GERI HALLIWELL – "Bag It Up"

Whenever I hear Bag It Up (or think of it, I should say – you don’t really hear it these days) two things spring to mind. One, the chorus hook is so blatantly pinched from Heatwave’s Boogie Nights. Two, dog poo in the park.

Given that it has basically the same ingredients as a recent brass-led monster disco bunny, I feel a bit sorry for Geri here. It should have aged better. But… the title makes me feel a bit queasy, the spoken intro makes me cringe, and surely her voice could be, err, disguised a little better?

Tom, I remember telling you back in 2009, when I was doing a project on ’00s number ones, that I’d have given this 4: you thought I was being very generous, so presumably you’ve mellowed on it.

‘attacking the song’ seems an appropriate description of GH’s style. She really does sound like she’s from another planet with her tin-eared, barking performance that references sex without being at all sexy.
@ 2: I can imagine Geri leading a step class at a local gym but I’d need some evidence for the assertion that ‘Big ideas have always been Geri’s forte’ – I’m not even sure if ‘ideas have always been Geri’s forte’

Songs this beat to the #1 race: blink-182’s “All The Small Things” (#2), Dr. Dre feat. Snoop Dogg’s “Still D.R.E.” (#6) and No Doubt’s “Ex-Girlfriend” (#23). Woot!
Also in the running were singles by ATB (that Adamski’s/Seal’s “Killer” cover, which is only thus in title; #4), Embrace (#14), Will Smith (#15), Macy Gray (#18), Babybird (#35) and Dario G (#37). None of them exactly vintage material or underappreciated gems – except maybe for Babybird’s “The F-Word”, but I digress.
Point is, even by the tokens of the day, it’s especially baffling how all but one of Geri’s debut album singles (incidentally, the first one) went all the way to #1. By any person’s criteria, all of them sounded like pretty generic varations on whatever came months-to-a-year previously. “Look At Me” is the Propellerheads’s “History Repeating” with no gravitas at all. “Mi Chico Latino” is probably the poorest Latin pop pastiche ever committed to wax. And then there’s the moment when she and her handlers pretty much seemed to give up and offered the public vague remnants of the Spice Girls. “Lift Me Up” sounds like a torpid “Viva Forever”/”Mama” hybrid. “Bag It Up” is essentially “Who Do You Think You Are” on autopilot.
The only conclusion I can take from this is that the Great British Public still had some goodwill left for her. If you recall it, she pretty much came out of the whole Geri-Out-Of-The-Spices thing looking as the bigger woman – and her parallel nomination as one of the UN’s Goodwill Ambassadoresses also didn’t hurt as great PR.

I was trying to think of what this song reminds me of, and the best I came up with was the “Are You Being Served?” theme where the woman’s calling out elevator stops.

3/10.

#6: I quite like All The Small Things. And Still D.R.E.. And The F Word.

Shame this kept Blink 182 off – I can’t stand it, Geri just grates too much on my ear I am afraid. Happily, I had forgotten everything about it until this entry went up except that Noel G wanted to call the final Oasis LP Bag It Up (after a track thusly named that opens the album) only for his girlfriend to point out “You mean, like the Geri Halliwell song?” after which there was a swift rethink.

OK, I just re-read my OP and I admit it: it does come across as if I’m slagging all those songs off. So, just to clear the air, so to say:

* That first paragraph was meant to highlight songs “Bag It Up” beat to #1 which later became somehow either iconic or generally well-regarded; something “Bag It Up” is certainly not. Admittedly, I’m no fan of “All The Small Things”, but I recognise how enduring it came to be in the Great Pop Conscioussness ever since. The other two, though, I’ll bat for them any time; Dre, especially.

* All those other songs I’ve mentioned are just that: mentions. As I’ve said, the Babybird song might be the only one that could be seen as underappreciated. But just like the others, it simply vanished from any kind of relevance. Out of that second group of songs, the Macy Gray one is the other one I actually like, but that’s pretty much it. Don’t see it as a tune with potential future cult status, unlike Babybird’s

As for the Geri Halliwell part, I don’t think it needs any addendum.

#13: It’s not yet accessible. It’s still only the Top 40 that is up at the moment.

See, I quite like Geri, possibly because of her ‘failings’ rather than despite them. And even though the good old media have always portrayed her as someone that it accepted that we all hated by the time this came out, it was a genuine surprise that this hit the top, despite it not being that good really.

still, out of the five it seemed that only the Mel’s really cared about the music, with Emma showing at least some interest post split. Victoria? She was prepared to work but it seemed that as soon as she found it too hard to stay number one she lost interest, or at least found some other more interesting channels to take.

The first croaking lines of this were a bit WTF? and then the chorus comes in and I’m suddenly remembering just how bad this is. Well, it’s not entirely bad. Cut from the same cloth as Spice Girls “Who Do You Think You Are?”, Geri turns in a performance that anyone who has heard that, would expect. Loud, brash Girl Power grown out, but not grown up. Men could hardly feel threatened by Geri’s assertions here. And women could hardly feel empowered. However, there’s an accidentally astute observation with “I don’t like sugar on my colour TV/ but he likes it loaded with eye-candy”. I can’t really imagine a Geri critique on Male Gaze being taken seriously by most, when she has taken the pornographer’s shilling*. But who could seriously call Geri Halliwell a feminist anyway? The well worn “battle of the sexes” is a misogynist trope, no matter who’s employing it. This comes from the same perspective as the Two Ronnies’ parody on Women’s Lib, where all the traditional gender-roles were reversed and the late, great Diana Dors played a “feminist” dictator.

“Bag It Up” could be described as camp, but these days it just feels a little too laden with disco horns, strings, and effects which could collapse under its own weight at any moment. BTW, I liked ATST as well. (4)

*of course, if women choose to bare all, then that’s their business and shouldn’t undermine any future argument on any subject.

#19 It’s not what Popular is about, but tracking Halliwell’s increasing desperation as the hits get smaller and the videos get more contrived is good sport. And I include the bunny in that.

View from the counter: nobody bought Geri Halliwell’s singles in my shop, 15 miles from her Watford home. I’d never accuse any label of indulging in underhand buying practices, and certainly not in this highly expensive case.

Quite a bit to discuss here.

In a parrallel universe where Mel B quit the Spices in 1998 instead of Geri this is probably what Spice Girls 2000 would have been like. Spicemania would have wound down and the critics would be noting how they were simply rehashing old songs (Bag It Up is Who Do You Think You Are part 2 right down to the Brit Awards connections) but the songs would still be going down a storm at pre teen discos. And this is the point I keep making – Geri had taken the Spice with her. Her records may not have been the best solo Spice numbers but they were one hell of a lot more fun than the other group members trying to impress an adult audience.

I think Bag It Up may have set an interesting record. For the best part of a quarter century Anetha Faltskog and Frida Lyngstad held the distinction of having featured on more number one singles than any other female lead performer (nine) with Madonna coming closest with eight up until 1998. When the Spice Girls scored their eighth chart topper with Goodbye Mel B – the only member to have had a solo number one at the point – finally drew level with the Abba ladies. With her first two solo chart toppers Geri also made it nine (she hadn’t featured on Goodbye) and with American Pie Madonna did the same. Bag It Up not only put Geri one ahead but it also made her the first female artist to feature on ten UK number one singles.

The last paragraph is probably of no interest to anyone but having bothered to work it all out I may as well include it.

It’s a shame All The Small Things didn’t get to number one as it would have been the third guitar based number one of 2000 and an interesting contrast to the two that came before. At the time the attitude of the British rock fan would have been, `Great to have Oasis back and the Manics seem to have remembered they’re a punk band. All The Small Things? Whining American rubbish.`

How times change. For the kids forming bands in 2015 – and there are still a fair few of them – Blink 182 are a massive influence if not always a direct one (and All The Small Things may remain their best known song but their sound did mature). The Manics are respected as spiritual forbears. As for Oasis, in 2015 they’re virtually dismissed as Dad rock. All The Small Things itself has aged remarkably well and I have to allow myself a smile when I stand in the rock bars of Harrogate watching kids almost half my age go crazy to a song fifteen years old. Which just goes to show you can never predict how things will turn out.

#14: The F-Word obviously lived on in the UK due to Gordon Ramsay.

#15: It probably is a bit of a monster but I also know that, whilst I know what I like personally, my knowledge of and ability to talk coherently about rap is limited at best. Hence what might have come over as equivocation. It’s good – I like it, I couldn’t tell you much of why though. Probably the strut of the track more than the rapping to be honest. I actually prefer Forgot About D.R.E. – but I suppose we might talk about that imminently given we’re about to enter the period of #1s by the guest rapper on that track.

#22: It’s interesting (to me at least) that Kerrang TV is still largely populated by videos from around this era and in the pop-punk genre in particular. I don’t know whether 15 year olds are busy watching Kerrang TV particularly (15 year olds seem to get a lot of their music from Youtube if the reports I read are any judge) but this specific era, the Blink 182s, the Green Days, the Sum 41s and the Bowling For Soups of this world, still seem to be spinning on in the upper 300s of the Sky channel list, which might well be helping them retain some sort of influence.

#25 (and others) – when I meet with my nephew, who is a drummer, he constantly tries to talk to me about Green Day and Blink as if they’re bands I’d have a nostalgic fondness for. I barely have the heart to tell him that they really didn’t (and don’t) figure in my life. Led Zeppelin too, who aren’t really connected to either, but seem to be a constant reference for “the kids” these days, whereas when I was a teenager Led Zep still seemed faintly whiffy and supergroupy. I think the issue of the “Past Masters” box set was a real turning point in how they were viewed, in my school and town at least.

Anyway, Geri… This is the track I find her vocals most irritating on. For me, it suffers the most from her tendency to over-emphasise Every Single Word In An Attempt To Increase The Impact, Baby. It also sounds like the obligatory retro-disco entry at Eurovision – every year a country puts forward a slightly plastic sounding, over-enthusiastic party groove which usually crashes out at the semi final stage or finishes in the second half of the final scoreboard, which can’t have been the sound Geri was trying to emulate.

I think her positive public image during this period is understandable, though. I even wanted to like her myself. Madonna may have dressed like an ordinary and sassy street girl during the earliest part of her career, but there was still something a bit slick, steely and untouchable about her. Geri, on the other hand, always seemed like the kind of moderately intelligent and ambitious suburban girl made good, the sort of person who exists in cul-de-sacs in Essex, Kent, and indeed Watford. What’s more surprising to me is that the kind of over-confidence, ambition and gobbiness she traded in wasn’t apparent (at least not to me) in a female pop star years before. It was a role that somebody clearly needed to fill.

I don’t find it strange at all that 23 Daves drumming nephew is into Blink: young drummers seem to have a very high regard for Travis Barker, who is pretty good amongst rock drummers as far as I can tell.

For a certain age and stripe of person, Green Day are The Beatles. This is obviously A Good Thing, in my view (not because The Beatles aren’t worthy or anything, more because it’s encouraging that people find their own path and key influences and not be totally indebted to that which is handed down on tablets of stone from the 60s).

#24 – Does it notice too much I’m not British? 😉 Indeed, I wasn’t aware of “The F-Word”‘s usage as the theme tune to a Gordon Ramsay show, as I never even heard of it before. It might be available on some cable channel around here (here being Portugal), but not that I’m aware. My Chef Ramsay awareness comes from Hell’s Kitchen, Kitchen Nightmares and Home Cooking.
As for blink-182’s current stock among teens and young adults and Travis Barker’s stock among drummers, I also remember how, at one point, during blink’s hiatus, he regularly used to crank remixes of hip-hop tunes. I particularly recall one he did for Flo-Rida’s “Low” (it’s a #2 tune, so no bunny here!) which was quite appreciated at the time. He even did a full rap/rock album a few years ago, wherein people like Lil Wayne, Snoop Dogg, Rick Ross and Ludacris guested.

Tom – today’s 30 somethings are, of course, the people who would have been teens (or almost teens) when Dookie came out. I think the main thing missing from GD post-American Idiot is (A) a sense of quality control and (b) Mike Dirnt’s frenetic, melodic, exciting basslines. He started following the guitars from AI onwards, which was a bit of a shame, because his bass carried the melody in pretty much all the hits from Dookie.

Travis Barker is a very, very talented drummer – all the drummers I know rate him extremely highly. The story is that Blink’s original drummer quit halfway through a Warped tour, they needed a drummer very quickly, and Barker (who was in a forgotten ska band) filled in having learned Blink’s entire set beat for beat in 45 minutes.

Oh, and re: Blink 182, Sum 41 et al, they were a joke to everyone I knew in 2000, can someone explain to me why their stock has risen so much in the last 15 years? I can understand enjoying their music, but they didn’t even seem to take *themselves* seriously, so why should anyone else?

#34: I’ll stick my neck out on that question. I think Tom is right that there’s an influence from US TV shows and films that are in heavy rotation, so that this music never really went away. I’d also say that the fact that they didn’t take themselves too seriously was a real boon for them; in the UK guitar scene at least they were up against boring, mewling non-entities, strumming their acoustic guitars in tedious fashion with no tunes and no clue. At least these guys could turn a chorus out and lived in technicolour a bit – it’s why we ultimately fell for The White Stripes, The Hives and The Darkness over here, getting away from the likes of Starsailor. I’m not a huge fan of many if any of the US pop punkers but I would definitely buy a US pop-punk Nuggets comprising the best and biggest of the hits – the stuff that hit big is pretty good I would say.

Green Day is an odd one to me. I first was aware of them at age 10, when my brother was all over the just released Dookie, so I knew that album very well. I only knew of the radio singles from Insomniac (“Brain Stew/Jaded” being my favorite) and Nimrod, and I’m probably the only person who really liked Warning, as I was a proper teenager when it came out. Nowadays the whole album has been written out of the history books. However, when American Idiot came out, I heard the title track, found it OK, but reasoned that at age 20 I was too old for that thing anymore. Little did I realize how much of a touchstone it became with my age group, and only listened to all of it years after the fact.

Blink 182, on the other hand, never had any time for them. Got a few grins out of the “All the Small Things” video that nicked all the teen pop videos of 1999, but that was it.

Dunno, just makes me think of No Diggity.

So-called Dad’rock’ is far more anti-rock’n’roll than this and its ilk could ever be.

But which dads do truly rock? I don’t mean just any actual father, but someone who has the demeanour of a stereotypical dad. Springsteen?

“So-called” “self-styled” “dad rock”.

Listening to PM tonight I heard the capital of Islamic State described as “so-called self-styled”. Does my head in.

WDYTYA is the obvious comaprison here as mentioned but whilst thats quite charming ‘Bag It Up’ just seems totally derivative.

Nothing wrong with the female perspective on these things at all but it’s like a ploy to extend the shelf life of Geri above all else.You need someone stronger than GH to make this convincing.

Her not terribly good records to start with just got worse with each release and this is a real low point. 2

All The Small Things was the first time I came across Blink-182 and I loved it instantly – having gotten into The Offspring after PF(FAWG) the year before, this seemed the next natural step. It was at this point in time, with Britpop having faded out and me becoming a sulkier teenager, that my musical attention switched mainly to Kerrang! TV and the various pop-punk and nu-metal bands that dominated things over the next few years. I felt like I was becoming too old for pop music and that stuff seemed way more interesting than Travis / Coldplay / Toploader etc. So, consequently, I have a lot less love for the pop hits of the early 00s than those of the late 90s.

Overall I like Blink 182 a lot, but at the time I preferred Sum 41 and Bowling For Soup (who came after) and then I preferred Green Day and earlier Offspring. I never quite connected with Blink as much, but there’s plenty to enjoy in their back catalogue. Especially if, as I was, you were a teenage boy at the time.

Also, re: Oasis-as-dad-rock comments, if Liam’s shows at Knebworth this summer are anything to go by Oasis still resonate with the kids today quite a lot.

Oh yes, Geri. Bag It Up is quite good campy fun to be honest, and much better than her last one, albeit not in the same league as All The Small Things. 6.