Spice Girls' Top 10 biggest singles on the Official Chart

As the group's 2019 reunion tour kicks off, we crunch the numbers behind the Spice Girls' big hits.
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It's official: Spice Girls are back!

Five may have become four – Victoria Beckham is sitting this one out, sadly – but there's no shortage of girl power as the band embarks on their Spice World 2019 Tour, kicking off in Dublin this weekend.

They're sure to be performing their hugest hits, so if you need a quick reminder of their potential setlist, we looked at the biggest songs of their career.

Wannabe 

The group's biggest single is, perhaps unsurprisingly, their debut Wannabe, with 1.71 million combined sales (split between 1.3 million sales and 40 million streams). The track turned them into a global sensation almost overnight, scoring seven weeks at Number 1 in the UK and topping the charts just about everywhere, including America, Germany and Australia. 

As with most of their music, Wannabe was co-written by the group along with Biff Stannard and Matt Rowe. It was completed in 30 minutes, mainly because the lyrics are a series of different lines, skits and raps made up by each member of the group – legend has it Victoria was out shopping that day, but she says she did contribute over the phone. So unusual is Wannabe's composition that their label wanted to release Say You'll Be There or Spice album track Love Thing as their lead single. Can you imagine?!

2 Become 1 

To put the scale of Spice Girls' success into perspective, they landed the Official Christmas Number 1 single three years consecutively, joining The Beatles as the only other act to manage this. 2 Become 1 was the first of them and is most enduring, as now-adult fans understand its true meaning. Its sales to date stand at 1.25 million, made up of 1.14 million sales and 10.4 million streams. 

Who Do You Think You Are? 

Where Wannabe made them instant global stars, Who Do You Think You Are? sent them stratospheric. It's 2am on the dancefloor, three tequilas deep. It's Mel B in leopard print. It's Victoria's space age catsuit. It's Comic Relief, Cool Britannia and, of course, that Union Jack dress at the BRIT Awards. The song spent three weeks at Number 1 (as a double A-side with Mama, as it came out around Mother's Day) and has 786,000 combined sales to date.

Stop

After an impressive, record-breaking run of six Number 1s, it was unlucky number seven for Stop, their first single to miss the top spot, blocked by Run DMC and Jason Nevins' It's Like That. The media leapt upon it as s sign the magic was over, and it seems Geri might have agreed with them…

Viva Forever 

For some, Viva Forever was the last true Spice single as it was already slated for release before Geri had quit the band, so she still featured in the video. It;s fair to say things never really recovered. Despite being the fourth single from their Spiceworld album, it reached Number 1 on the Official Singles Chart and ranks as their seventh biggest single overall with 740,000 combined sales. 

Holler/Let Love Lead The Way 

"Holler holler! Let you scream my name!" Victoria Beckham's ad-libs are probably the best thing about this slick but rather un-Spice Girls track, taken from from their final, Geri-less album Forever. As a quartet, the group opted for a more US-friendly R&B approach, but it lacked the carefree spark of previous efforts. Despite the distinct air that the imperial phase was over, it topped the Official Chart, bundled as a double A-side with Let Love Lead The Way, and places tenth on their best-sellers with 287,000 combined sales. 

See Spice Girls' full UK Singles and Albums history on the Official Chart.

Spice Girls' Top 10 singles on the Official Chart

POS TITLE ARTIST PEAK
1 WANNABE SPICE GIRLS 1
2 2 BECOME 1 SPICE GIRLS 1
3 SAY YOU'LL BE THERE SPICE GIRLS 1
4 SPICE UP YOUR LIFE SPICE GIRLS 1
5 GOODBYE SPICE GIRLS 1
6 WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE SPICE GIRLS 1
7 VIVA FOREVER SPICE GIRLS 1
8 TOO MUCH SPICE GIRLS 1
9 STOP SPICE GIRLS 2
10 HOLLER/LET LOVE LEAD THE WAY SPICE GIRLS 1

©2019 Official Charts Company. All rights reserved.
This chart is based on sales, downloads and streaming equivalent sales combined.

Bonus stats for Spice fanatics: Their biggest album track is Never Give Up On The Good Times from Spiceworld (925k streams), just ahead of Move Over (816k streams), which they used for their Pepsi endorsement deal. Most streamed album track from their debut Spice is Something Kinda Funny, on 649k streams.

Main image: REX

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@gingerpresident

0

How many copies sold Headlines in UK?

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@gingerpresident

1

I've heard news that SPICE UP YOUR LIFE already passed 1 million sales more than a month ago!! If it's true i hope you're gonna make an article to celebrate it :)

I wanna share it!

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Gabriele Allara

0

Update other Singles please

MB

Michael Brown

1

Who Do You Think You Are was a double A-Side with Mama... a minor point but a point none the less. Credit where credits due. :)

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etin

0

if they didnt split up tell me why & right back at'cha would be singles of forever..
I hope they release their unreleased song "w.o.m.a.n"

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Gabriele Allara

1

update sales other singles please :)

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Jay1988

5

https://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/the-uks-official-chart-millionaires-revealed__20459/

In your Millionaires article from September 2017, you stated 1,385,211 pure sales for Wannabe, but now you're saying 1,300,000?

September 2017: 1,385,211 pure + 160,276 streaming = 1,545,488 total
November 2018: 1,300,000 pure + 310,000 streaming = 1,610,000 total

So it's gained 150,000 sales in streaming since Sep 2017. If you added those sales onto the 1,545,488 total from Sep 2017, it would be on at least 1,695,488 now - and that's without taking into account the pure sales it's achieved over the past 14 months (possibly a 1.7m+ total).

Are you able to clarify why you've lowered the pure sales for Wannabe? That's quite a discrepancy!

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Bengy

2

It is the problem with sales data from 1994 to 1996. Sometimes the OCC use DUS figures (too low) and sometimes they use Panel Sales (too high). The true figure lies somewhere in between. Hence the inconsistency.
Another possibility is that the 1.3m figure has been rounded downwards.

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Jay1988

0

Thanks for the reply! I wish they'd decide on one or the other. It makes me wonder when Wannabe will be deemed to have sold 1.8m and be certified 3xPlatinum - whether it'll be sooner with the higher figure coming into play, or less soon with the lower figure.

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Bengy

0

Now updated to 1.71 million combined sales (split between 1.3 million sales and 40 million streams). Due to streams downloads are nearly extinct these days.

OD

Owen Davies

0

What are the sales figures for Spice Up Your Life? Is it close to a million? I would love that to be the 4th million seller they have

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David AC

0

Both Say You'll Be There & Spice Up Your Life aren't too far away from a million, but still a way to go yet.

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Jay1988

2

OCC shared on Twitter that Say You'll Be There has now passed 1 million (when streams are taken into account) - https://twitter.com/officialcharts/status/1059811411168235520 So it's a "millionaire" at least, but not a million seller.

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Alain Aouad

0

Say you'll be there is a million seller now since they say they have 3 million seller singles...

OD

Owen Davies

0

Thanks for getting back. I hope with annoucment people bought it hahs