Wannabe (song) - Release and Promotion

Release and Promotion

"Wannabe" was either a hit or a miss, love or hate. It would either do everything or nothing. We felt, well, if nobody likes it then we have got other songs up our sleeves, but that was the one we wanted to release.

After signing the group, Virgin Records launched a major campaign for their debut song to promote them as the new high-profile act. There was a period of indecision about what song would be released as the first single; the label wanted to get everything right for the campaign, because the all-girl group format was untested. The group, led by Brown and Halliwell, was adamant that the debut song should be "Wannabe", they felt it served as an introduction to their personalities and the Girl Power statement. Virgin's executives believed that the first single should be "Say You'll Be There", which they considered a much "cooler" track. At the beginning of 1996 the impasse between the group and their record label about the release of the single was temporarily solved. In March, Fuller announced that he agreed with Virgin in that "Wannabe" should not be the first single. The label wanted a song that appealed to the mainstream market, and nothing considered too radical. Halliwell was shocked and furious; she told Fuller, "It's not negotiable as far as we're concerned. 'Wannabe' is our first single." Fuller and the executives at Virgin relented, and the song was chosen as their first single.

The trigger for the Spice Girls' launch was the release of the "Wannabe" music video in May 1996. Its quick success on the British cable network The Box sparked press interest, despite initial resistance to the all-girl group idea. The same month, their first music press interviews appeared in Music Week, Top of the Pops, and Smash Hits, and their first live TV slot was broadcast on LWT's Surprise Surprise. A month after the video's release, the song was receiving intensive airplay on the main radios stations across the UK, while the group started to appear on television—mainly on kid's programmes such as Live & Kicking—and doing interviews and photo shoots for teen magazines. A full-page advertisement appeared in the July issue of Smash Hits, saying: "Wanted: Anyone with a sense of fun, freedom and adventure. Hold tight, get ready! Girl Power is comin' at you". The group appeared on the television programme This Morning with Richard and Judy, and performed at their first Radio One road show in Birmingham.

"Wannabe" was released in the United Kingdom on 8 July 1996 in two single versions. The first one, released in two formats—a standard CD single and a cassette single—included the radio edit of the track, the Motiv 8 vocal slam remix, and the B-side, "Bumper to Bumper". The group wrote "Bumper to Bumper" with Paul Wilson and Andy Watkins—the songwriter-production duo known as Absolute—and British singer-songwriter Cathy Dennis. The second version, released on maxi single format, featured the radio edit, an instrumental version, the Motiv 8 dub slam remix, and the Dave Way alternative mix. This version came with a fold-out postcard inlay and a stickered case.

During the weeks following the UK release, the group began promotional visits abroad. They did three trips to Japan and brief visits to Germany and the Netherlands. On a trip to the Far East, they visited Hong Kong, Thailand, and South Korea. In January 1997 they traveled to North America to do a promotional campaign that Phil Quartararo, president of Virgin Records America, described as "absolutely massive". During their visit to the US, the group met with influential radio programmers, TV networks, and magazines. In addition, Virgin persuaded fifty radio stations to playlist the song before it was released, while the music video was placed into heavy rotation by MTV.