Spice, sweat and self-discovery: Melanie C has found freedom on the dancefloor
Long before the world knew her as Sporty Spice, Melanie C was finding her feet on the dancefloor. Now, with her ninth studio album, Sweat, the pop icon is embracing the euphoric pull of club culture with renewed vigour. This November, she’s bringing her bass-heavy sound to Brisbane and beyond. Ahead of her Australian tour, she reflects on creative reinvention, the power of the dancefloor and why she’s only just getting started.
If Melanie Chisholm had her way, there’s a good chance the world would know her not as Sporty Spice, but as Rave Spice.
Before she shot to worldwide fame as part of, arguably, the world’s most famous pop group, Melanie C was carving up dancefloors across northern Spain and the UK. Entranced by late-90s club culture and the European rave scene, it was there that she came to love the tempo, energy and euphoric abandon associated with dance music – a genre that the artist feels was misunderstood at the time.
“In many ways, it felt like a bit of a misspent youth,” recalls Melanie. “Rave had a bad name back in the day. The government was trying to stop it. The police were trying to stop it. So it was perceived as something to be ashamed of, really.
“Now we look back and realise how influential that time was – how it’s impacted music and just seems to get stronger and stronger as the years go by.”
When Melanie became a Spice Girl, her former life as a raver was put on the back burner. Soon, she was no longer looking up at stages, but dominating them. Yet Melanie never stopped listening to dance music, and once Spicemania subsided and her solo career began, she eventually found herself returning to her raver roots.
“I wasn’t part of club culture. I was too busy being a Spice Girl,” Melanie says. “It felt like that era of my life was over, but when I started DJing eight years ago, it reignited this passion – the feelings of euphoria and joy, that unity on the dance floor, and that way of expressing yourself and just releasing and all of the beauty that comes with that culture.
“I was like, I can’t believe that I’d left all of this behind.”
You might like
Earlier this year, Melanie C released Sweat, her ninth studio album. Recorded across London, Stockholm and Los Angeles, the record sees the artist digging deeper into the propulsive, electric and invigorating music styles that had always held her heart.
Across 13 songs, Melanie C weaves together heat, light and movement, pairing high-energy electro-pop earworms with foot-stomping four-on-the-floor bangers, before pivoting to disco-laced dance tracks that could have been plucked directly from the Costa Brava clubs Melanie used to frequent. Listening to Sweat, one can hear a multitude of sounds informing the record – a tasteful mix of genre touchpoints no doubt picked during Melanie’s current era as an in-demand DJ.
“I started DJing about eight years ago and I just found it was influencing the music I wanted to make more and more,” says Melanie. “I think my last two albums before [Sweat], I’d really started leaning more to an electronic sound.”
During the climax of the album’s opening track, Melanie urges the listener to ‘set yourself free’. One could also interpret that moment as Melanie talking to herself – encouraging herself to ditch the shackles of everything that has come before in favour of becoming her truest self, amalgamating her popstar persona with her new era as a dancefloor doyenne.
“When it came to this album, I had such a strong vision of what I wanted to create,” Mel explains. “I have such a fantastic fan base and I’m a pop artist – I always will be. I write pop songs, but I love dance music.
“I just wanted to find this beautiful sweet spot in between – still making a pop record, but it’d be really danceable. I’ve been having so much fun, really embracing being Sporty Spice again. [Sweat] was just an amalgamation of all these things that were going on.”
In November, Melanie C will bring Sweat to Australia, performing a string of dates across the country – including an anticipated stop at The Tivoli in Fortitude Valley for this year’s Melt Festival.
Interspersing Sweat’s foundation-shaking thumpers, the tour’s setlist has been known to also feature acoustic interludes and renditions of hits from across Melanie C’s three-decade career. Having already taken the Sweat tour across North America, Melanie C feels the show is now in a good place. The execution is tight, but not without moments of spontaneity – the recipe for every incredible dance show.
“This album works so well live,” says Mel. “Everyone that’s come to see the show has just been like, it just works. People are leaving really sweaty – exhilarated, but really happy. I’m making it my mission to make sure everybody goes home satisfied. So there’s a little bit of everything in this show.
“I get behind the decks for a little bit and we do these fun little DJ mashups. And it just feels like a club night as well as a live thing and also a bit like a workout. And then we have a big crescendo at the end.”
When asked about her album’s impact and potential legacy, Melanie reckons that Sweat’s defining – and most enduring – quality is its joyfulness. In an era when headlines and algorithms are pushing the worst news possible to the fore, Melanie believes that dancefloors are one of the few remaining spaces where joy can be readily found.
“We are bombarded with social media – you can’t even avoid the darkness of the world. It’s just everywhere you turn,” says Melanie.
“It is so important to have these moments of release, and the dance floor is the perfect place for that. It brings together people, and it’s a shared experience. It’s a positive one.”
Even though there hasn’t even been any time for the proverbial sweat to dry from this album-making effort, Melanie C is already thinking about her next creative undertaking. Her DJ work is playing a pivotal role in the direction of her sound, as her appetite for new sounds becomes ever more voracious and her playlists become more diversified.
“DJing has changed the perspective in which I see music and the way I want to make music. I think even the structure of songs has changed for me,” says Melanie.
“I’m curating a playlist because I am looking ahead to the next album. I just want to keep being really brave, taking risks musically and seeing where we land. I want to go further, maybe get a little bit more specialised – get some harder, bigger bass. Always turn the bass up.”
As much as one might raise an eyebrow at the thought of sweaty clubs matching the dizzying highs of Spice World at its zenith, there’s something about Melanie’s energy that makes it easy to believe she’s genuinely having the time of her life. Since stepping behind the decks, she’s barely stopped moving – her infectious enthusiasm for rhythm, motion and tempo palpable even through a Zoom screen.
It makes you think, maybe Sporty Spice was the right name for her after all.
“I just feel like my feet haven’t touched the ground since I started [DJing] – it’s just reinvigorated me,” says Melanie.
“I feel younger. I feel more excited. I feel more ambitious. All of this comes from dance music – that shared experience. That was what I wanted to bring to Sweat.”
Melanie C’s four-date Australian tour kicks off on Wednesday November 11. Click here for more information.
Want to see more stories from InDaily Qld in your Google search results?
- Click here to set InDaily Qld as a preferred source.
- Tick the box next to "InDaily Qld". That's it.
Free to share
This article may be shared online or in print under a Creative Commons licence