For an artist whose introduction to the world came as one-fifth of the biggest girl group of the 1990s, Melanie C has done a rather remarkable job of ensuring that particular chapter of her career hasn’t become her entire story. Nearly three decades after the Spice Girls first encouraged us to spice up our lives, the woman affectionately known as Sporty Spice is still finding new ways to keep us moving, and judging by the enthusiastic reception to her Sweat Tour at The Tivoli in Brisbane, we’re more than happy to follow her lead.
At 52, Melanie Chisholm remains an impressively energetic performer, possessing the sort of stamina that makes you question your own fitness levels just watching her. But whilst her physicality has always been a defining characteristic of her stage presence, it’s her continued commitment to musical reinvention that makes her such an interesting artist to revisit.
And with Sweat, her ninth solo studio album, she’s leaning wholeheartedly into the electronic and dance influences that have increasingly shaped her sound, delivering a live experience that feels as indebted to the European club scene as it does the pop phenomenon that first made her famous.
Before Melanie could turn the Tivoli into her own personal nightclub, however, New Zealand singer-songwriter Cassie Henderson was tasked with warming up the crowd, and she proved an endearing choice of support.
Balancing her own material with some particularly crowd-friendly covers, Henderson moved between Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!”, ABBA’s “Lay All Your Love on Me” and Wheatus’ “Teenage Dirtbag”, demonstrating an appealing versatility that complemented her easygoing stage presence. Her originals, including “Whatever” and “It’s a Wonder”, offered something more personal, with the singer joking that her songwriting was perhaps the easiest way to get to know her, given her tendency to reveal rather a lot about herself and her ex-boyfriends.
It was “Teenage Dirtbag” that generated the most enthusiastic response, though, Henderson dedicating the song to Melanie, who had mentored her during her third-place run on The Voice. The connection added a lovely personal dimension to the pairing, and Henderson’s evident affection for her former coach made the moment all the sweeter.
When Melanie eventually emerged, any suggestion that the evening might be a leisurely trip through pop nostalgia was swiftly dispelled.
Launching into “Undefeated Champion”, she immediately established the physical and musical language of the show. Its defiant, motivational energy made for an appropriately commanding introduction, the singer attacking the material with the sort of conviction that suggested she had no intention of easing us gently into proceedings.
And ease us in she certainly did not.
With the tour taking its name from her latest record, Melanie understandably gave Sweat considerable prominence, dedicating much of the opening sequence to its material. “Free to Love”, “Til It Breaks”, “Emotional Memory”, “Cashmere”, “Attitude” and “Pressure” followed in succession, each further establishing the album’s pulsating electronic aesthetic.
For an artist with a catalogue that includes some of the most recognisable pop songs of the last thirty years, it’s a particularly confident approach to constructing a live show. Rather than treating her latest recordings as obligatory additions to an otherwise nostalgia-driven set, Melanie positioned them as the evening’s foundation, trusting the audience to embrace the music she’s making now.
And whilst the newer material didn’t always inspire the same collective enthusiasm as her established hits, it certainly wasn’t without its admirers. The gentleman standing beside me appeared to know practically every lyric from Sweat, enthusiastically singing his way through songs that much of the surrounding crowd was still becoming acquainted with.
It was a rather charming reminder that Melanie’s audience isn’t exclusively made up of those still clinging to their childhood Spice Girls memorabilia. Her solo career has attracted a devoted following in its own right, and for those fans, the opportunity to hear so much new material was evidently something to celebrate.
Musically, the opening stretch also provided an effective showcase for her vocals. Melanie has always possessed one of the more distinctive voices to emerge from the Spice Girls, her slightly husky tone lending itself equally well to muscular pop anthems and more emotionally vulnerable material. That she’s able to maintain such control whilst moving around the stage with almost relentless enthusiasm only makes her delivery more impressive.
Of course, there was always going to come a point when the audience’s appetite for familiarity needed satisfying.
An acoustic interlude offered a welcome change in atmosphere, allowing Melanie to revisit some of the songs that established her as a solo performer in the first place. “Northern Star”, the title track from her 1999 debut, sounded particularly lovely in its stripped-back arrangement, whilst “Never Be the Same Again” served as a reminder of just how confidently she transitioned from girl-group phenomenon to chart-topping solo artist.
Without the weight of their original production, both songs revealed a tenderness that contrasted beautifully with the electronic intensity of the opening set. It also gave Melanie the opportunity to demonstrate that, for all the choreography and club-ready beats, her voice remains the most compelling instrument at her disposal.
And then, in a moment seemingly designed to emotionally undo every millennial in the room, she turned her attention to “Viva Forever”.
Arguably one of the Spice Girls’ finest recordings, the sweeping ballad has lost none of its emotional appeal, and hearing Melanie deliver it with such affection was a genuine highlight. For an Australian audience, however, it also came with the familiar reminder that the original Spice Girls line-up has somehow never performed together on our shores.
Almost thirty years later, that still feels like a rather glaring omission from Australia’s pop concert history.
Still, if we can’t have all five Spice Girls, Melanie was making a compelling case for why one can be more than enough.
The acoustic portion also provided something of a necessary breather, because what followed was considerably less interested in allowing anyone to remain stationary.
Having promised a more dance-oriented second half, Melanie proceeded to deliver exactly that, with “Sweat” ushering in a stretch of the show that increasingly resembled a late-night club session rather than a traditional pop concert.
“Touch Me”, from her self-titled 2020 album, proved especially effective in this environment, its sleek electronic production and euphoric momentum fitting seamlessly into the evening’s evolving soundscape. “One Track Mind”, meanwhile, gave way to a rave and house-inspired breakdown that pushed the atmosphere further into dance-floor territory.
What became increasingly apparent was how comfortably Melanie inhabits this musical space. Her enthusiasm for dance music doesn’t feel like a calculated attempt to remain contemporary, but rather a natural extension of the sounds she’s been exploring throughout her solo career.
That affinity was further demonstrated when she stepped behind the decks for a DJ set that could have comfortably soundtracked a particularly lively evening in Ibiza. The transition from singer to DJ was surprisingly seamless, and her selection of club-oriented sounds ensured the Tivoli’s energy never noticeably diminished.
It was also during this portion of the evening that the show’s particular appeal to its predominantly queer millennial audience became most apparent. For many of us, the Spice Girls were an early introduction to pop music as a form of joyful self-expression, and Melanie’s subsequent embrace of dance culture has only strengthened that connection.
But whilst the contemporary material gave the concert its musical direction, the evening’s most exhilarating moments were still to come.
Returning to the Spice Girls catalogue, Melanie delivered a wonderfully inventive pairing of “Who Do You Think You Are” and “Spice Up Your Life”, transforming two already exuberant pop classics into something considerably more unexpected.
The former was accompanied by the instantly recognisable guitar riff from Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, an unlikely collision of grunge and disco that somehow made perfect sense. The song’s familiar groove remained intact, but the addition of that abrasive guitar hook gave it a playful new dimension, as though two defining musical movements of the 1990s had suddenly decided to share the same dance floor.
And just when it seemed the musical mash-ups couldn’t become any more inspired, “Spice Up Your Life” arrived with Fatboy Slim’s “Right Here, Right Now” woven into its already riotous, carnival-inspired production.
It was an inspired piece of musical matchmaking.
The contrast between Fatboy Slim’s steadily building electronic intensity and the Spice Girls’ gloriously over-the-top celebration of rhythm and movement created one of the evening’s most electrifying moments. More importantly, it demonstrated that Melanie understands the value of reinterpreting these songs rather than simply recreating the versions audiences have been listening to for decades.
The result was pure pop euphoria, the sort of collective experience where individual voices disappear into one enormous singalong and everyone in the room seems temporarily transported back to a time when life was considerably less complicated.
For the predominantly queer crowd, there was something particularly satisfying about watching an artist so intrinsically linked to our formative years continue to celebrate the music that helped shape them. The Spice Girls’ message of individuality and self-acceptance may have been packaged in brightly coloured outfits and impossibly catchy choruses, but its resonance with LGBTQIA+ audiences has never been particularly difficult to understand.
And judging by the response inside the Tivoli, that affection hasn’t diminished in the slightest.
Of course, Melanie had one final ace up her sleeve.
“I Turn to You” remains arguably her most enduring solo anthem, a gloriously euphoric slice of turn-of-the-millennium Eurodance that sounds every bit as irresistible today as it did when it first dominated dance floors and radio playlists.
As a closing number, it was difficult to imagine anything more appropriate.
Its soaring chorus and propulsive production provided one last opportunity for the audience to surrender themselves to the music, with Melanie’s vocals cutting confidently through the electronic arrangement as the evening reached its exhilarating conclusion.
By that point, the Sweat Tour had more than lived up to its name.
What made the performance particularly satisfying was that it never felt as though Melanie was attempting to reconcile two competing versions of herself. Sporty Spice and Melanie C aren’t separate identities that need to be carefully balanced; they’re simply different chapters in the same musical journey.
The woman who helped define a generation of pop music is also the artist who has spent the subsequent decades experimenting with rock, electronic sounds and dance production, developing a catalogue that deserves recognition beyond the extraordinary success of the group that introduced her to the world.
And whilst the Spice Girls numbers understandably inspired some of the evening’s loudest reactions, Melanie’s willingness to devote so much of the show to Sweat was perhaps its most revealing quality. She’s clearly proud of the music she’s making, and that confidence translated into a performance that felt genuinely enthusiastic rather than dutiful.
There’s also something rather wonderful about watching an artist who has been performing for almost thirty years still appear so invested in the simple pleasure of entertaining an audience. Melanie’s energy was infectious, her vocals consistently strong, and her ability to move between emotional balladry and full-throttle dance music spoke to a versatility that has sometimes been overlooked in discussions of her career.
For those who arrived hoping to relive a little Spice Mania, there was certainly enough nostalgia to satisfy. But the evening offered something more rewarding than a straightforward trip down memory lane, presenting an artist who remains creatively engaged with the present whilst retaining an obvious affection for the songs that helped make her famous.
Sporty Spice may have given Melanie C her first taste of global superstardom, but the decades since have demonstrated that her story was never going to end there.
And after an evening of infectious dance beats, inspired musical mash-ups and some wonderfully unapologetic pop nostalgia, one thing was abundantly clear: Melanie C still knows exactly how to spice up our lives.
FOUR STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Reviewer attended 14/11 at The Tivoli in Brisbane. The Sweat Tour continues in Sydney on 15/11.
