'Spice Girls' star Mel C gives insights into 'emotional' 30th anniversary celebration of ‘Wannabe’

Melanie C, famed as one of the Spice Girls members, has said the 30th anniversary of the band's debut single Wannabe, which fell on Wednesday, was a "very emotional day."

The singer formerly known as Sporty Spice recalled that seeing the song in shops had been "so exciting, because it was everything we dreamed of."

Wannabe then went on to become one of the defining singles of the 1990s, selling more than 8 million copies worldwide, and launching the band's Girl Power agenda.

"We knew exactly what we wanted to achieve but nobody imagined the scale [of what] we went on to do," said the star, whose real name is Melanie Chisholm.

"We went out, we conquered the world. We were told that we couldn't, and we wouldn't. But we did,” she exclaimed.

The 52-year-old was speaking at the Nordoff And Robbins Silver Clef Awards at the Royal Albert Hall, where she was honoured with the global impact award.

The Spice Girls celebrated Wannabe's 30th birthday with separate posts on social media earlier this week as well.

Victoria Beckham said the song had "forever changed our lives," while Geri Horner wrote: "Thank you to my beautiful spice sisters."

"It was a very emotional day yesterday," Chisolm said on the red carpet. "We're all in touch obviously, all of the girls, we're so grateful and respectful of each other."

She also recalled Wannabe's nail-biting first week on the charts. After 48 hours, it was expected to enter the Top 40 at number six. When the chart was finally published, it had raced up to number three.

"We were just on cloud nine," said Chishom, further recalling, "Then it went to number one the next week - but we were in Japan, because we'd released the album in Japan before anywhere else.”

"I remember we had record performances and send them back to Top Of The Pops [and] we were so frustrated because we wanted to get into that studio,” she recalled.

"Luckily it stayed there long enough that, on the third week, we got into the studio. And then it went on to spend seven weeks [at number one], so we had nothing to worry about, really. It changed all our lives forever. And some would say it changed the world,” she said.

Melanie Chishom was presented with her award by actor Richard E Grant, who played the Spice Girls' harried manager Clifford in the 1997 movie Spice World and to mark the anniversary, he wore one of his original sparkling pink suits from the film.