proposed to write a track with an uptempo dance-pop rhythm. Rowe set up a drum loop on his MPC3000 drum machine. Its fast rhythm reminded Stannard of the scene in Grease. Stannard commented that the only pre-planned concept for the song was that it should represent the essence of what they were. 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. And then we just sewed it together. It was rather like the way we'd been working on the dance remixes we'd been doing before. Kind of a cut-and-paste method. "Wannabe" was completed in 30 minutes—mainly because the group had written and composed parts of the song beforehand—in what Brown describes as a "sudden creative frenzy". During the session, Brown and Bunton came up with the idea of including a rap near the end of the song. At this point the group became highly motivated, and incorporated the word "zigazig-ah" into the lyrics. Chisholm told Billboard: "You know when you're in a gang and you're having a laugh and you make up silly words? Well we were having a giggle and we made up this silly word, zigazig-ah. We were in the studio and it all came together in this song." Recording and production While most of the other songs on the Spice album required two or three days of studio time, "Wannabe" was recorded in less than an hour. The solo parts were divided between Brown, Bunton, Chisholm, and Halliwell. Adams missed most of the writing session and communicated with the rest of the group on a mobile phone. In her autobiography, she wrote: "I just couldn't bear not being there. Because whatever they said about how it didn't matter, it did matter. Saying 'Yes, I like that' or 'Not sure about that' down the phone is not the same." She contributed backing vocals and sings during the chorus. Rowe stayed up all night working on the song, and it was finished by morning, the only later addition was the sound of Brown's footsteps as she ran to the microphone. The group parted with Heart Management in March 1995 because of their frustration with the management company's