9. Oasis
On the flipside of looking at the Stevie Wonder record or even Neneh Cherry, Definitely Maybe is something I really recognise. Growing up in the North West with a working class background, that environment and those references were things that really struck a chord with me. I remember going to see Oasis at Earls’ Court and I was so blown away that the fans were so incredibly different to any other fans of an artist I’d seen before. It was quite aggro. It was blokey, innit! Oasis was blokey! But characters like Liam and Noel, the roles that they play – thank god for people like that in music. It’s good to have these people who can be a bit of a dickhead, but you can’t help but love Liam. I’d like to see them back together, like the rest of the population.
What was it like co-existing as a member of Spice Girls but also a lover of Britpop? Did you feel more like a celebrity or a fan at the time?
All of us girls had quite different musical tastes, and that served us well really. I’ve always loved pop music and listened to all kinds, but I’d listened to a lot of rock music as a kid. At one point I went through a phase of listening to Def Leppard, probably because some fit boy at school did, but then I got into dance music in the early 90s. So Blur and Oasis were my gateway into guitar music. They opened me up to bands like The Charlatans, Space, Cast, The La’s and The Stone Roses, and with the girls that very quickly became my role. I was like ‘Indie Spice’ – I think NME even said that one day – and I loved it.
As a pop singer, you spend so much time singing to backing tracks, so to actually be in front of a live band has always really moved me. I don’t play anything well enough to perform, but as a singer when you get that feeling of a band being really tight and you’re all moving together like you’re in sync with each other… that really appeals to me. My mum’s a singer and my step-dad’s a bass player, so when I was a kid they were always rehearsing in the living room – which sounds wonderful, but at the time it was annoying. I’d be in bed upstairs trying to go to sleep through bass lines stomping through the floorboards. I think that’s why I’m drawn to a lot of guitar music as well, it really touches my soul.
