Subsequently, the song had intensive radio airplay across England, while the Spice Girls performed it on television and began doing interviews and photo shoots for teen magazines.

In March 1994, father-and-son team Bob and Chris Herbert, together with financer Chic Murphy, working under the business name of Heart Management, placed an advertisement in The Stage, which asked the question: "Are you street smart, extrovert, ambitious, and able to sing and dance?"

[8] In November, the group—now named "Spice"—persuaded their managers to set up a showcase in front of industry writers, producers, and A&R men at the Nomis Studios in Shepherd's Bush, London.

[9][10][11] Producer Richard Stannard, at the studio for a meeting with pop star Jason Donovan, attended the showcase after hearing Brown, as she went charging across the corridor.

[12] In her autobiography, Brown recalls that the duo instinctively understood their point of view and knew how to incorporate "the spirit of five loud girls into great pop music".

[15] The group then added their own contributions to the song, Rowe recalls: They made all these different bits up, not thinking in terms of verse, chorus, bridge or what was going to go where, just coming up with all these sections of chanting, rapping and singing, which we recorded all higgledy-piggledy.

[27] "Wannabe" presents a different version of the traditional pop love song performed by females; its energetic, self-assertive style expresses a confident independence that is not reliant on the male figure for its continuance.

[28] The refrain ends with the word "zigazig-ah", which musicologist Sheila Whiteley compared to the neologisms created by Lewis Carroll;[27] other writers have considered it a euphemism for female sexual desire, which is ambiguously sexualised or broadly economic.

[27] During the chorus, the lyrics—"If you wanna be my lover/You gotta get with my friends"—address the value of female friendship over romantic relationships, while the ascending group of chords and the number of voices creates a sense of power that adds to the song's level of excitement.

[38] A month after the video's release, the song was receiving intensive airplay on the main radio stations across the UK, while the group started to appear on television—mainly on kid's programmes such as Live & Kicking—and doing interviews and photo shoots for teen magazines.

[48][49] In Canada, the group did interviews for newspapers and radio stations, appeared in television programmes such as Hit List, and MusiquePlus,[50][51] and attended an autograph signing at Montreal's HMV Megastore.

[57] In a review conducted by the British pop band Deuce for Smash Hits magazine, the group described "Wannabe" as "limp", "awful", and "not strong enough for a debut single.

[35] In her review for The Guardian, Caroline Sullivan called it a combination of "cute hip pop and a vaguely feminist lyric", she was also surprised that "considering the slightness of 'Wannabe,'" the group had an overwhelming amount of offers from record companies.

[71] Sarah Rodman of The Boston Globe described it as a "maniacally zippy single",[72] and Stephanie Zacharek of Salon referred to it as an "unapologetically sassy dance hit".

Christina Kelly from Rolling Stone magazine criticised the group's image, and added that their songs, including "Wannabe", were "a watered-down mix of hip-hop and cheesy pop balladry, brought together by a manager with a marketing concept.

"[76] Matt Diehl of Entertainment Weekly said that it was "more a compendium of music styles (from ABBA-style choruses to unconvincing hip hop) than an actual song,"[77] and Sara Scribner of the Los Angeles Times described it as "a bubblegum hip-hop confection of rapping lifted off Neneh Cherry and Monie Love albums.

[79] The song ranked at fifteenth in the American Pazz & Jop, a nationwide critics poll published by The Village Voice and conducted by its music editor Robert Christgau,[80] who called it "a classic".

Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic said that "none of the girls have great voices, but they do exude personality and charisma, which is what drives bouncy dance-pop like 'Wannabe,' with its ridiculous 'zig-a-zig-ahhh' hook, into pure pop guilty pleasure.

"[30] In a review of their Greatest Hits album, IGN said that after ten years it "still sound reasonably fresh",[83] while Digital Spy's Nick Levine said that "Wannabe" still remained an "exuberant calling card".

His original concept for the video was a one-take shoot of the group arriving at an exotic building in Barcelona, taking over the place, and running riot—the same way they did when they were looking for a manager and a record company.

Virgin was concerned that old people appeared in the video, and worried that the scenes of the Spice Girls jumping on a table and Halliwell's showgirl outfit might be considered threatening by music channels.

You get the individual personalities of all five members, the infectious togetherness of the group at large, and most importantly, the sense that they were coming to absolutely blast through American pop music and mess up everything we previously thought we knew.

[143][144][145][146] After a breast-cancer scare led Geri Halliwell to leave the team at the end of the European leg of the Spiceworld Tour, her parts were replaced by Melanie Chisholm (refrain), Victoria Adams (verses), and Bunton (bridge).

[154] The Metro's Jon O’Brien concluded that: "From its lyrical themes of female solidarity to its insanely catchy pop hooks and mischief-making promo, the worldwide chart-topper encapsulated everything that made the group so spellbinding in the space of just two minutes and 52 seconds.

"[155] Digital Spy's Lewis Corner agreed, adding: "It's hard to imagine any other pop act managing to make this much of an impact so quickly and effortlessly ever again.

The video, which was launched on YouTube and ran in movie theatres internationally,[162] featured British girl group M.O, Canadian "viral sensation" Taylor Hatala, Nigerian-British singer Seyi Shay and Bollywood actress Jacqueline Fernandez lip-syncing to the song in various locations around the world, including a set of stairs reminiscent of the Midland Grand Hotel steps from the original music video.

"[162] In 2014, a study at the University of Amsterdam with the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester found that "Wannabe" is the most recognisable and catchy pop song of the last 60 years among young English speakers.

The characters Brittany (Heather Morris), Tina (Jenna Ushkowitz), Marley (Melissa Benoist), Kitty (Becca Tobin) and Unique (Alex Newell) dressed up as the Spice Girls and performed the song on the 17th episode of the fourth season of Glee.

[191] "Wannabe" was performed, along with another Spice Girls song, "Say You'll Be There", with revised lyrics, in the second episode of the 41st season of Saturday Night Live by host Amy Schumer and cast members Cecily Strong and Taran Killam.

[196] For the 21st anniversary of the song in July 2017, W magazine had various celebrities perform "Wannabe", including Nicole Kidman, James Franco, Riz Ahmed, Milo Ventimiglia, Millie Bobby Brown and Keri Russell.