Tell us what you want, what you really, really want, at the foot of
this article
FOR: David Sinclair
Today the Spice Girls will formally announce their reunion at a press
conference at the O2 Arena. There will be a string of high-profile shows on
different continents and a Greatest Hits album, including new songs that
they have recently recorded.
Should they have got back together? The answer, if you are their manager,
Simon Fuller, or have anything to do with their record company, Virgin, is a
no-brainer. With album sales in freefall and the record industry in
meltdown, the chance to recreate the kind of sales that the Spice Girls
enjoyed with their first two albums will be like manna from heaven.
Even now, the scale of the Spice Girls’ success across the globe is difficult
to grasp. Their first two albums, Spice and Spiceworld, each sold more than
20 million copies. And in this year of reunions, when bands such as The Who,
with only two of the original members still alive, or Take That without
Robbie Williams, can make a huge impact as touring attractions, the Spice
Girls are likely to prove a significant commercial success.
Indeed the reunion of the five original Spice Girls together with their
manager Simon Fuller represents the resolution of unfinished business. The
band suspended operations in 2001, but Fuller had been booted out much
earlier, in 1997, and Geri left soon after in 1998. Fuller has often talked
about the unfulfilled potential of the group, and a reunion of all five plus
him will be a chance not only to revisit past glories but also to achieve
some kind of closure.
But what about closure for the rest of us? The business case may be clear cut,
but whether a reunion is the right thing on aesthetic or artistic grounds is
another matter. The Spice Girls were a group spectacularly locked in a
moment. They were young, glamorous, irreverent and fun, and it will be
asking a lot of them to transport that kind of exuberant appeal on to a
stage again now that they are all in their thirties.
But I have no doubts that their music will stand the test of time. Think of
how many of their songs you can still recall with absolute clarity – Say
You’ll Be There, Mama, Who Do You Think You Are and, of course, Wannabe –
and remember that there is another generation of kids who have seen the
Spiceworld movie, heard the songs and will be fascinated to see the group
together for the first time.
The critics in Britain, and to a lesser extent America, will naturally be
queuing up to rubbish them. And it is true that the Spice Girls have a lot
to answer for. More than a mere pop group, they were a social phenomenon.
The way in which the group was assembled, through an audition process, and
then put in a house together, where they were filmed (and even “voted out”
one of the original members, Michelle Stephenson) unwittingly provided the
blueprint for the world of celebrity culture that we (and they) now inhabit.
Their bubbly enthusiasm belied a streak of ruthless ambition that took them
to the top of the greasy pole of pop without any of them being ripped off.
They were smarter than they looked. And they became ubiquitous to the point
of overkill.
But history has a way of readjusting the stock of pop groups that seem
irritating and irrelevant at the time. Abba, who came to fame after winning
the Eurovision Song Contest, were derided as buffoons when they were still
together: and even groups such as the Monkees, the original prefabricated
four, have achieved a certain grudging critical respect in hindsight. The
songs of the Spice Girls – whose first album, let’s not forget, was
shortlisted for the Mercury Music Prize – may prove to have a similarly
surprising long-term appeal. And if they can find a way to present
themselves that recaptures the fun without making them look like idiots,
they will be home and dry.
Reunions always attract a certain amount of flak, and a Spice Girls reunion
doubly so. But if it is such a terrible idea, then why all the interest?
When I wrote my book Wannabe I was asked, time and time again, why would
anyone bother to write a book about the Spice Girls? But never, anywhere in
the world, was I asked, who are the Spice Girls? The fevered speculation of
a reunion that has rumbled on for years has been fuelled by continuing
public fascination in the five girls as individuals. They have become part
of the fabric of modern celebrity culture. You can’t turn back the clock,
but at least now we can put the rumours to rest and see what they were
actually all about. Let’s hope it was worth all the fuss.
— Wannabe: How the Spice Girls Reinvented Pop Fame, by David
Sinclair, is published by Omnibus
AGAINST: Pete Paphides
So which songs are you gagging to hear one more time? Some bodies of work date
pretty well. Others fade like photographic paper exposed to light. Before we
get on to all the ways they influenced these times for the worse, we should
dwell first and foremost on the fact that the Spice Girls were a pop group.
Their existence was, at least notionally, predicated on making records that
people might want to hear. And for a while they did, but then so did the Bay
City Rollers, Bros and Westlife.
Once the fug of pheromones and hormones has evaporated, what is actually left?
Listen to hits such as Wannabe, Viva Forever, Stop and Mamaand what strikes
you is their flimsy production, threadbare tunes and – the two Mels
notwithstanding – singing voices that no amount of autotune could render
palatable. If you want to hear mainstream pop executed with sex, savvy,
passion, humour and high songwriting values, you’d be much better off with
the songs that the Xenomania production team has been penning for Girls
Aloud over the past five years.
Of course, the Spice Girls and the people around them would be quick to argue
that without the “girl power” they ushered in, such groups might not have a
ready fanbase waiting for them. But female singers existed long before
Wannabe came out, and they didn’t have the temerity to kid us that their
mere existence made them pop’s equivalent of Emily Pankhurst.
During a four-year reign marked mostly by the utter lack of humility with
which they carried themselves, the Spice Girls bellowed that wretched slogan
so often that they began to believe that it meant something: yet under the
weight of any examination whatsoever, Girl Power stood up as well as Oliver
Reed and Keith Moon after a night in their local.
Inverviewed on the Saturday morning children’s show Live & Kicking,
they claimed that they had received letters from children who had invoked
this girl power thing to stop being bullied at school. One was put in mind
of George Harrison shouting “Hare Krishna!” as his bedroom assailant
advanced towards him: a novel idea but, in the real world, entirely useless.
But then, if the rubbish film they made is anything to go by, the Spice
Girls lived not in the real world but in Spiceworld – a realm of product
placement and infinite merchandising possibilities.
Though she was swiftly told to backtrack, Geri Halliwell’s declaration that
Margaret Thatcher was the original Spice Girl was just about the truest
thing she ever said. The Spice Girls were Simon Fuller’s first glimpse of
the possibilities afforded by that most pernicious of modern phenomena, the
pop franchise. Later, of course, Fuller ploughed his talents into Popstars–
the programme that effectively started the continuing wave of prime-time
talent shows that blight schedules to this day, and are partially
responsible for coopting pop into the world of light entertainment.
Before Girl Power, pretty girls would try to get a foot in the door of the
entertainment industry by doing a bit of glamour modelling or dancing in
nightclubs. After Girl Power, pretty girls elected to get a foot in the door
of the entertainment industry by doing a bit of glamour modelling or dancing
in nightclubs. And why? Because Girl Power showed them that it was their
right to do so! When I interviewed Mel B in 2000 and made the same point to
her, she refused to countenance the notion that there may be any negative
aspect to Girl Power: less still that any overlap between their Girl Power
and feminism might be a good thing. “Feminism,” she explained, “is a bit
more harsher. I think they’ve gotsome good political views.”
Far from being an antidote to Loaded laddism, the Spice Girls were a symptom
of it. If you want an example of how a woman can subvert mainstream pop on
the back of a radical agenda, try Beth Ditto of the Gossip. But Ditto didn’t
form the Gossip because of the Spice Girls: the Arkansas trio came from the
genuinely empowering Riot Grrrl movement that gained wider attention through
bands such as Huggy Bear and Bikini Kill in the early 1990s.
The Spice Girls legacy is far less spectacular. It has made pop another branch
of the light entertainment industry, something that vacuous dolly birds can
add to their portfolio alongside modelling and dancing. The only Spice Girl
who appears to have any awareness that their tenure might not have been an
altogether good thing is Mel C. With a reasonably successful European solo
career to maintain, Sporty Spice has said that her reluctance to be the one
who prevents a Spice Girl reunion just about eclipses her reluctance to take
part. For the rest of the group, there’s little to prevent them from
satiating a massive public nostalgia that I doubt is even really there. Lest
we forget, they offered to reunite two years ago for Live 8: and as a
fabulously catty BBC source said: “Live 8 isn’t Party in the Park.”
Well, quite. Like Big Issue sellers and those homeless people who turn up at
your front door with a tray of dishcloths, if the Spice Girls had any skill
at all it was in using another agenda to sell you a poor-quality product. In
a sense, that’s fine. You weren’t really buying The Big Issue, crap
dishcloths and a pop record: you were, respectively, buying the fleeting
gratitude of two tramps and a stake in Girl Power. Why the hell would we
want the Spice Girls back? Haven’t they done enough damage already?
