Music: Melanie Chisholm rules out reunion. The former Spice Girl says she will not join reunion unless all members plan to participate.
In essay, the former Spice Girl says she will not join reunion unless all members plan to participate
Former Spice Girl Melanie Chisholm has outlined her reasoning behind her reluctance to join her former band mates Emma Bunton, Geri Halliwell and Melanie Brown in a 20th anniversary reunion in an essay.
Chisholm — aka Mel C — wrote a piece for fashion magazine Love in which she explained her relationship with fame and the phenomenally successful Nineties pop band that resulted in her international celebrity.
She also ruled out any kind of reunion unless all five members of the group were present, adding that the “continuous speculation” about the band’s reformation “has been particularly exhausting”. Chisholm wrote: “The fascination with the band never seems to go away. It’s a blessing and a curse all at the same time. Daily I’m asked ‘are the girls getting back together?’ Then it’s When? How? Why?
When we reunited in 2007 the questions stopped momentarily. We had done it — the fans were happy and we were happy. But the minute that tour ended it started again.”
Chisholm described the reunion tour as “amazing, scary and surreal all at the same time. The five of us back together again. Like we’d stepped back in time for a global celebration of the band”. But she said that it would not be happening again soon:
“Truth be told, earlier this year after several face-to-face meetings with the girls I made the difficult decision not to be part of a proposed reunion with Emma, Geri and Melanie. Victoria had already bowed out understandably with the demands of her fashion label and her rather large family.
The hardest part for me was letting people down, the girls, the fans, civilisation?! Unfortunately something didn’t feel quite right and I had to follow my gut.”
She added: “I will be a Spice Girl until I die”, but suggested that her time with the group had finished in 2012 after the Spice Girls performed during the Olympics Closing Ceremony:
“There’s a lot to be said for bowing out on a high note.
“For me the absolute pinnacle of my Spice existence was being watched by a billion people around the globe belting out Spice up Your Life on top of a black cab at the 2012 London Olympics. Anything less than the full line-up just didn’t feel like we’ d be doing justice to the band or the fans.”
Brown, Halliwell and Bunton have been prompting speculation of a reunion of three members of the band after photographs and videos emerged around the 20th anniversary date of the release of the Spice Girls’s first single, Wannabe. At the time, Brown said during a TV interview:
“This would be the perfect year [for a reunion], but places get booked out this year, so what we’ll hopefully do is, we’re planning on doing something to celebrate next year. It’s something we want to do and it would be nice to celebrate and give thanks to all the fans. I’m not getting any younger, so let’s hurry up and get this done.”
During the weekend the trio posted social media updates showing they were spending time together.
Although Chisholm doesn’t directly discuss her former band mates’ decision to reform, her musings on fame suggest she no longer wishes to maintain celebrity status like them. “You see, I’m a singer and songwriter. Not a celebrity. The two are very different things. You can earn a fortune being a ‘celebrity’ depending on how much dignity you want to keep intact.”