Thirty years after the Spice Girls burst onto the scene with one of the most iconic anthems of the ’90s, a little-known original member has recalled the moment she first heard Wannabe.<\/p>\n
Lianne Morgan, from Cowbridge, Vale of Glamorgan, joined Victoria Beckham, Geri Halliwell, Emma Bunton and Melanie B in Touch, the group that eventually became the Spice Girls.<\/p>\n
But Lianne was abruptly replaced by Mel C because, at 23, she was “too old against the other girls”.<\/p>\n
After returning from a cruise ship gig, Lianne saw them singing Wannabe on Top of the Pops. <\/p>\n
She recalled how she “got out their numbers” to congratulate them on the hit, before thinking “no, I won’t, they might not even remember me”. <\/p>\n
Back in the ’90s, Lianne attended an audition at Nomis Studios in London and was chosen to be part of Touch with Geri Halliwell, Melanie Brown and Victoria Adams. <\/p>\n
She said that “she fitted the bill” for what they were looking for as she was a singer and dancer “with an edge and confidence”.<\/p>\n
“Having sang in Welsh social clubs as well as up north I was confident and could hold an audience and deal with hecklers. I could hold my own,” she added. <\/p>\n
The mum-of-two, now aged 55, said Geri Halliwell was the first member of the band that “stood out”. <\/p>\n
“Geri was great fun to be around and I would have definitely been closest to her, she was the most grounded one,” she said. <\/p>\n
Morgan said Victoria Beckham was “very quiet and shy”, adding that she “did not want to sing at all, she kept on saying I am not a singer, I am a dancer.” <\/p>\n
She also recalls Mel B being “so confident”, even as a teenager. <\/p>\n
“She had an incredible voice and I knew she would be picked but felt she was very, very young,” said Morgan. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thirty years after the Spice Girls burst onto the scene with one of the most iconic anthems of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":680628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-680627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/680628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}