Why We Should Change The National Anthem To "Spice Up Your Life" by The Spice Girls

Our National Anthem is a tuneless turgid groan full of outdated royalism and gross military pomp. So each week we ask a writer or musician to argue for a new song to replace “God Save The Queen”. First up, our own Emma Garland argues for “Spice Up Your Life” by the Spice Girls.

Sport is virtually the only arena in which national anthems are regularly heard and sung with any semblance of genuine emotional content. But what if a country’s national anthem is so dreadful that not even its premier league football players can be bothered to learn the words?

A national anthem is supposed to reflect some kind of national identity, even if that identity is based on a legacy of war and colonisation, so what does it say about Britain when half its young people don’t know the words to “God Save The Queen” (do any of them even know the Queen's first name?). I’ll tell you what it says. It says the British national anthem is shit and we need to upgrade it. But what to do? We need a song that can uplift a nation, but what is Britain’s “Started From The Bottom”?

If we’ve learned anything at all from the UKIP approval ratings it’s that the general public can’t be trusted to make good decisions. If it were up to you lot, we’d all be linking arms and downing pints along to “Chelsea Dagger” in a heartbeat. So in the interest of avoiding that horrendous fate, allow me to suggest an alternative that reflects the true interests of the majority: “Spice Up Your Life”.

I know what most of you are thinking - what a fan-fucking-tastic idea. Finally, something I can relate to on an existential level. But, for those of you who aren’t entirely convinced, let me explain…

It’s 2014 and pretty much everybody is broke and depressed. Next year there will be a general election and regardless of whether we end up with the middle-aged white man who wants to shaft everybody without a mansion or the middle-aged white man who can’t eat a sandwich, more people will end up broke and depressed. We are in need of a pick-me up; preferably one that isn’t taxed by the unit. And if what I have learned from broadway musicals and American prison films is true, then there is only one way to combat low-spirits: singing!

Just as I have never seen a group of completely opposing human beings bond so well as when a DJ at Hevy Festival dropped “Starships” between Jimmy Eat World and Paramore, I have also never seen a group of footballers look as communally depressed as when they’re forced to sing the British national anthem before kick off. With every mention of the Queen, they visibly deflate like a line of flaccid penises at the most cokey orgy of all time.

Imagine, instead, that just after they run onto the pitch they get to sing “Spice Up Your Life”, complete with a simple set of dance moves and some general pointing, and try to tell me that wouldn’t be a million times more rousing. We would definitely win everything, but even if we didn’t nobody would care because nothing galvanises national pride quite like five era-defining women singing “Slam it to the left! Shake it to the right!”

If there’s one thing we can take away from 2014 it’s that feminism has “arrived” in pop culture. Regardless of whether your vision of modern feminism includes Pussy Riot's lyrics or Miley’s arse, there is no erasing the word from our subconscious and now is the perfect time to balance out the dominant male soldier imagery that comprises our national identity, which currently boils down to a series of quotes made by Hugh Laurie in Blackadder Goes Forth (“A bit of a jolly old crash landing behind enemy lines - capture, torture, escape, and then back home in time for tea and medals”). The whole point of feminism is to highlight the fact that women make up the fabric of our society too, and most of those women aren’t the Queen. Luckily, we are in the perfect position to make that alteration on a national scale: Spice Girls are still the best selling girl-group of all time, their number one message was “GIRL POWER” and they are proportionally representative of Britain's regions (sort of). It’s tactically watertight.

Finally - not that this needs spelling out but - “Spice Up Your Life” is an absolute banger. Putting aside the fact that every time it comes on in a club several people are admitted to hospital because there is no space big enough to contain that quantity of actions-to-music dance moves, the lyrics are exactly the kind of spirit-lifting nonsense we love. Timbuktu. Spice up your life! Kung fu fighting. Spice up your life! Wait, what even is a tribal spaceman? It doesn’t matter, SPICE UP YOUR LIFE! It’s inclusive, forward-thinking and sassy. It’s not a pale middle-aged man singing “Hey Nonny Nonny” with a lute up his arse, which I’m pretty certain is still how 90% of the world sees us.

Basically, there is only one image on this good earth that has ever made me feel remotely close to patriotic, and that image is Geri Halliwell fist pumping in a Union Jack dress so short that it doesn’t even cover her fanny.

Follow Emma on Twitter: @emmaggarland