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by Christopher Barrett
Richard "Biff" Stannard, one half of the songwriting team behind Spice Girls smash hits including Wannabe, 2 Become 1 and Viva Forever, reveals the secrets of the creative process that also produced tracks that were too racy to release
In July 1996 the Spice Girls' debut single, Wannabe, catapulted the act's five brightly-attired members to the top of the UK singles chart and the world's attention. Wannabe would go on to reside comfortably for seven weeks at the peak of the UK rundown before mirroring that success in 30 other nations around the globe.
The Ivor Novello award-winning songwriting team behind that first hit, Richard "Biff" Stannard and his partner Matt Rowe, unsurprisingly became regular Spice Girl collaborators. The duo worked with the girls throughout their career, creating a string of number one singles, including Spice Up Your Life, 2 Become 1, Viva Forever and Goodbye before teaming up with them again to write the two new tracks on their forthcoming Greatest Hits package.
How did you come to meet and start working with the Spice Girls?
Before they started working with Simon Fuller we were working with another of Chris Herbert's acts and he mentioned that he had these five girls called Touch. I remember thinking it sounded interesting because Chris was brilliant at putting things together. I was at Nomis Studios in West London at a showcase of another act and literally ran into Mel B. She started asking me who I was and she knew the East 17 songs that I had recently done. They ended up doing a showcase for me there and then. We became mates and within a week we were working together; there was definitely chemistry there.
What were the first songs you wrote together?
In the first three days we wrote three songs and two of them were Wannabe and 2 Become 1. Wannabe was the second song that we wrote, in a tiny room at Strongroom Studios. There were seven of us sitting on the floor in this tiny room. Matt Rowe and I would add the backing track and start with rhythms; everyone had their role; Geri was always concentrating on the theme and all the others would chip in with...