Maidenhead is a UK market town of about 70,000 people, which lies on the south-western bank of the River Thames. Famed for its historic brick railway bridge \u2014 it was also the site of the Spice Girls’ first share house.<\/p>\n
“I think it’s maybe about an hour and a half out of London; a very suburban part of the UK,” says Melanie Chisolm \u2014 otherwise known as Mel C, otherwise known as Sporty Spice.<\/p>\n
After a management company held auditions for a new all-female band, and a few line-up tweaks, they moved five young women into their new house.<\/p>\n
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“I was given the nickname Sporty Spice, because alongside music, I love sport and being very athletic, whether that was dancing or gymnastics or netball or football.” (Supplied: Melanie Chisholm)<\/p>\n
A 20-year-old Mel C shared a bedroom with Melanie Brown (Mel B, Scary Spice). Another room was shared by Victoria Adams (Posh Spice) and Emma Bunton (Baby Spice). Geri Halliwell (Ginger Spice) got her own room “because she’s the eldest”.<\/p>\n
“And we would get in Geri’s car every morning and poodle down to this church hall where we’d practise choreography and learn songs,” Mel C, now 51, explains to Zan Rowe on Take 5.<\/p>\n
The group of five lived together in this Wannabe pop star house for about a year.<\/p>\n
“At the time, we were being given songs to sing that were being written by middle-aged men. So of course, that didn’t go down very well, but we were getting to know each other, getting to figure out what we didn’t like as well as what we did want to do.”<\/p>\n
But cautious management was frustrating them.<\/p>\n
“[They] just kept saying to us, ‘You’re not ready, you’re not ready, don’t try and run before you can walk. I think you need to lower your expectations’,” Mel explains.<\/p>\n
“But we were like, ‘Nup.'”<\/p>\n
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Cash poor but inspiration rich, they convinced their management to finance an industry showcase. They made the contacts they needed and then left.<\/p>\n
“The management was starting to get in the way,” she says.<\/p>\n
“I think once the five of us had met, we were like, ‘nothing’s going to stop us’.”<\/p>\n
‘It’s boy bands that sell’<\/p>\n
The Spice Girls burst onto a scene that hadn’t been quite ready for them.<\/p>\n
Following the grunge movement of the early 90s, bands like Oasis and Blur were dominating the airwaves.<\/p>\n
Watch Take 5 with Zan Rowe<\/a><\/p>\n Across six episodes, icons in music and screen join Double J host Zan Rowe to delve deep into intimate moments in their lives as they share five songs they love.<\/p>\n “Pop music was a bit of a dirty word, and girls were a little bit overlooked,” Mel says.<\/p>\n The group could see the gap in the market, but the people in power couldn’t.<\/p>\n “We were going around to labels and \u2026 being told, ‘no-one’s interested in girl bands, it’s boy bands that sell’.”<\/p>\n Mel says that was “the red rag to the bull”.<\/p>\n “We’re so grateful for that because it gave us that fire in our bellies and we’re like, ‘Right, let’s go’.<\/p>\n “This is what created the Spice Girls. We set about to prove everybody wrong, and we did.”<\/p>\n “We all wanted to travel all over the world. We wanted to play these big stages. We wanted to be famous,” Mel C says. (Photo by Tim Roney\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n Iconic R&B band TLC was also a big inspiration for the Spice Girls, as a powerful group of women where each member had a defined character.<\/p>\n “We really looked up to them. We love their music, and we also loved how outspoken they were.”<\/p>\n Mel points to songs like Waterfalls, which touches on HIV\/AIDS and drug abuse; tracks like that helped the group realise they also had a strong, influential voice.<\/p>\n Mel C’s Take 5 songs:Stevie Wonder \u2014 Sir Duke, 1976TLC \u2014 Waterfalls, 1995Wham! \u2014 Everything She Wants, 1984Orbital \u2014 Chime, 1989The Beatles \u2014 Eleanor Rigby, 1966<\/p>\n “And we wanted to use it.”<\/p>\n While she acknowledges their Girl Power message was “a lot more throwaway and fun”, Mel says it offered an accessible way for young girls to learn about feminism and their own power.<\/p>\n “We set out being a band for girls, but then that quickly escalated to being a band for anybody that needed something to be a part of.”<\/p>\n ‘I’ve been one of the lucky ones’<\/p>\n Mel C’s mum is a singer, and her stepdad is a bass player \u2014 they were working musicians throughout her whole childhood.<\/p>\n Joan O’Neill, Mel C’s mum, is a singer. \u00a0 (Supplied: Melanie Chisholm)<\/p>\n “One of my pals’ mums was a dinner lady and her dad worked in a car factory. Nobody’s parents got dressed up on a Saturday night, put their makeup on and went out and sang to people,” she says.<\/p>\n “And that just made me feel very proud of my mum. I thought she was very sophisticated.”<\/p>\n She also lived in a part of Liverpool where “everybody works really, really hard … to put food on the table”, which she says was an important influence on her working life.<\/p>\n “Obviously, I’ve been one of the lucky ones. I’ve done it in such a beautiful way. I’ve performed in the most incredible places with the most incredible people, but you never see what’s going on behind the scenes.<\/p>\n “And behind the scenes, there’s a lot of blood, sweat and tears.”<\/p>\n “I can’t imagine a life without music,” Mel C tells Zan Rowe on Take 5. “I think every memory I have through my life there is music that accompanies it.” (ABC TV: Photo by Femi Johnson)<\/p>\n But she’s the first to admit that the hard work has well and truly paid off. As part of the Spice Girls, Mel C had the chance to work with her heroes, like Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney.<\/p>\n She now has a 16-year-old daughter, Scarlett Starr, and lives in the picturesque countryside of Monmouthshire, Wales, but continues to play shows all around the world as a singer and a DJ.<\/p>\n And she thinks her rave-loving Liverpool teenage self would be “pretty damn proud” of it all.<\/p>\n “I don’t think she knew what was coming, but she was hoping for something that spectacular.”<\/p>\n Stream all episodes of Take 5 with Zan Rowe free on ABC iview<\/a>. Hear extended Take 5 podcast episodes on the ABC listen app<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maidenhead is a UK market town of about 70,000 people, which lies on the south-western bank of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,90565,134,90562,41239,90563,90567,90568,41241,90569,74777,90564,90566],"class_list":["post-130259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-does-mel-c-have-kids","tag-entertainment","tag-how-old-is-mel-c","tag-mel-c","tag-mel-c-age","tag-mel-c-spice-girls","tag-melanie-c","tag-sporty-spice","tag-take-5-with-zan-rowe","tag-the-spice-girls","tag-the-voice-australia-2025","tag-where-is-mel-c-from"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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