She was widely regarded as the most talented member of the Spice Girls and had a hugely successful solo career but Melanie Chisholm has been keeping a low profile in recent years.
While her bandmates Victoria Beckham, Emma Bunton, Mel B and Geri Halliwell have all been pursuing TV careers or launching into the fashion spectrum, the 37-year-old has been treading the boards in West End play ‘Blood Brothers‘.
However Melanie C, otherwise known as Sporty Spice, is launching back into the spotlight with her brand new album ‘The Sea‘.
“It was really fantastic [theatre], but I really missed my music,” she tells Starlounge in an exclusive interview. “It was time for me to make a new record.”
Melanie, who has sold more than 10 million records as a solo-artist, says she has been inspired by her two-year-old daughter Scarlet who has begun bursting into song recently.
“She has started singing, she sings mommy’s songs, just the odd line here and there and it is very cute,” she says.
It’s been three years since the Spice Girls reunited for a world tour, but Melanie insists that they still make time for each other, especially now they are all mothers.
“We get together with our children when there are birthdays or some other occasion,” she says.
“When Victoria is in London we see each other, too. Scarlet was the baby for a long time, she was the youngest but now Emma had a little boy, Victoria has had Harper and Mel is due to give birth any minute, so mine is not the youngest! Time goes quickly.”
The Spice Girls were famous for their revealing outfits when they launched onto the scene, but Melanie says she thinks modern pop stars like Lady GaGa and Katy Perry have taken dressing overtly sexy a little too far.
“I think that culture has changed, I don’t think we are responsible for that,” she adds. “Sex has always been sold, it just seems that now it has become very prevalent in pop music.
“It seems like this is the way these young artists want to express themselves. Artists like Katy Perry or Lady Gaga or Britney Spears, they have fantastic voices and I don’t think they need to take their clothes off, but apparently they want to.
“I just think everybody has quite young fans and you can be impressionable at a young age, and sometimes people go a little too far.”
Melanie shows off her fantastic figure in the video for her new single ‘Think About it‘, but she says it took her a long time to regain her figure after the birth of her daughter Scarlet.
“I actually did gain a lot of weight. When I got pregnant I was very fit but when I had my little girl I put on about three and a half stone,” she says.
“There is a lot of pressure on women after a pregnancy to lose baby weight quickly but I didn’t feel like it at all! I was so exhausted, I was so busy just taking care of her, I really couldn’t be bothered even thinking about going to the gym.”
Mel credits her current toned and sculpted shape to the intensive training she has been undertaking for the Virgin Active London Triathlon which she is running on July 30th to raise money for the Children’s Medical Research Charity Sparks.
She has become famous for tattoos and has at least 11 all other her body, but despite the fact that she was forced to spend hours in make-up covering them up while she starred in ‘Blood Brothers’, Melanie insists she does not regret her body art.
‘It was definitely a pain to cover them up daily at the theatre, but I love my tattoos, they all mean something to me.
Melanie has been with her partner Tom Starr for nine years, but she says that have no plans to tie the knot.
“We are really just happy the way we are, we have a beautiful child, we share a nice home, but you never know what the future holds,” she adds.”
