Taking Sides: Take That vs Spice Girls

Win some, lose some.

Very true. I know yr all sick of it, but "Never ever" was wayyyy better than anyone had any right to expect...

because the Spice Girls had infinitely BETTER records fool, sexiness isn't as relevant as you seem to think.

Melanie Blatt, fwiw.

Why was this though? There was a period when every single thing that a Spice Girl did was a legitimate front page story. Take That were only ever on the front pages when a) Robbie left b) they split.

1 Spice Girls Wannabe Jul 1996 Notes
1 Spice Girls Say You'll Be There Oct 1996
1 Spice Girls 2 Become 1 Dec 1996
1 Spice Girls Mama / Who Do You Think You Are Mar 1997 Notes
1 Spice Girls Spice Up Your Life Oct 1997
1 Spice Girls Too Much Dec 1997 Notes
2 Spice Girls Stop Mar 1998
1 Spice Girls Viva Forever Aug 1998 Notes
1 Spice Girls Goodbye Dec 1998
1 Spice Girls Holler / Let Love Lead The Way Nov 2000

Take That: 4 at least
Spice Girls: 0

don't even remember this one

I was going on intense emotional neediness.

Balladish.
"What part of no don't you understand?
I want a Man, not a Boy who thinks he can..."

'Too Much of something is not enough...
And too much of nothing is....??'

Summat like that?

I still think All Saints were rubbish

SG had more sophistication than them even though that was supposed to be the latter's selling point

Is this what NME readers call them?

(Note - they wore sexier skirts too).

a) released in 1995

b) features guitar and piano

c) 'covered' by Robbie at a festival a year later

d) isn't as good as people thought at the time

(irt 'sexy' Atomic Kitten)

1 it sounds more beatlish than eltonish or george michealish
2 wasn't it on that album with the sgt.pepper style cover?
3 it would have been covered by the bluetones or cast or one of those shitehoppers if they'd thought of it (cf travis britney hit me one more time)
4 noel of gallagher bigged it up
5 the evening seesion played it i think

there!

Anyway, Take That would've been so much better if they'd split after "Never Forget". That was the perfect, bombastic, overblown farewell-on-a-good-note song.

I put the That and the Spices fairly level on songs (I'd completely forgotten about the great Motown-pastiche "Stop"). The Spice Girls were more culturally significant but I think Take That affected the more isolated pop scene a lot more.

Yes, it has acoustic guitars. And piano.

But was it the third single off the album?

Conclusion, as a Daily Mail subtext: "Handbag feminism contemptible; handbag homosexuality merely disgusting."

The Spice Girls marked the new era of pop music, that continues today. With Take That, each members were still talented, and had a skill useful in a boyband. Gary and his songs, Jason and Howard with their dancing, Robbie for being silly/funny and Mark for being cute. Ever since the Spice Girls, record companies have realised that you don't actually need the band to have any skills, as long as you have the marketing right. So thanks to them we have Atomic Kitten, S Club 7, Blue and so on.

If we didn't have The Spice Girls, I'd like to imagine that we'd jump straight from TT to Busted

- one of the best debut singles ever (Wannabe)
- one of the best SECOND singles ever (Say You'll Be There, clearly the No Good Advice of 1997)
- one of the best robbed-of-number #1s ever (Stop)
- "Too Much", an incredibly underrated song - definitely their most forgotten single, but still a corker
- an astonishingly good hit-to-miss ratio; the first album had their very best songs, but the second one was alarmingly consistent
- a video in which animated Spice Girls slew a sexually ambiguous youth
- several rubbishly ace songs (If U Can't Dance, Love Thing) that may have popularised hugely enjoyable rubbish rap bits in otherwise sensible boring songs
- the best phone message in a song.... ever! (Emma's in "Naked")
- the hilarious book that I think came with the Spice LP
- some great B-sides like "Take Me Home" and the Backstreets-Back-pillaging "Outer Space Girls".

Take That only had:

- "Back For Good", admittedly an amazing song that I was too indie to love at the time but now recognise as being startlingly touching
- The rather poor choice of costuming in the "Sure" video.

As far as solo efforts go, each one of the Spices has managed one great single (Geri: Look At Me, Bag It Up, Scream If You Wanna Go Faster AND Calling [yes hataz! those last two are GREAT!], Emma: The entirety of her second album, really, plus What Took You So Long?, Victoria: Let Your Head Go and Out Of Your Mind, Mel B: I Want You Back, Tell Me, Feels So Good, plus that ridiculous song on her album called Pack Your Shit, Mel C: er, actually she is crap solo..), but as far as Take That goes, Robbie Williams' career has been one monstrosity after another (save for Supreme and The Road To Mandalay which I quite liked), Gary Barlow writes crap songs for other crap losers, Howard and Jason I know nothing of, so their only bright spot is Mark Owen's In Your Own Time - an absolutely fantastic record, one of 2003's overlooked gems. Really, buy it... "Gravity", "Close To The Edge", "Kill With Your Smile", "Crush" - guitar pop singalongs of the highest order...

So, yes, Spice Girls win.

For the image/cultural effect/barometer of the zeitgeist? Again the Spice Girls for more than I can ever explain.

Who would I rather shag? Take That.

So go figure...

Because their packaging as sex objects rather than personalities was more effacious!

Girl groups, when on TV for the first time, seem to be all "Look at ME, not her or her" until they calm down a bit. And usually, they would look identical. The spicegirls were all different. It seems to have gone back to the old way (identicality) again...

I mean, honestly, can you tell Atomic Kitten apart, other than one of them having dark hair and one of them having short hair? It's like when guys talk about Abba, they talk about the "blonde one" or the "brunette one" and that's as far as it goes.

When talking about boybands, sure, it's very archetypical, but it's "the cute one" or "the rebellious one" or the "slightly gay one" rather than "the blond one" or "the brunette one".

The Spice Girls actually used that Boyband archetype of personalities/archetypes.

I mean, sure, as Stevem pointed out, there will be adolescent girls (and me) pointing out "X is fit!!!" on, say, Busted threads and the like. But they are more individuated, and the lust-distribution is individuated in the same way.

What about bands like The Ronettes, the Spice Girls, etc. who were managed by men who were manufacturing what *they* wanted, to the extent that the manager was actually shagging one of them?

Market girls to boys = emphasise boobs/sex etc
Market girls to girls = Show them having a good time...

Market boys to boys: show them as "cool"
Market boys to girls: market them as available?

still spice girls though, that only bringing TT up to 2 songs that I like

but..but.. Take That had Babe..

Umm, very pooer indeed...

I still prefer NKOTB to Take That, and Jordan Knight's solo record kills all of theirs.

.. and he got dropped after one...

I used to never like the Spice Girls so much, but I think I'm coming around now.

Have we ever polled solo Spice Girls hits? I want to poll solo Spice Girls hits

(Mostly stems from giving the David Sinclair SG biog my first read in four years, but I'm only re-reading that in the first place because I wanted to refamiliarise myself with the disaster of Mel B's album/Spice Girls' Forever coming out around the same time and sounding the same).

Spice Girls + solo would be a good poll

Didn't spot there hadn't been a regular Spice poll. Feel like any of those first three hits would walk it tho. If it was just solo then I'd have no idea what would win (I'd root for Out of Your Mind, would be fine with Never Be the Same Again, and would expect some to back Emma's 60s lounge/bossa period)

the start of this thread is particularly grim

Well it's Calum, dude spent hundreds of posts trying to troll ILX with bullshit like that before moving on to be annoying in the blu ray boutique label world instead.

i wasn't really around when it happened but weren't calum (= CRW here tho he used many names) and also dom the primary reasons the borads developed a mechanism actually to ban people (which they certainly couldn't in 2004) ?

dudes telling us about who they would or wouldn't fuck, the least interesting thing on the internet.

More reason to get away from this thread. Poll time now.

taylor swift