spice). Mel B was Scary Spice for reasons that are too complex to get into.

Chisholm was athletic and a vocal Liverpool FC fan, so she became Sporty Spice. It was a name that bothered her because it cast her as the masculine one in an all-girl band, while also emphasising the idea that she was “the plain one at the back that didn’t really do anything”. Chisholm tended to be shuffled to the rear on most occasions. Even during recordings, she tended to get few solos, despite having the strongest voice. More often, she was deployed to add some texture on top of the other vocals (she’s practically used as a human guitar solo on songs like ‘Say You’ll Be There’).

Behind the scenes, Melanie C was a people-pleaser and a problem-solver, the hardest working and the least glamorous, the least sure of herself. If you were ranking them by likelihood of becoming solo stars, Sporty Spice would have been 5th, if not lower.

By Spring of 99, if any Spice Girl was likely to become a breakout star, it was Victoria. Her marriage to David Beckham was the gossip magazine event of the decade and the beginning of a brand that would become bigger than Spice Girls: Posh’n’Becks.

3. She did but kept it hidden well

While tabloids were focusing on Victora Beckham, née Adams, and Geri Halliwell, née Ginger Spice, the other three were keeping busy. That summer, all three recorded solo songs for movie soundtracks.

Emma Bunton was first off the block with  ‘(Hey You) Free Up Your Mind’ for the English dub of Pokémon: The First Movie. The movie did well, but the song wasn’t released as a single. Mel B recorded a cover of Cameo’s ‘Word Up’ for Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, which was released as a single but only reached Number 13 in the UK.

Melanie C, meanwhile, was asked to produce something for Adam Sandler’s next comedy, Big Daddy. She got to work on a song with Phil Thornally, whose credits include both The Cure’s ‘Love Cats’ and Natalie Imbruglia’s ‘Torn’, and created something that would be a strong foundation for her forthcoming solo album.

The result was ‘Ga Ga’, Melanie C’s first real solo track. Few people heard it, but those who did would have been struck by her bold new direction: slick rock, crunchy guitars, a sound somewhere between Alanis and Garbage.

However, nobody cared about the other Spice Girls in summer of 99. All eyes were firmly on Geri Halliwell and her upcoming debut.

In 1999, Robbie Williams was the gold standard of post-boyband success. Two massively successful solo albums had elevated him to the status of a bona fide pop star, and his natural charisma had made him a national treasure. This was the bar Geri had to clear.

There was also a fate she needed to avoid: Gary Barlow’s. As Take That’s lead songwriter, Barlow had seemed a likely bet for solo success. His first two singles reached number one, but without winning any new admirers. When the Take That fans’ goodwill ran out, so did Barlow’s chart success. His second album barely made a ripple and, by 1999, he was yesterday’s man.

EMI $3 million that Geri would be a Robbie, not a Gary. Also betting on Geri were Absolute Productions, who had helped nurse the first two Spice Girls albums into the world. When the other four Spice Girls heard that Absolute were supporting Halliwell, they threatened to never work with them again. Absolute still chose Geri.

In May 1999, the world finally got to hear Geri Halliwell’s solo music. Debut single ‘Look At Me’ tries very hard to match Robbie Williams’ energy, with lots of tongue-in-cheek, self-referential humour and a big band sound (with which Williams was experimenting at the time). The video features Geri as a widow, mourning at a funeral. When the hearse appears, the flowers in the rear spell out GINGER—a very Robbie-esque joke.

The song is… fine. It peaked at Number 2.

Geri’s album, Schizophonic, got a 4/10 from NME who said it’s “as thrilling as watching Stereophonics watching paint dry”. Rolling Stone were slightly more positive, saying that while Geri didn’t seem to have any specific musical talent, “she’s like a really enthusiastic impersonator, so anxious to win you over that you give in.”

Halliwell still had a lot of momentum behind her, but even the fans knew in their hearts that the Geri-naissance wasn’t going to happen. Focus began to switch back to Spice Girls, who were about to make a second attempt at their third album.

4. Until she cracked and then she fell

Untitled Spice Girls Project #3 looked promising on paper. The fab four were now in the studio with the legendary Jam & Lewis, who had masterminded Janat Jackson’s rise to megastardom. They were booked to play a lavish Christmas In Spiceworld UK tour, which seemed like an opportunity to debut some new material. Could there be a new single soon? Would the Spice Girls captue a fourth successive Christmas Number One? The signs were good.

[VH1 voice] But, behind the scenes, things were falling apart…

The four were barely able to be in a room together and recorded most of their vocals alone. Once again, most of the recordings were scrapped. While the previous year’s disaster had at least produced ‘Goodbye’, nothing in those 1999 sessions was good enough for release. The Spice Girls debuted some new songs (including ‘Holler‘) at the Christmas tour, but they didn’t release any new records until 2000.

One of the issues was Chisholm, who wanted to get back on the road and promote her solo album. The record, Northern Soul, wasn’t doing great but she was having more fun as Melanie C than as Sporty Spice.

In August 99, she’d made a surprise appearance at the V Festival (it was definitely a surprise for the rock fans who came to see Manic Street Preachers and Placebo). Her setlist was only six songs: five tracks from her solo album, plus a cover of ‘Anarchy In The UK’ with the lyrics, “I am an antichrist/I am Sporty Spice”. Most commentators focused on her new look (cropped, bleached blonde hair) and the angry reaction of some fans.

“I had bottles of things thrown, and in my memory there’s even Weetabix,” she said of the gig in later years. “I don’t know how you throw it because they’re quite light, but it has definitely stuck in my memory!”

Around this time, we got her first solo single, ‘Going Down’, which charted at Number 4. ‘Going Down’ builds on the sound of ‘Ga Ga’, adding fuzzed-up vocals and a guitar riff that’s clearly nicked from David Bowie’s seminal Berlin album, Low—an act of thievery that’s either audacious or sacrilegious, depending on your point of view.

NME found it sacrilegious. They hated her new indie aesthetic and reviewed her debut album with the kind of spittle-flecked hatred normally reserved for child murders. According to NME, she represented something called “mock’n’roll”:

If we accept Robbie Williams wowing Glastonbury as the zenith of ‘mock’, then we can welcome Northern Star as the point at which every discerning music fan worth their Mogwai albums stood up and stomped the bastard into bloody smithereens.

We should take out a court order on Melanie Chisholm and her like…It should be fucking illegal for them to come within a million miles of our music.

NME, September 1999

Truly, a deranged thing for an adult human to write, especially about an album that is only 50% indie. But it shows how much of an underdog Melanie C was at this point. Her path ahead didn’t look like that of Robbie Williams or Gary Barlow. If anything, she seemed destined to be the Spice Girl’s answer to Take That’s Mark Owen, who released a slightly baffling rock album and then faded away.

5. I have learnt my lesson well

If someone had scripted this, the story would climaxed in December 1999 with a massive chart battle. Geri vs the Spice Girls duking it out to be Christmas Number One. And not just any Christmas hit: the final Number One of the decade, the song that would echo around Britain as fireworks exploded over the Millennium Dome.

Sadly, all of them chickened out.

Geri had the best shot. She’d already scored a Number One in August 99 with ‘Mi Chico Latino‘, another of her easy-to-like, hard-to-love singles. The third single from Schizophonic was ‘Lift Me Up’, which is not a Christmas song, but it’s just about festive enough to reach the top.

Instead, ‘Lift Me Up’ appeared in early November, creating a minor chart battle against Emma Bunton’s ‘What I Am’. Halliwell won easily and got her second Number One, making her the last Spice Girl to top the charts in the 90s.

A few weeks later, Melanie C released her second single, ‘Northern Star’. This one actually felt a bit Christmassy, with tinkling bells and lyrics about following stars. It’s got a lovely soaring chorus, even if the verses feel like Andrew Lloyd-Webber cast-offs.

Was ‘it ‘Northern Star’ intended as a Christmas hit? It’s honestly hard to tell. It was released late enough to be in the running, but a bit too early for a serious challenge. In hindsight, it almost feels like Melanie C was saying, “It’s okay if you want to make this Christmas Number One, but no worries if not!”

In my opinion, it would have been a good Christmas Number One with which to end the 90s. It’s certainly better than Cliff Richard’s ‘The Millenium Prayer’ or the song that did claim top spot, Westlife’s butchering of ‘I Have A Dream’.

Westlife got to close out the final Top Of The Pops of the 90s. For the first time in four years, no Spice Girls appeared in the Christmas Day episode.

6. Don’t give into their lies and goodbyes

The album Northern Star appeared in October 1999, but it took six months for people to realise that it was actually quite good.

In April 2000, someone finally said, “Hey, what if we released the best song as a single? You know, the one with the high-profile guest star?” ‘Never Be The Same Again‘, collab with Lisa Left-Eye Lopez, went thundering to Number One, as did follow-up ‘I Turn To You‘. Both singles were among the top-selling tracks of 2000, outpacing the final Spice Girls single and Geri’s ‘Bag It Up’. Even Victoria Beckham’s collab with Dane Bowers couldn’t match Melanie C’s success.

Northern Star went platinum and remains the most successful album by a solo Spice Girl. All of which was cold comfort to Chisholm, who experienced a severe mental health crisis that year which forced her to step out of the limelight for a while.

Melanie Chisholm’s story is full of frustrating ifs and maybes. What if she’d had Victoria’s glamour or Geri’s brass neck? What if she’d been out front in the Spice Girls instead of being the plain one at the back? Could the right marketing strategy have made her the female Robbie Williams?

Maybe. But then she’d be someone else. She wouldn’t be Melanie C, the patron saint of the plain ones standing at the back.

---

Thanks for reading!

If you enjoyed this, here are two things you can do next.