Look At Me What You Made Me Do

I drove a few places this week and nothing pleases me more than dancing at the wheel of a reasonably priced car. At 17 I was so into Radio One we would actually pull over to dance to In The Mix during Dance Anthems. My mix tapes were also legendary. Who hasn’t hollered White Stripes out the window at a pal in a nice bit of suburbia? FIND ME THAT PERSON. This week, I had a wee run in with R1 driving round in the sunshine.

Geri Halliwell’s 1999 album Schizophonic (no, not messing with you) third best known single was arguably My Chico Latino - both sounding like and looking like Geri writhing around on a boat, was in her words, a tribute to her mother’s Spanish heritage. Apart from being muchos lolz, the song, a inoffensive play with cultural pop-propriation, taught a whole generation of school kids a couple of lines of Spanish ahead of upcoming Spanish Aural tests in their GCSE’s. (I cried with frustration in mine, surprised much?)

Also - Geri famously buried herself at the start of her solo career, popping her wee self in a coffin - in the video to Look At Me. Declaring in every interview on Saturday daytime TV in the UK that Ginger Spice was dead. And generally hammering the message home - ALL THAT BEEF IS BEHIND ME.

Cue 2017, pop is now so cyclical its spin cycle has broken the temperature gauge on the washing machine.  Everything is set to cool. (SORRY). Taylor, who we’ve tried as good feminists to back as she’s a woman bossing it at the top of the industry, just shat out an unapologetic bumface of a song in Look What You Made Me Do. I have just watched the video for research - no comment - but the basic problem is she’s recycling Geri Halliwell. (There are literally a gazillion other problems, pop to Vulture for some of them)

Similarly Reggaetón Lento - Lil’ Mix’s new remix of the Latin American La Banda winning boy band, haunts me back to my sweet lavida - BAILAR! Arguably likely to be third best known single (I mean, nothing’s getting on Power is it, even with it’s ‘YO WOMIN GET DOWN FOR THE BOYS’ accidental chorus), when fused with Lil Mix it’s a confusing mix of Spanish phrase book fun times and joyous declarations of 'BOOM' and 'Eh?'.

I’m not sure how we should feel about Geri’s ghost storming the charts again. Does this teach our little pop fans that they can re-invent themselves or that they should never apologise? Does it teach them Spanish or that any all girl pop-band can only do a single with a man’s voice giving it approval? I mean, Geri didn’t let no Spanish blokes sing on her record, she just lay on them.

I think I’ve kinda lost a thread with this one… maybe the lesson is 31 year olds shouldn’t listen to Radio 1.