Boy/Girl Bands and the Billion Songs Position 12 · Wannabe (1,394 million streams · Dec 31, 2025) Spice Girls · 1996 The girl power manifesto written in under an hour. What it's about Wannabe isn't a love song. It's a declaration of principles. Five young women explaining the conditions for entry into their lives: it's not enough to impress them you have to get along with their friends. Female friendship is explicitly placed above romantic relationships. In 1996, in a pop landscape dominated by songs asking women to adapt to male desires, that was a revolution. The "zig a zig ah" the most debated and least explained phrase in pop history was left deliberately mysterious. The Spice Girls never de nitively clari ed it. Mel B in a Reddit AMA said: "EVERYONE needs a zig a zig ah, and it's whatever you want it to be". The ambiguity is the point. 126