“Wannabe” by Spice Girls

"Wannabe" was the Spice Girls' first single, a 1996 burst of dance-pop they wrote with Matt Rowe and Richard "Biff" Stannard, who produced it for the debut album Spice. The group disliked Dave Way's first mix, so Mark "Spike" Stent redid it. It's a song about putting your friends ahead of any romance, and it became the anthem of their girl power creed.

Johan Camitz's video took off on the Box, the press and radio piled in, and Virgin put the single out in Japan in June 1996 and in Britain a month later, well ahead of the album. Critics were split, but it held the UK top spot for seven weeks, had topped the charts in 37 countries by the end of 1997, won a Brit and an Ivor Novello, and went on to outsell every other girl-group single.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.