[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3wgaWAHo2Q]
So, as I mentioned over on Twitter earlier, I got caught singing Spice Girls tunes publicly this afternoon.
I was out riding around, running some errands and enjoying the unseasonably pleasant weather, and for some odd reason, “Wannabe” was in my head. And soon, I was singing it, which was, of course, ridiculous and stupid and I shut up after I realized that yeah, other people can and will hear me.
I came to this realization only after seeing the discomfited look on the face of a fellow cyclist I passed while singing, “If you want my future/forget my past/if you wanna get with me/gotta make it fast.”
Yeah, I’m still a little embarrased.
This was probably way worse than the time I caught myself singing The Dead Kennedys’ Too Drunk To Fuck on my way to work. Fortunately for me, it was like 5:45 a.m., I was still in deep ghetto, and nobody was around to witness my witlessness.
This whole Spice Girls thing was definitely an odd development to me. I failed to appreciate them back when they first came out, as I was in my obnoxiously earnest “post-adolescent idealistic phase” and was not exactly their target market. In 1997, I was a sophomore in college and had a gigantic stick up my butt. I was offended by their glitter-n-thigh-highs “girl power” and general trampiness. In stead of just taking them at face value as a silly song-n-dance group that were here to get you in the party mood, I took them (and Britney) to be harbingers of the Death Of Feminism.
I really think that Destiny’s Child cracked the shell for me. Sure, they dressed skimpy and often seemed pretty ditzy in interviews, but their music was so infectiously danceable that they really got me re-hooked on girlpop. After I started to enjoy the best that Beyonce & crew could deliver and after I recovered from my ABBA surfeit from grad school, I started to be able to appreciate the true cheeztastic fabulosity that the Spice Girls brought to the music world. I even like probably three or four of Britney’s songs, too! And of course, there’s the whole corny J-Pop thing.
But just because I like dorky girl-pop doesn’t mean I need to be singing it (badly, I might add) on public streets in broad daylight. Good grief!