Don't Do It Emma

As a closet Spice Girls fan, the kind of thing you can only get away with confessing to on the internet, the varying depths to which their solo careers have plummeted in recent years has been particularly painful to watch.

Whether it was Geri's misjudged soft porn video for Desire, Mel B's laughably cheap album LA State of Mind or Mel C's insistence on releasing plodding pub-rock, there hasn't been much to cheer about since Emma's wonderfully retro Free Me album over two years ago.

But any hope that she might be the sole success story was quashed when I saw and heard her latest single, the Petula Clark cover, Downtown. It may be for charity but that doesn't mean she has to release the kind of lazy inoffensive cover that reduces her to the status of a younger Jane McDonald.

Her tie-in with Strictly Come Dancing is a clever marketing idea but it would have worked so much better if she'd come out with something as classy as Free Me, as bonkers as Maybe or as fun as Crickets Sing For AnnaMaria.

She's apparently been working with Smoke City, responsible for Underwater Love, the excellent Levis advert tune from 1997, and the guys behind UK chart-toppers Olive, so the album sounds more promising. But releasing it in December is absolute career suicide. So many albums by much bigger acts have sank without trace due to being lost in the Christmas rush.

Each Spice Girl has had their moments of pop genius but their recent output has been nothing short of woeful. I'm glad they've had the dignity not to get back together for a quick buck but I do with they wouldn't tarnish their reputation even more by releasing such rubbish.