How Melanie C Learned to Embrace Sporty Spice

For Melanie C, the return to North American stages carried a question the ticket sales couldn’t answer: would audiences still show up for her as a solo artist, decades after her last visits to some of these cities? The tour brought her back to places she’d played with the Spice Girls in 2007, and, in some cases, hadn’t visited on her own in more than 20 years. She tried not to expect too much. The welcome surprised her. “I was blown away,” she tells Rolling Stone. Fans sang along to the new material, too—a response any artist hopes for, but can’t count on.

That reception says something about Melanie C’s staying power, but it also points to a more personal story: how she’s made peace with Sporty Spice as part of her own identity. Born Melanie Chisholm, she rose to global fame in the Nineties with Melanie Brown, Emma Bunton, Geri Halliwell-Horner, and Victoria Beckham. As the Spice Girls, they took their “girl power” message to the top of the charts and into mainstream pop culture. The group announced an indefinite hiatus in 2000; later reunions brought the members together again, but Melanie’s solo career took its own turns.

Now, after finishing her U.S. tour, she’s looking back with evident warmth. Her ninth studio album, Sweat, came out in May. Calling from London on a bright afternoon, she describes the moment the curtain opened each night: venues such as the Fonda and the Castro Theatre, neon light, and a crowd ready to meet her there.

“The places I just literally hadn’t been to for such a long time were the ones when it really, really touched my heart to know that there’s still support out there,” she says. Fans told her about the first time they saw her, whether at a Spice Girls show in 1998 or during her Northern Star tour. “There’s this beautiful community of fans. We’ve all grown up together.” That bond is more than nostalgia: people were welcoming the new songs alongside the memories.

Back to the dance floor

Sweat reconnects with the Nineties rave scene that first drew Melanie to dance music. The thread also runs through her previous, self-titled album, which marked a similarly open shift in sound. Her interest began during college, after a holiday in Spain led to weekends out at London clubs and the occasional warehouse party. She remembers being drawn to the way the scene brought different communities and cultures together through music and shared experience. Then the Spice Girls took off, quickly, and that chapter of her musical life receded.

She found her way back to DJing in 2018. “It reignited this passion that I had for dance music, and I’ve never looked back,” she says. Learning a new skill later in life took courage, she adds, and she’s grateful she made the leap. Here’s the thing: Sporty Spice was never simply a character to leave behind. For Melanie, the dance floor offers a route back to a part of herself she’d set aside.

The Spice Girl in Melanie was never gone

Melanie C’s latest album draws on several chapters of her life: teenage rave culture, her Sporty Spice identity and the confidence she’s built as a solo artist. It also came after the end of her long relationship with former manager Joe Marshall and during the early months of her marriage to Australian model Chris Dingwall. The breakup gave her material for “Flick of the Wrist” and “Good for Nothing,” she says.

Love and anger share the record. Melanie describes a stretch of phone calls, arguments and frustration that coincided with falling for Dingwall; the album became a way to move through those competing emotions. “Drum Machine,” its second track, is a live favorite for her, built around the physical rush of a new relationship. The title track’s video makes another side of her persona plain, sampling Diana Ross’ “Work That Body” as Melanie rides a spin bike in spandex and works out with exercise bands. The Sporty Spice references are playful, but they also make a point: she’s comfortable owning that part of herself.

That comfort took time. Looking back at the Spice Girls’ 2019 stadium tour, the group’s fourth and most recent reunion run, Melanie recalls wondering how a woman in her forties could still leap around as Sporty Spice to “Wannabe.” Rehearsals answered the question: the character wasn’t something she had to put on. “It’s within me,” she says. Now, she says, she makes peace with being a Spice Girl every day, including when she performs solo. Her broader takeaway is simple: people can spend too long searching outside themselves for identities that have been there all along.

She’s less forthcoming about whether the group will reunite again, but she knows which songs she’d want on a hypothetical fifth tour. “Wannabe” and “Spice Up Your Life” may once have seemed silly to her; now she sees how those hits turn a stadium into a shared celebration. She’d also make room for “Viva Forever.”

For now, Melanie is focused on returning to North America after her U.K., European, Asian and Australian dates. She says playing live in the U.S. again has been a warm experience, and admits she felt guilty for staying away so long. Her promise to fans: she won’t wait as long before coming back. That’s a fitting close to this chapter—an artist reconnecting with an audience while making room for every version of herself.