Driving into work this morning, I happened to listen to a Spice Girls song, ‘Stop’ to be precise. Its a fun song with a sixties style to it that seemed familiar. I started wonder, once the song has finished, why don’t more people admit to liking the Spice Girls?

Yes, there is the fact that the Spice Girls were manufactured much the same way that Take That, Boyzone, N-Sync, Backstreet Boys and many other chart toppers had been. Yes, the Spice Girls consisted of five girls, or young women if you like, who were picked as much for their look as for their singing talents. Each had a particular look, and were infact nicknamed after the look, Scary, Sporty, Ginger, Posh and Baby. Sounds like a censored episode of the Mr Men. Yes, they embodied the ‘Girl Power’ movement, which erm, they started and which died when the band broke up. Empowerment for women is great and good but should a pop band, albeit one filled with women, be using it as their ‘message’ rather than something perhaps better aimed at their fan base?

But underneath all of this was the music. Regardless of whether the songs were written by the band, the manager, the janitor or some un-named superstar song writer, the Spice Girls did deliver some very enjoyable songs. ‘Stop!’ being one of my personal favourites incorporated a throwback style that along with the video of the five girls singing in a street was a change of direction from previous songs and videos.

‘2 becomes 1′ featured some very non-pop-like chord progressions, so much so that Paul Gilbert, he of the wild guitar antics for the band Mr Big, recorded his version of the song with heavy guitars which if he hadn’t attempted to sing on it, would have been a world wide hit. It would be nice if one day, some one places the Spice Girls voices on Paul Gilberts version.

‘Say you’ll be there’ is pure pop, and as such not exactly a classic but it did showcase the variety of voices in the group. Each one of the five voices were distinctive and recognisable. It was also one of those songs that crept inside your head and then danced up and down in your cranium as you tried in vain to sleep at night.

It would be easy to write character assassinations of the five girls, each not only having their own look but their own issues but its safe to say that the best singer in the group was easily Mel C, or Sporty Spice. Yes, Ginger Spice did go on to have a solo career once she stopped being ginger (both laterally and figuratively), and yes, Posh Spice did go on to become too skinny and marry some footballer player, and yes, Scary Spice did little until getting Eddie Murphy to impregnate her, and Baby Spice, who knows? But Sporty Spice did have a couple of albums, and perhaps the pinnacle of anyone career, a very good duet with Bryan Adams!

In the same way that there is a stigma attached to watching and enjoying cheesy romantic comedies (Sweet Home Alabama anyone?), there is a overall feeling that if you like the Spice Girls, perhaps you are two notes short of a chorus, or you pay a little too much attention to your own personal hygiene.

Yes, the Spice Girls are manufactured pop, and yes they did outlive their welcome and they did annoy most people but they also had some good songs that are as enjoyable to listen to today as they were when they were released. And who didn’t have at least one fantasy with at least one of the Spice Girls? What do you mean it was only me?