"Wannabe" was the debut single by the British pop group Spice Girls, widely considered to be their signature song. It was written by the Spice Girls, Richard Stannard and Matt Rowe for the Spice Girls debut album Spice (see 1996 in music).
The single was released in July of 1996 in the United Kingdom, reaching the top of the UK Singles Chart for seven consecutive weeks, and received a platinum certification by the BPI. In January of 1997 the song was released in the US topping the Billboard Hot 100 for four weeks, becoming their only number-one single in that country.
"Wannabe" is one of the most recognisable and successful songs of the 1990s. By the end of 1996 it had topped the charts in 22 nations, and by March of 1997 this number had climbed to 31, before it became the best-selling single by a female group in the history of recorded sound, selling over six million copies worldwide.