To some (and let's try our best not to judge them) the Spice Girls are simply, not all that. To others (the better part of the human race) the English pop group is everything. The Spice Girls are a pop culture phenomenon that has entranced the public since 1996. From popularising Girl Power to delivering some of the most famous songs in history, the Spice Girls are a timeless force that should not be underestimated.
While a new chapter of their story will begin this May when they embark on a reunion tour, to understand the essence of Spice and their global appeal, let me take you back to 1994 in an effort to highlight just how lucky the world is to have had the Spice Girls as we know and love them today.
1990. The music market is saturated with boy bands and hip-hop and R&B style music is dominating the global charts. Enter executives from Heart Magazine. Eager to make a fortune and compete against the much hyped boy bands of the 90s, Bob and Chris Herbert decide to create an all-girl-group singing sensation.
In February of 1994, an ad was placed in trade magazine The Stage, looking for singers to audition for an all-female pop band. At the time of the first auditions, it is recorded that in excess of 400 women attended. The women were put through their paces during both dance and vocal auditions.
Several weeks of deliberating later, Melanie Brown, Melanie Chisholm, Victoria Adams and Michelle Stephenson, along with 12 others were notified that they had made it to the second round of auditions. Having missed the first, Geri Halliwell is allowed to participate in the second round and she along with the two Mels, Victoria and Michelle are selected to form the band Touch.
Trying to forge a relationship out of thin air, the girls moved to a house in Berkshire and spent the rest of 1994 rehearsing nonstop. The material they were going over however was very young pop and didn't sit well with the majority of the girls. Months later, Stephenson was fired from the band (for reasons that are still speculated today) and replaced with a young blonde by the name of Emma Bunton and some time between Stephenson's exit and Bunton's arrival, Geri comes up with the band name, Spice.
After months of seemingly no progress, the girls begin touring management agencies to try and find someone who believes in them and their true sound. Unhappy with Heart, it is alleged that the five of them stole the master recordings of their discography in an attempt to severe ties with Heart completely. After their rebellious act, Mel B encountered Simon Fuller of 19 Entertainment, a man who would secure them their first record deal with Virgin Records in September 1995.
Almost a full year after their formation, Spice were finally getting somewhere. They had a manager, a record label and their foot in the door of the industry. With contracts being drawn up, the girls were informed that they would need to change their band name once again, as there was already a rapper going by Spice, and so Spice Girls was born.
Despite their record deal, the girls still had trouble trying to get music executives and sound engineers to take them seriously. They would have to beg people to work with them, making promises that they would not disappoint if given just a few minutes. It was Mel B's in your face attitude that finally led to the opportunity to record Wannabe. For a mere 10 minutes the girls shouted raps, chants and song lyrics back and forth until it all came together and formed Wannabe- the most successful debut and single by a girl group of all time.
At its peak, the Wannabe video was played 70 times per week on television and the song held the number one position on the charts for seven weeks. Riding a wave of success, Say You'll Be There and 2 Become 1 were released in quick succession, earning the group two more number one singles. With more than 462,000 copies sold in the first week, 2 Become 1 was the fastest selling single of 1996 and suddenly the Spice Girls had three of the top five biggest selling songs of 1996 in the UK.
The release of their debut album in November of 1996 in Europe can only be compared to a modern day Beatlemania. Certified 10 x Platinum, the Spice Girls were quickly becoming a phenomenon as million pound sponsorships from Pepsi, Cadbury and Polaroid came knocking.
However, the toughest test of their popularity was yet to come- cracking the American market. In January of 1997, the Spice Girls released Wannabe in the US to an overwhelming response. It had not only broken into a notoriously tough market, it was the hottest single in America at the time and the Spice Girls earned the highest ever chart debut by a non-American act.
In their first year as a public group, they had more consecutive number ones than the Jackson 5 along with Billboard Awards and Brit Awards victories and an infamous meeting with Prince Charles. It was all becoming a whirlwind.
In October 1997, Simon took the girls for their first ever concert where they performed to a sold out crowd in Turkey before a visit to South Africa where Nelson Mandela called the girls "my heroes".
A month later and the release of their second album, Spiceworld was another smashing success. Setting a new record for the fastest selling album, the press needed to find a word that surpassed phenomena, because the Spice Girls clearly had.
However, America wasn't as responsive to a second Spice album within the span of nine months. Picking up on their image stall in the American market, the UK media embarked on a negative campaign against the girl group which would ultimately culminate in the girls firing Simon and deciding to run the group themselves.
Sadly, the group couldn't do anything right in the eyes of the media. Simon's firing was heralded as the beginning of their demise and was used as a tool to highlight how out of tune they were with the music business. Despite the backlash, the fans did the real talking and by continuing to buy and listen to the music, the Spice Girls ended 1997 as the most played artist on American radio.
Click the arrow for more photos of the Spice Girls throughout the years!
Come 1998 it was time to embark on a world tour to try and satisfy the fan's ever growing appetites for Spice. Beginning in Europe before crossing over to North America, the Spiceworld tour was meant to be the girls way of soaking up their success and truly basking in it. However, the Spiceworld tour was to signify the beginning of the end. Rumoured tensions with Mel B apparently reached a boiling point on a flight in between tour destinations and Geri made the decision to leave the group.
Not even two whole years after their breakout arrival on the music scene, the Spice Girls as the five-some the world loved was over. However, in show business, the show has to go on rail, hail or shine and the remaining girls scrambled to re-block choreography and divide Geri's lines in songs between themselves.
What was rumoured to be their ending was soon silenced by the release of new material. Goodbye was released to positive reviews and was a very public way for the group to bid farewell to their Ginger the only way they knew how- through song.
Powering on through the hard times, the four-part Spice Girls embarked on a UK only tour and released what would be their last album- Forever. Departing from their pop roots with a new, edgier R&B sound, the album sold only a mere fraction of what the Spice Girls had become accustomed to.
Seemingly coming since Geri's departure in 1998, the remaining ladies announced in December 2000 that they would be embarking on an indefinite hiatus. For fans of bands that have broken up throughout history, we most definitely know that indefinite hiatus will likely last forever.
It's funny to look at the Spice Girls' career and realise how quickly it all started and fell apart. July 7 1996, they quite literally burst onto the scene and change the landscape of pop and modern day feminism, yet by May 31 1998, the original band as we know it has broken up. The Spice Girls seem to occupy such a huge space in music and pop culture history, yet they only completed one tour in full with the original members. While strange, it is a very obvious example of the lasting power of the the Spice Girls brand- it was fleeting yet the impact has transcended time.
Thankfully, the story doesn't end there. Girl power in fact shines through and the five best things to come out of Britain in the 90s reunited in 2007 for The Return of the Spice Girls World Tour. Tickets to the London shows sold out in 38 seconds, proving that years later, Spicemania was still well and truly alive.
However, in what was becoming a Spice Girls trend, the tour was shortened due to 'personal reasons' and the most deserving city in the world- Sydney- was left untouched by Spice magic.
In a move akin to ABBA, as 2010 rolled on in, the girls teamed up with Judy Craymer (of Mamma Mia fame) and Jennifer Saunders to develop the musical, Viva Forever! And two years later they had their first public reunion in four years during a promotional event for the musical.
When you think about the Spice Girls a few words come to mind. Obviously girl power is up there, but iconic is also one of the first things that surfaces. What they were able to achieve in a music climate dominated by males and different genres of music was truly fantastic and the fact that despite all of the breakups and fallen through plans, they remain as in demand as ever, is a testament to their popularity. No matter what they do, they are always the most exciting thing happening at that moment- highlighted by their 2012 appearance at the closing ceremony of the Summer Olympics which was to become the most tweeted about moment of the entire Olympics.
As rumours continued to circulate after their Olympics performance, each Spice remained relatively tight lipped, except of course, Mel B. If you counted every time Scary teased a reunion, we would have had exactly 12,500 reunions between Geri's departure and now. So while we can't exactly take Mel B's word for it, she does ensure that the hope always lingers on.
In true Mel B fashion, she teased in 2016 that the girls were getting back together (well only herself, Geri and Emma) and a few months later a single was leaked online, titled Song For Her. Despite only featuring three of the original members, the appetite for Spice was such that anything remotely Spice-esque was devoured by the public. Yet again, in true Spice Girls fashion, the project was cancelled when it was revealed that Geri was pregnant with her second child. Those damn Spice Girls and their false hope!
Maybe another disappointment was in fact the best thing. Maybe Geri leaving the band so early on led us to something greater. Perhaps the cancelled Australian leg of their reunion tour was fate telling us to wait for something more, something bigger. In fact, maybe all of the hardships faced by the band and their fans were all leading up to this moment.
Hear me out now. If Geri hadn't left the band and instead continued to tour with the group, they would have had success in Europe and North America. That success would have resulted in another album by the original band and it could have been such a flop that the public turned against them and they went into hiding and severed ties with each other.
Instead, the band's history has led us to this moment, where the Spice Girls have never faded from public consciousness because they left us with just enough music to adore them and yet still long for more some day.
And that some day is about to dawn when in May, Geri, Mel B, Mel C and Emma will embark on a reunion tour. While yet again it isn't the full band, the fact that Victoria used to perform with her microphone off, will show you just how much she is needed.
The Spice Girls have had a long and tumultuous history. They have fought industry stereotypes, released smash records, iconic music videos and weathered break ups. At the time it seemed that the world was trying to deprive us of Spice, when in fact, maybe it was just trying to prolong the longevity of the most successful girl group of all time?
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