Here’s What the Lyrics to Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” Actually Mean

Remember when you would spend hours with your best middle-school girlfriends recreating Spice Girls music videos, dancing, and singing like your little 13-year-old hearts never had before? Well, prepare to feel a little bit ickier about it. Some new info about one of the girl band’s most popular songs has been revealed, and we’re suddenly rethinking what we were singing all throughout much of the 90s.

A co-writer on “Wannabe” gabbed to a British tabloid and shared that there’s more sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll behind the pop group than we ever would have thought.

According to the co-writer, when Scary Spice (a.k.a. Mel B.) does a roll call in the middle of the song it supposedly contains a neatly hidden drug reference. “We got G like MC who likes it on an…Easy V doesn’t come for free” go the lyrics, with the insider saying that by not finishing what Geri Halliwell and Mel C. like it on, the phrasing is meant to suggest they like it on “Easy V” or, err, ecstasy. They’re “enjoying sex whilst on ecstasy, if you listen carefully” the source said.

As to what the heck “zig-a-zig-ah” means, the co-writer said it refers to a neighbor at their gritty Shoreditch recording studio: “This guy had this nasty habit of taking a dump in the shared khazi while smoking a cigar, so we took to referring to him as ‘shit and cigars.’ During the recording, this phrase was thrown around a lot and must have worked its way into Mel B’s subconscious, who pretty much wrote all the lyrics. She may have considered ‘shits and cigars’ for a minute, but eventually settled on ‘zig-a-zig-ah’ instead.” (FYI, “khazi” is British slang for a toilet.)

In less-scandalous Spice Girls news, find out which Spice Girls outfit Victoria Beckham says she’d never wear again.