{"id":429767,"date":"2026-05-07T09:49:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T09:49:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/429767\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T09:49:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T09:49:15","slug":"we-were-really-bullied-in-the-spice-girls-i-felt-insecure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/429767\/","title":{"rendered":"We were really bullied in the Spice Girls, I felt insecure"},"content":{"rendered":"

First pop-inspired fashion trends I adopted<\/p>\n

The Desperately Seeking Susan era brought fishnet tights, fingerless gloves, ribbons in your hair and lots of rosary beads. I was definitely one of those girls. With the sportswear, it was just the uniform where I grew up in Cheshire \u2014 everybody wore it. I continued to wear it in the Spice Girls, but the strangest thing was having the finances to buy whatever I wanted. My mum and dad worked constantly to pay the bills, so clothes weren\u2019t much of a priority as a child, but then later I could have as many pairs of trainers as I wanted.<\/p>\n

First film I saw at the cinema<\/p>\n

Flash Gordon. My parents divorced when I was a toddler, so my dad used to take me to the cinema and it became our ritual. He took me to all those great Eighties films \u2014 Flash Gordon, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and the Star Wars films.<\/p>\n

\"HenryHenry Thomas in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)Shutterstock<\/p>\n

First TV show I enjoyed<\/p>\n

As a family we used to compare ourselves to the Royle family because we\u2019d all sit round the telly gossiping. We watched lots of great comedies like Steptoe and Son, Fawlty Towers and Only Fools and Horses. I watched Dallas with my mum and The A-Team with my brother. I think it\u2019s really sad how our culture is changing and families watch TV together less and less.\u00a0<\/p>\n

First music artist I admired<\/p>\n

Stevie Wonder will be my favourite artist as long as I live. Songs in the Key of Life is my favourite album: there isn\u2019t a bad song on it. We performed with him in 1998 in Modena. It was one of those pinch-me moments. We were backstage in his dressing room and Emma [Bunton] and I were so gobsmacked we couldn\u2019t talk, but Stevie, being Stevie, greeted us with: \u201cNice to see you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"StevieStevie Wonder on stage in 2017Erika Goldring\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

First book I loved<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t got the patience to sit down, so I came to reading quite late. I was in my late teens when I read Dusty Springfield\u2019s autobiography, Dancing with Demons. Unbeknownst to me, she experienced a lot of things that I would go on to experience in the Spice Girls.\u00a0<\/p>\n

First concert I attended<\/p>\n

I saw Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons in Canada on a family holiday. I realised then that you don\u2019t really know an artist until you see them live. At first my brother and I thought, \u201cWhat are we doing here?\u201d but they were actually amazing. Your love for artists really grows when you see them live.<\/p>\n

First music album I bought<\/p>\n

The first vinyl record I saved up for and bought from Woolworths was The Kids from Fame. Being a dancer and a performer with a love for theatre, that style has been a huge influence on my own music, particularly my new album.<\/p>\n

First time I cried at the cinema<\/p>\n

ET the Extra-Terrestrial affected me so much. I loved it, but I think I cried for two weeks after watching it.<\/p>\n

First stage show I enjoyed<\/p>\n

I remember going to the Liverpool Empire to watch Barnum. I went with my friends and we all danced together. It was something we were really passionate about. It made me really love the theatre.<\/p>\n

First moment I realised I wanted to be in the music industry<\/p>\n

I was watching Live Aid in 1985, and I saw Madonna perform for the first time with a band. I\u2019d seen her on Top of the Pops and her music videos, but seeing her with a band gave me this moment of clarity where I thought, \u201cThis is what I want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

First performance to intimidate me<\/p>\n

Our first shows as the Spice Girls were in Istanbul in 1997, and they were being recorded. There was so much pressure on us because the world was waiting. Wannabe had been at No 1 for seven weeks, but we\u2019d never performed live for the world. Everyone was, like, \u201cCan they do it?\u201d We rehearsed really hard every day to get these shows the best they could possibly be. Like with everything we ever did, we got thrown in at the deep end.<\/p>\n

First performance I loved<\/p>\n

Those shows in Istanbul. Once we got out there, performing in front of a big crowd gave us confidence. When the crowds are so affectionate and loving towards you, that energy hits you. It\u2019s a really beautiful experience.<\/p>\n

First famous person I remember meeting<\/p>\n

Early on in the Spice Girls we had the same management as Annie Lennox, and she was incredible. Such a powerful female artist who gave us lots of advice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

First time I felt overwhelmed by fame<\/p>\n

It did become overwhelming when the tabloids were really cruel to us. In the Nineties there was a culture of really inappropriate things being written about all women in the public eye, especially at times when you were feeling insecure. They were bullies. Luckily, the culture\u2019s changed and that\u2019s not really acceptable any more. <\/p>\n

First moment I realised I had made it<\/p>\n

When we released Wannabe, the first week it charted at No 3. That week we flew to Tokyo to start promoting over there. We were there for two weeks, and when we came back Wannabe had been No 1 since we left and everything had changed. There were hundreds of people at the airport and from that moment on Spice Mania had started.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Melanie C\u2019s new album, Sweat, is out now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"First pop-inspired fashion trends I adopted The Desperately Seeking Susan era brought fishnet tights, fingerless gloves, ribbons in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429768,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409],"class_list":["post-429767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}