Spice Up Your Life

Fanatic responses to popular music

It was Friday, January 23, 1998. My best friend and I arrived at the theater. The movie wasn’t sold out. We didn’t care. We were too pumped. We took our seats and settled in for 93 minutes of enjoyment. 

It was opening night of Spice World (the Spice Girls movie).  

I should mention, we weren’t huge Spice Girls fans at all. We had a normal appreciation for the girl group but somehow, on that day, we ended up spending our Friday night with Posh, Scary, Sporty, Ginger and Baby (I recalled most of those names from memory). 

The Spice Girls had a moment. They were a contrived girl group with calculated personas and character archetypes. They played the role of best friends and promoted girl power. But that’s not why we were in the theater that night. 

We were there because they made bangers. As in multiple, can’t-help-but-nod-your-head hits. 

We didn’t care that their music wasn’t made for us. All we cared about was that their earworms made us feel good. That’s the point of pop music. 

Yes, all art is saying something about the state of our culture, but pop has less responsibility than its more serious counterparts. 

No, you can’t understand some of their lyrics (“I really, really, really wanna zigazig ah”) and the ones you can understand are a bit silly (“Yeah, I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want / So tell me what you want, what you really, really want”), but they make me feel good when I hear them.  

And maybe it’s just me. Maybe I am just a sucker. I always have been. 

In 1992, the sensation known as Kris Kross entered my life. Everything about this group blew my young mind. Both members of the duo were named Chris (!?!?!?!). One went by the moniker Mac Daddy (Chris Kelly) and the other by Daddy Mac (Chris Smith). Their debut single, “Jump,” on their debut album, “Totally Krossed Out,” was a sensation and is still played today. Oh, and the rappers were 12 and 13 years old, respectively.

But that’s not what blew my mind about Kris Kross. They wore their clothes backwards—and so did I.

This might not seem like a big deal, but it was a statement. A ridiculously inconvenient, not borderline but rather definitively stupid statement. I remember rolling up to a urinal and being like, “Um…we didn’t think this one through, did we?”

That’s sort of the point of all this. I wasn’t even a big Kris Kross fan just like my buddy and I weren’t Spice Girl fans. We just fell into it. We got caught up. Pop is short for popular.  

Even though I’ve never been a superfan, I have come to realize that they do exist. I was at a wedding and rode one of those wedding buses with some woman I had never met. These are the buses where a handful of people are best friends but the collection is random, so there is sort of a nervous energy. Some on the bus might have pregamed a bit while others were mad their babysitter hadn’t texted a picture of their kid eating organic broccoli yet. Everyone was looking around, sizing one another up and asking themselves, is this a Jack Johnson, The Weeknd or LMFAO vibe? (If it’s the latter, I am walking straight to the back of the bus, pulling the emergency exit ripcord and taking my chances with the pavement because I never need to hear “Party Rock Anthem” ever again.) 

ANYWAY…So, I am making small talk with my bus-mate and somehow she reveals (it did not take much effort on my part) that she is a huge Hanson fan. I’m like, Hanson? Like, Hanson? As in, “MMMBop” Hanson? 

She does what any superfan would do—she gets offended, brushes off their most popular song by a fucking mile and starts going on and on about all their tours and albums since then (fan is short for fanatic, by the way). 

I’m half-listening because I am utterly shell-shocked that A) Hanson is still making music and B) they have actual fans.

The Hanson brothers, Isaac, Taylor and Zac, were 16, 14 and 11, respectively, when “MMMBop” hit. I am not sure if there is direct causation, but given the Hanson brothers’ and the Chrises’ young ages, maybe younger is better. 

I remember this baby had a single. I’m serious. A fucking baby. Like a baby, who spoke gibberish. 

Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered that the baby’s name was Jordy. I couldn’t locate the Hanson brothers’ hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma on a map, but somewhere in the recesses of my brain I remembered that there was a baby named Jordy who had a music video. 

And it turns out, I was right!

In 1992, four-year-old Jordy (Jordy Claude Daniel Lemoine) released “Dur Dur D'être Bébé!” which translates to “It’s Tough to Be a Baby” (OK, so it wasn’t gibberish, it was French, but I was a kid wearing my clothes backwards, so cut me some slack). That baby had a music video that I watched on a television channel called The Box, a now mostly defunct rival to MTV where people would call in and could dictate what music videos would be played (the concept is actually pretty groundbreaking and ahead of its time now that I think about it).

While many of these artists are young, age is not necessarily a predictor of success. Kate Bush was in her 60s when her 1985 song “Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)” became a sensation because of its use in the Netflix series Stranger Things. The song is incredible and was played multiple times during the show, but the fact that the song is good and got a lot of attention doesn’t necessarily mean it will become a hit—especially when that song had been on the sidelines for close to four decades. That’s what's fun about pop music. Nobody knows when something will take off or why something will succeed. It’s like an artistic snow globe. 

Along those lines, not even talent guarantees success. Justin Timberlake was not only the most talented member of his group NSYNC but also their rival, Backstreet Boys. Yet, the Backstreet Boys created better music than NSYNC and it’s not particularly close. Yes, NSYNC had JT, but the collective output of the Backstreet Boys produced more head-bobbing hits. It’s like when the Detroit Pistons beat the Shaq/Kobe Lakers in 2004. Throughout the entire series, we expected the Lakers to turn it on. And then they lost five games. The whole was greater than the sum of its parts. 

Timberlake is not the only defector who has gone on to have success as a solo artist. Harry Styles came up with the band One Direction and has since launched an incredible solo career. In fact, I had a front-row seat to Harry’s greatness when I attended his “Love on Tour” tour at the Forum in Los Angeles, which he renamed “Harry’s House” and believe you me, the new name was appropriate. 

Sometimes, artists have moments. The Spice Girls had one in 1998. Kris Kross had one in 1992. And during that tour (November 2022), Harry Styles was having a moment. I remember sitting in my seat before the concert started. I arrive early because I still don’t understand what time to show up at a concert. (I showed up to a Jay-Z and Kanye West concert during their “Watch the Throne” tour at 7:30 pm because that’s what the tickets said. Two hours later, the artists went on.) The DJ plays a song and the people on the floor go nuts— turns out it was a One Direction song (“Best Song Ever,” which is a bit of a bop, I must admit). 

So I am waiting in my seat and my buddy next to me asks if I want earplugs. I smirk, shake my head and dismiss his kind gesture. Earplugs? Come on. Why go see live music if you’re going to drown out the sound? That was a mistake. 

Here’s some unsolicited life-advice: if someone asks you if you want earplugs, you say yes. I think my ears are still ringing from that concert. 

Anyway, Harry rose from the ground and ignited the 20,000 fans crowded into the arena (he opened with “Golden,” which was the perfect choice). 

I enjoyed the concert and I like Harry Styles’ music, but like the Spice Girls and Kris Kross, I would not identify as a Harry Styles fan. Not in the way I am a LA Dodgers, LA Chargers or Sublime fan. And that’s what makes pop music fun—it doesn’t require commitment. 

I can float in and out of songs without any real attachment. I loved “Call Me Maybe” when it came out in 2012 and was simultaneously shocked to see someone wearing a Carly Rae Jepsen hoodie from a 2019 tour. I had the same response to the Hanson fan—she’s still making music? And people are actually buying tickets and going to see her? 

Moreover, in a world where technology and the availability of information seems to be polarizing society, pop music remains one of the remaining links of an increasingly splintering monoculture. You may disagree politically but “California Gurls” by Katy Perry still melts your popsicle.  

Speaking of technology, it is somewhat powerless in predicting the success of a pop song. There is no formula. No algorithm can tell you the exact number of times to use the word “baby” in order to make a hit. Nobody knows why or when an artist will have a moment. They come and then go. They always go. Most of the time they go quickly, but sometimes they can last. It’s the mercurial nature of art that makes pop music simultaneously interesting and completely unimportant. It’s difficult to define, or in the words of French baby-rapping superstar, Jordy, it’s the “je ne sais quoi.”