The Scotsman

Spice of life

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Melanie C talks about her new new solo album and coming to terms with some of the toxic legacy of the Spice Girls

As part of the Spice Girls, Melanie Chisholm went from shy teenager to global superstar, with scarcely a moment to draw breath. With a new solo album, the singer talks to Sarah Carson about coming to terms with the difficulti­es she faced, including an eating disorder and depression, and how she can now look back on the Spice Girls phenomenon with affection

Being Melanie C involves an exhausting amount of self- examinatio­n. “I spent a lot of time after Spice Girls trying to show people that there’s more to me,” she tells me. “‘ I’m not just Sporty Spice, I’m not just a high- kicking, ponytailed, Adidas tracksuit- wearing pop star, I’ve got more to me.’ I think I tried too hard, and I lost myself.”

Is it any wonder? Most young women suffer insecuriti­es about their bodies and joyless comparison to their peers, but to be given a label on the brink of adulthood in 1994 by Top of the Pops magazine, rapidly become one of the most famous celebritie­s on the planet and then spend years doomed to both feel a pressure to conform to that identity and reject it as you grow up was “very confusing”, she says. “You think, ‘ Don’t tell me who I am!’”

Ever since, the 46- year- old has been trying to work out how to distinguis­h herself from the band. “How do I express myself through my music? Or the way I dress?”

Last summer, when the Spice Girls reunited for a stadium tour, “I realised I’d been searching all this time externally, but I’m here. I’ve never gone anywhere. When I’m wearing the tracksuit, I’m me. When I’m running around singing Wannabe and kicking my legs in the air, I’m me. It’s a huge part of me and I tried to bury it, I tried to say ‘ that phase is over’.”

This month, she released a selftitled solo album – her eighth, since Northern Star in 1999 – and the words that come up often as we talk about it are “embrace” and “accept”. Melanie C is some of her best stuff to date – her soft- Scouse vocals against catchy disco- pop grooves. Singles such as the synth- racing Blame it on Me and the flirty and infectious In and Out of Love are already instant hits.

“I’d been Djing, reigniting my passion for dance and house music. I want it to be an album people want to dance to but is also interestin­g, has a message, has depth to the lyrics.” She sings about female empowermen­t, self- affirmatio­n, a toxic relationsh­ip, sexism, ageism. “You keep trying to fix something that isn’t even broken,” she sings, presumably to herself, on Good Enough. “I don’t wannabe your acceptable version of me”, she adds, cannily, on Overload ( she has talked about being bullied by other members of the Spice Girls). “They said I was too old… But I’m on fire,” she sings, with bite, on Here I Am.

No longer does she view her life in “phases”. In fact, she mocks that very idea in the video for the lead single, Who I Am, as she stalks through a gallery displayed with icons of her past “selves”: statuettes of her elegant in a golden ballgown, punching in a tracksuit, cross- legged with frosted tips in her spiky hair ( when we speak on Zoom, she’s in a black vest, crucifix tat on show).

Making the video “was traumatic,” she says, cackling, “I’m not gonna lie. I didn’t realise how difficult it would be to face myself. I had to face so many painful memories. It wasn’t until I watched it back I found peace with it.”

The video is clever, a brutal reminder of how relentless­ly pop stars are forced to consider or reinvent their brand and image, and a reminder that, since Melanie Chisholm auditioned for a new girl band called Touch and felt her life explode, she has never escaped the gaze of others.

Today, she is canonised for ever along with Britpop and Blair as an emblem of the 90s. But the Spice Girls are not merely a relic of pop history: the band is surely more interestin­g now – for the obvious complexity of the women’s relationsh­ips and conflicts as they have grown up – than for any “girl power” slogan from 25 years ago. They fight, things are not perfect, their friendship­s are not simple, they have let each other down.

“Awful things have happened between us, but we’re family. When we’re unified, it’s powerful.”

How does it feel to represent a decade that by her own admission, was often “painful”? “I really enjoy the nostalgia,” she says.

This summer, she covered the Sounds of the 90s show on BBC Radio 2, sharing memories between songs by the Happy Mondays and Eternal.

“I love to be reminded of how brilliant it was musically, that it was a time of change, that we had great hopes for Britain. We often dwell on the negatives – now I’m feeling grateful for the good stuff, and healing from the bad stuff.”

That “bad stuff ” includes anorexia, binge eating, depression, the press intrusion that meant that at the height of fame, she “didn’t feel like my life was my own, it felt like it belonged to everybody”.

Earlier this year, she wondered to Lauren Laverne on Desert Island Discs whether those problems stemmed from a 1996 fight with Victoria Beckham backstage at the Brit Awards, after which she was threatened with being kicked out of the band and began to put pressure on herself to behave. “I’m a perfection­ist – a failed perfection­ist,” she admits. Reports back then speculated on her sexuality, her weight, her relationsh­ips. Reading them now, their crassness feels dated ( though little has improved for women in the media since).

I wonder what she makes of the changing attitudes to discussion­s about mental health now, given how much of an outlier she was when she opened up about her own.

“I’m relieved and happy”, she says. “But when I first spoke about having depression and an eating disorder, I didn’t feel like I had a choice. I was very young and a lot of my issues changed my appearance, I felt compelled to tell everybody why. I was embarrasse­d, ashamed. Looking

“I’ve had to come to terms with a lot of stuff… Spice Girls was incredible, but very destabilis­ing as a young person”

back, I don’t think I was ready – I was very vulnerable, still healing, definitely not fully well. There was a long time when I regretted talking about it.”

Not least because, years later, the price she pays for her candour is that everyone wants to talk about the “issues”. “You could be doing numerous interviews for hours and hours, and you spend most of the day talking about depression, it gets f** king depressing!

“I’ve had to come to terms with a lot of stuff… Spice Girls was incredible, but very destabilis­ing as a young person.”

How? “You might be working with lovely people who want to make sure you’re OK, but at the end of the day you are a product, you’re paying people’s wages, and that can be a recipe for disaster.

“Young people, making more money than they ever imagined… When it was happening to us there was no emotional or profession­al psychologi­cal support.”

Chisholm has an 11- year- old daughter, Scarlet, with her ex- partner Thomas Starr. As someone whose own adolescenc­e was so scrutinise­d, has it made her doubly protective of her daughter?

“I almost feel relief about some of what I’ve experience­d,” she says. “Having a lot of therapy has helped me to look at those times and see the positives, and not get too caught up in the negative things that happened. Having that first- hand is helpful for a parent trying to navigate young girls.”

If there is one thing she has learned, she says, it’s that “you run out of the energy it takes to pursue perfection”

Melanie C is available no

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 ??  ?? The Spice Girls in 1996, main; Melanie C performing solo, top left; the singer has released eight albums, far right; the Spice Girls performing at the 2012 Olympics closing ceremony; a Sporty Spice doll, below
The Spice Girls in 1996, main; Melanie C performing solo, top left; the singer has released eight albums, far right; the Spice Girls performing at the 2012 Olympics closing ceremony; a Sporty Spice doll, below
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