First music videos for artists are difficult - the artist needs to be introduced to an entire market via one concept, and the video can often stick in the public's head as their mental image for that artist.
For instance, if you think about the Spice Girls, I think about them running around in a hotel from "Wannabe". They made a whole movie
The video is one shot, featuring the members of the Spice Girls going around and causing havoc at a "posh" (that's British for fancy) hotel - namely the St. Pancras Renaissance London Hotel, which was a backup location after another locale in Barcelona fell through. They sing and generally just have fun disrupting things because as we all know, nice hotels are evil.
When this video was shot, Virgin Records was apparently really unhappy with the results, and looking back on this video and nitpicking it, it's not too difficult to come up with some reasons why. First of all, the first half of the video is ridiculously dark - there are times when members of the Spice Girls are in complete darkness, but they spend most of the time in a kind of murky shadowy light. Thankfully, once they pass a certain point the video is brightly lit, but the first half of the video is a little hard to watch once you notice the light.
Also, notice the two homeless people at the beginning of the video. This was shot in April in London, and it was extremely chilly on that night. This wouldn't usually be a problem, but the Spice Girls were not about to go putting sweaters on, so they just toughed it out. The result is Melanie Brown and Mel C's ridiciously obviously erect nipples contained by tops that seem designed to allow maximum erect nipple exposure. Combine that with the aforementioned shadows, and you get a video that is pretty in your face with nipples. Some areas banned it, but people seemed generally alright with it.
What I really don't understand, however, is the almost completely silent 49 seconds before the song starts, where the members of the Spice Girls are mocking people getting out of a car and walking in with them. It's full of awkward empty space as well as a man in all denim who is inexplicably stopped from entering the hotel beind the Spice Girls, and it feels like something that belongs on r/cringe.
Virgin was apparently really close to ordering a re-shoot for this video, and I can sort of see why. But the video also has a lot of appeal, and it's the Spice Girls most popular video in a group of much more polished and visually appealing videos that came later. The Spice Girls are so juiced up that from the opening frame until the end of the video they are never not glowing with enthusiasm and energy. No wonder this appealed so much to teenage girls - what other act at this time was sending a message that going nuts with your friends and disrupting things was not only really cool, but it might even be justice?
Jhoan Camitz was tragically killed in a bizarre car accident in 2000, and "Wannabe" was to be his highest profile video. Despite some quirks, it's a great introduction to the Spice Girls.
