There’s no doubt that the Spice Girls are one of the biggest bands of all time. But how have they fared in the 20 odd years since? Sam Brooks ruthlessly ranks their solo careers.

The footsteps and cackle at the start of ‘Wannabe’ are as era-defining as pop music gets. Hell, that entire song is one of the most perfect three minutes of pop that exists, sounding both timeless and very much of its time.

But we’re not here to discuss the virtues of ‘Wannabe’.

The Spice Girls were one of the biggest bands of all time, and for a band that had two albums (I don’t count the third, because you don’t) that’s pretty incredible. There’s no point ranking their music from that era – you’ve heard it all, and you either love it beyond all logic or reason or are indifferent to it (once more, beyond all logic or reason)

We’re not here to discuss the virtues of The Spice Girls collectively. They are beyond judgment.

We’re here to discuss the virtues of their solo careers, which are as varied as you can get from people who all came from the same band, genre of music, and general geographic location. Who made a good go of it and didn’t quite pass the finish line? Who is still making a good go of it? Who sat comfortably within her limits and made quietly amazing pop music? And what’s Geri Halliwell doing today?

Now, just so we’re clear: this is a ruthless, incredibly timely, ranking of the Spice Girls’ solo music. I’ve left out discussion of other careers, such as acting or whatever shadow empire Victoria Beckham is using to rule over the world with an iron fist. This ranking is a pure, completely biased, assessment of their music.

Let us continue.

5. Victoria Beckham

Look. This is the easy one to rank. If you know a Victoria Beckham solo song at all, and we’re counting you in the extreme minority here, then it’ll be the one above.

It’s not even a bad song – it’s fine in the way that most club music from the late 90s or early 00s is fine. It wouldn’t get you on the dancefloor but it wouldn’t get you off the dancefloor.

Beckham’s lack of a solo career appears to be more out of disinterest in music than in any lack of talent. When you have two full-time jobs, are running an Illuminati-esque fashion empire and busy making sure David Beckham doesn’t say stupid things in public, why would you be making a go at a solo music career?

Victoria Beckham is so disinterested in music that she isn’t even joining the 2019 reunion tour. I, for one, respect that. No need to drag up a horse skeleton and kick it a few times. Just let dead horses lie, and bask in the fact that you’re now worth over a billion dollars.

4. Melanie B

Did you know that Mel B is short for Melanie Belanie? The wonders of the world!

Talking real for a moment: ‘I Want You Back’ is a top-tier, underrated 90s classic, and Mel B is the only Spice Girl to have collaborated with Missy Elliot, one of the most important artists of… ever, really. It’s lean, it’s moody, and it bubbles sinisterly under the surface like the best R&B of that era does.

And continuing to talk real: nothing else in Mel B’s solo career comes close to this song. ‘Word Up’ is a nice enough song, but it outstays its four-and-a-half minute welcome. Her biggest song outside of ‘I Want You Back’ is ‘Tell Me’, which could very easily be a Samantha Mumba b-side.

Mel B’s issues as a vocalist are the inverse of what makes her famous, so it’s unsurprising that she’s found success as both a celebrity judge, host, and spokesperson. Her voice is thin, but she packs so much personality and vim into what she’s singing that it makes you forget the slightness of her instrument.

However, one Missy Elliot feature does not make a career, and thus she languishes here.

3. Geri Halliwell

Let’s do the numbers on this first.

Geri Halliwell had an unprecedented run of successful singles, especially for someone breaking out of a successful girl group who isn’t named Beyonce or Diana. Her first single, ‘Look at Me’, reached number two on the charts, followed up with four consecutive number one singles, ‘Mi Chico Latino’, ‘Lift Me Up’, ‘Bag It Up’, and potentially her most famous and successful single, a cover of ‘It’s Raining Men’.

It’s a record-setting run that would only be beaten by Cheryl Cole and Rita Ora, both of whom we can all agree are popstars who are breaking ground constantly in pop music.

But how does it actually hold up now?

‘Look at Me’ is… nice? It’s too long, but the beat holds up.

‘Mi Chico Latino’ is one of those trend-following, hit-chasing songs that sounds like everything else at the time. But when you listen to it even a few years later, it sounds entirely inexplicable. That video thumbnail explains exactly what’s wrong with this song: Halliwell is actually half-Spanish, but her passable rapped bridge in the language is… not convincing. It’s a fine song that you forget while the last chorus fades out.

This world never had any use for a mid-tempo Geri Halliwell ballad, and I can’t explain why ‘Lift Me Up’ was so successful except, maybe, that people somehow loved Ginger Spice the most of the Spice Girls and for a few years would spend hard earned money on anything she put out.

However, the music video, which appears to be set in some sort of prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, involves a lot of little men painted in silver helping her fill her car. That’s something that I have a lot of use for.

And finally, we have Geri Halliwell’s ode to condoms, ‘Bag It Up’.

It’s a fun song. The chorus is hooky, and it’s something that I would love hearing on a playlist, despite it sounding a little cheap.

So, Geri Halliwell had a successful run, inarguably the most successful solo period of any Spice Girls. So why isn’t she ranked higher?

Because one, the songs aren’t very good, and aged the moment they were printed. They were shamelessly on-trend for the time, with no sense of longevity or permanence in sight. The songs don’t get any better if you dig into what she did after her consecutive hits.

And two, take what I said about Mel B and voice vs. personality, but magnify it. Geri Halliwell really really can’t sing, and her brassy personality is not enough to carry these songs across. The soft afterglow of being in the Spice Girls might cover up a few flaws, but once that glow fades, you’re just left in the harsh light with nothing to cover up the fact that your assets worked better in harmony.

But hey, it’s hard to mess up ‘It’s Raining Men’.

2. Emma Bunton

‘What Took You So Long’ is, in my mind, the best song released by a Spice Girl outside of the band. It’s that rare thing: a mid-tempo earworm. You might not try it at karaoke, but you’d definitely crank it up in the radio. It’s the ‘come hither’ at the bar rather than the ‘CHUNE’. So I’d rank her at two for that alone, but I can hear the Geri Haliwell fan (singular, come on, it’s 2019) screaming at me.

So, let me say this: Emma Bunton actually had more than one good song, it’s just that nobody ever heard them.

Take, for example, 2004’s ‘Maybe’:

A few good years before Duffy ‘Mercy’d her way onto the charts, Bunton was giving us a perfect 60’s pastiche – vocals so light they’re brushing the ceiling, an impenetrable wall of sound, and a wry, nearly Austin Powers-ish sense of humour.

For some reason, Emma Bunton seems to be perceived as not having a very good voice. I encourage you to look at her solo albums, or even back at the Spice Girls discography. She’s not a belter, but there’s a lightness to her voice that’s incredibly pleasant to listen to and she never pushes past it. In another decade, Bunton could’ve been a Julie London or a Ronette. In this decade and the last one, she’s an also-ran, someone who was doing the 60s before it became popular.

Also, Bunton’s releasing music right up to the current day, with an album coming out next month. It’s half covers – including a 60’s inspired cover of Madison Avenue’s ‘Don’t Call Me Baby’ which is definitely too cute – and half originals. If the first original is anything to by, it doesn’t sound half bad:

It’s not going to set the charts on fire. Sadly, Duffy ‘Mercy’d away as quickly as she came along. But I’ll be damned if this isn’t someone working within the limits of their voice, having fun with it, and making chill, classy music at the same time.

But, of course, there’s one indisputable winner:

1. Mel C

Oh, come on, like it was going to be anybody else here. If you scrolled down and expected to see Victoria Beckham here, bless your soul and thank you David Beckham for reading The Spinoff.

I could list a Wikipedia’s pages worth of records she’s broken, not just for a Spice Girl but for a real life human being, but let’s leave it at this: she’s got the best voice, she’s the one whose songs you remember most, and she’s the one who’s never taken a break from music, even if you might never have intentionally listened to one of her songs in fifteen years.

She doesn’t need my defending and uplifting like Emma Bunton does, and she doesn’t need my skepticism like the initial solo career of Geri Halliwell did.

She also didn’t need to do a cover of ‘I Know Him So Well’, musical theatre’s best ode to mediocre masculinity and superior women with Emma Bunton, but she did, and she nailed it:

And how many people have a duet from Chess, one of history’s most boring musicals, and an unimpeachable club banger in their discography?

Melanie C is the one who can sing the best. She’s had the best songs. She’s the one who has never taken a break or hiatus. Her solo music career is the best.

Send your emails and complaints to sam@thespinoff.co.nz you crazy Spice Girls cats you.

A previous edition of this article stated that ‘Halliwell is about as Spanish as Mexicali Fresh’. Despite the humour, this is an inaccuracy: Geri Halliwell’s mother is from Spain. The Spinoff Music regrets the error.

Before The Joe Rogan Experience, before even Fear Factor, Joe Rogan was an actor on a much-loved, little-seen show called NewsRadio. Laura Vincent looks back at the unproblematic hunk Rogan used to be.

I’m an expert on Joe Rogan. You know the guy, right? If not from yelling enthusiastically at UFC cards you’ve surely heard of his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, where he talks about smoking weed or the benefits of sensory deprivation and meditation while riffing with comedians, actors and public figures.

Doesn’t ring a bell? Lately, he’s been hosting prominent alt-right figures in his unchallenging, friendly space. He claims no political affiliation but his ability to placidly agree with almost anything his guests say is getting increasingly weirder to behold. Yes, that guy! You know him! He conveys a kind of ‘whoopee cushion straining at the join’ vibe. He smoked weed with Elon Musk and his opening serve to this billionaire – who called one of the rescue divers of the kids in the Thai cave a “pedo” – was to skittishly ask how someone “constantly innovating” finds time to make a flamethrower.

He brought on Jordan Peterson and they merrily talked smack about gender pronouns, diversity, and income equality. His name comes up more and more as his podcast grows in popularity. Its clips go viral, reddit analyses them, and your not-yet-radicalised cousin on Facebook clicks on them out of idle curiosity.

Yes, I’m an expert on Joe Rogan. Wait, that’s misleading: I’m an expert on a very precise slice of Joe Rogan, during the years 1995-1999 when he played a gorgeously handsome lunk in the little-watched but extraordinary NBC sitcom NewsRadio.

I don’t actually know that much about the man now, but without his current level of clickbait infamy, there’s no way I’d be able to write about my precious gem NewsRadio. I’ve tried. I’ve pitched. I’ve been waiting like a spider for my opportunity, and here it is at last (editor’s note: I’m more familiar with his mid-career fame as host of Fear Factor, but you do you.)

Consider the 90s sitcom and it’s the juggernauts that spring first to mind. There’s the vicarious, cosy, Buzzfeed-fluffing Friends and the groundbreakingly clever and mean Seinfeld, the opera-heavy spinoff-that-could Frasier, and Everybody Loves Raymond, which was also there. Zoom in, peel back layers of Just Shoot Me and Caroline In The City and there you’ll find NewsRadio, a sitcom about shenanigans and machinations at the fictional WNYX radio station in New York.

It ran for four years from 1995, during which it suffered 11 time-slot changes before cancellation at the end of its fifth season. NewsRadio achieved woeful viewer numbers, yet retaining any audience was impossible with this scheduling carry-on. It was less of a chicken-and-egg, more a chicken-throwing-its-eggs-at-the-wall situation, and probably the reason why you haven’t heard of the show before.

The first thing to know about NewsRadio is that it’s just the most peerlessly clever and funny sitcom, marrying the workplace family and increasing surreality of MASH with Frasier’s theatrical physicality and the purgatorial un-poignancy of Peep Show. Did you know 10 of its episodes are named after random Led Zeppelin albums for absolutely no reason? Did you know that in direct reference to its own appalling ratings, the show had an episode called Sinking Ship where the characters travelled back in time to the Titanic?

The second thing about NewsRadio is that from where we stand now, the cast is a truly gobsmacking group to have gathered in one room. From “oh that guy” Stephen Root to “oh…that guy” Andy Dick; from ER’s Maura Tierney to Treme’s Khandi Alexander; from Dave Foley of Kids in the Hall to stage actress Vicki Lewis. There was also Phil Hartman, the ex-SNL showman who provided the deliciously smarmy voice of Troy McClure on The Simpsons and designed several album covers for the band America in the 70s. He was also murdered by his wife in May 1998 just before season five of NewsRadio was due to start filming. To the surprise of all, the show was picked up for another season. But the loss of Hartman sent it into an obvious decline before it was finally cancelled.

And there was Joe Rogan. Young and fresh-faced, with this lantern-jawed brunette thing going on that the 90s favoured (think Greg from Dharma and Greg, Will from Will and Grace.) He played Joe Garrelli, a character undoubtedly originally influenced by Joey Tribbiani of Friends. NewsRadio’s Joe is a loveable dolt who’s funny, loveable, charming, and a blue-collar contrast to the fancier radio hosts and executives who make up the rest of the cast.

But I didn’t just come here to write about a pretty face (valid though that is). As the show progresses you start to see Joe the person’s influence on Joe the character – and the seeds of who Rogan would become – hiding in plain sight.

Joe Garrelli’s main deal is that whenever he’s given a job he tries to DIY it, usually elaborately. You know the saying, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it? Joe Garrelli likes to preempt this entirely. (“I’m rewiring the phones for speed-dial, so like, if you have to call 911 you don’t have to push a whole lot of buttons.”) The man makes his own duct tape.

As the show builds, Garelli quickly starts – like Rogan – to display a strong propensity for conspiracy theories. From alien abductions and paranormal activity (“I don’t care what you say about me but making fun of alien technology is just stupid”) to government cover-ups and security cameras being part of a grand social experiment from an unnamed agent in a mountain in Virginia.

In episode nine of season two, ‘The Cane’, Joe suggests – hilariously from this angle – that the station work on launching a “fully interactive online website”.

By episode 17 of that same season, ‘Physical Graffiti’, Joe is the resident expert on all things cyber, and wisely, with some portent, says “you can’t take something off the internet. That’s like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.”

In season four’s eighth episode, ‘Stupid Holiday Charity Talent Show’, Joe shows off his prowess against a piece of wood. “My talent is hitting things really hard and not hurting my hand.”

By season four’s 20th episode (rakishly named ‘420’) Joe is pitted against Andy Dick’s character in a charity UFC bout, which, let’s face it, is just an incredible metaphor for Rogan’s real career path.

At first, it amused me that through Rogan’s current infamy there was, at last, a vehicle for writing about NewsRadio, and I thought it cute how he worked UFC references into his character’s storyline. But the more I researched, the less amused I felt.

There’s an episode of Rogan’s podcast from 2011 – an unfathomably far off-time – where he talks to his NewsRadio castmate Dave Foley. It’s bittersweet and funny, and the two guys, both part of something special, have a comfortable back-and-forth. And then Foley starts talking about his divorce. His experience, full disclosure, sounded singularly horrific. I also know in my very bones, like a spider innately knowing how to spin a web, that you shouldn’t read YouTube comments.

Yet read them I did, and then some. Turns out there’s a ton of people out there taking whatever Joe Rogan says and using it to springboard off and extrapolate wildly. The level of hostility in these comments made me feel queasy. With every episode of the podcast I watched, especially recent ones, the comments seethed harder, and what Rogan said became more influenced by a particular style of politics. Which in turn – the real chicken and egg – set off the commenters even more.

In the Foley episode, Rogan says he’s “learned from the Phil Hartman experience” and will now openly warn his friends if he feels they’re in an unsafe relationship. This is commendable: men looking out for their friends should be encouraged. But while looking for ways in which Rogan had influenced his position on NewsRadio, I started to wonder if being on the show had created these fissures that are now cracking into his real-life persona.

Would there be this much discourse about suspicion of women if Rogan hadn’t experienced his friend getting murdered? If Rogan didn’t have this veneer of being the reasonable middle ground, which I found myself agreeing with often in spite of myself, would he have attracted so many listeners who imprint upon him exactly what they want to hear? It was a lot to consider.

But did you know that in response to network instructions for an episode of NewsRadio where a character dies, as a tie-in related Four Weddings and a Funeral, the writers had the characters hold a funeral for a dead rat? Did you know they had an episode set in outer space for no reason whatsoever? Did you know they got Jerry Seinfeld to guest star in an episode about the characters desperately trying to get Jerry Seinfeld to guest star on their radio show to avoid cancellation? Did you know that Ray Romano of Everybody Loves Raymond was originally cast in Joe Rogan’s role?

If you are already a Joe Rogan fan, maybe consider watching NewsRadio. Not because he was hot in it, not because I can write more about this show if it has a resurgence, but because honestly, you don’t have much time on this earth and of what you have, very little is spared for leisure. If it’s Joe Rogan you want then you might as well consume something really good. His NewsRadio role bears all the hallmarks of his particular personality, with remarkably less alt-right commentary. You can’t take the pee out of the swimming pool, but you can swim elsewhere.