Spice Up Your Life - Writing and Recording

Writing and Recording

A session with the production and songwriting duo Richard Stannard and Matt Rowe was booked to record the group's next single. During the recording of the Spiceworld tracks, the group was so busy with the filming schedule that the quality of their contributions became more erratic and piecemeal. About the writing process during the session Rowe recalls:

I remember when they came to record 'Spice Up Your Life'. It was in the middle of the chaos. It had been booked in, that they were coming in to record their next single, and write it, with us. It was at Whitfield Street Studios and there was going to be an MTV crew there filming them as they did this, which there was. Well, how on earth can you possibly do this? You can't write and record a song in half-an-hour with a film crew watching.

The session was interrupted constantly, with people entering the building, phoning them, or throwing things through the window. Eventually, when the filming crew left the room, the group managed to finish the song. Stannards commented about the inspiration behind it to Music Week: "We were talking about Bollywood films, the colours and how the Spice Girls could present themselves. It was a matter of how do we get everything in to one song?" All the writing and the vocal recording was completed in one afternoon, and instead of taking turns, the five members went inside the vocal booths and recorded the chorus together. Brown commented that for this reason the final mix sounds "spontaneous and full of energy".