The Spice Girls: their return today will ring a few bells for me
Just when you thought we'd booted the last of the 90s out of the door, today sees the Spice Girls give a press conference in which they'll surely announce their reunion. It will ring a few bells for me, since this time 10 years ago I was staff writer at the dear departed pop gazette Smash Hits, and spent more time thinking about the Spice Girls than any other group.
My introduction to them was abrupt. I'd never heard of them until one day in the early summer of 1996 when they burst into Smash Hits' small and filthy office, put on a cassette (!) of their debut single Wannabe and proceeded to sing and do the dance routine right in front of our desks. As you might imagine, the effect was mortifying. Perhaps it was embarrassment that made the editor of the time, Kate Thornton, decline to come out of her cubicle at the back of the office to meet them. Bad decision: Wannabe went on to be number one in 33 countries, including America, and her faux pas that morning, gleefully leaked by the Spices' people, went on to be talked about in the same breath as Decca turning down the Beatles in 1962.
This got Smash Hits off to a bad start with the Spice Girls while Top of the Pops magazine, our deadly rivals, achieved the magnificent journalistic coup of inventing the nicknames by which some of them are still known: Posh, Scary, Sporty, Ginger and Baby. Yet naturally we were still invited into the eye of their storm. I remember interviewing them backstage at the Smash Hits Poll Winners' Party, where they seemed to exude a kind of elated tranquillity (no, they weren't on drugs). That same afternoon, Simon Sebag Montefiore had interviewed them for the Spectator about their politics, in a piece that made international headlines. Right in front of my eyes they were being pushed through the sound barrier into superstardom, a very weird transformation to witness.
The Spectator interview reminds me of how seriously the Spice Girls were taken: for about six months, they were an unstoppable cultural force. A lot of crap has been talked about their influence on young girls, but from my view in the Smash Hits office it was wholly positive. The Spice Girls openly proclaimed themselves feminists (and in Geri and Posh's case, Tories, but you can't have everything). Almost overnight, Smash Hits was deluged by letters from young girls who finally had pop stars who weren't just there to fancy (Take That, Boyzone) or be passively leered at by men (Louise). Even if they did subsequently all fall out, in their imperial period the Spice Girls presented a model of female solidarity and achievement that was inspiring and important.
Plus, how refreshing to have a group that had a manifesto, that was about more than just the music. OK, as a concept Girl Power wasn't exactly Anarchy in the UK, but at least it recognised that pop music can still be used as a vehicle to transmit ideas as well as a good time. Also, the best Spice records were musically great - Say You'll Be There with its Russ Meyer-homaging video, 2 Become 1 with its downy soft Emma Bunton vocal, even the Motown pastiche Stop that brought their run of number ones to an end.
Their ultimate pop moment was at the 1997 Brit awards when they strode up and down the catwalk with Geri in a Union Jack dress. And ultimately that's what the Spices provided, a very intense, brief pop moment of the kind we don't get any more now everyone's out for longevity and maximum return on their investment, and the whole thing is masterminded by the Simons Cowell and Fuller (Fuller no doubt learnt a few lessons from managing the mouthy, volatile Spices, who dumped him as their manager at their peak).
Trying to recapture that makes about as much sense as their original fans attempting to be six again. But after years of well-deserved derision at their solo exploits, you can't blame the Spices for coming back for a last taste of glory. And let's face it - their comeback has to be more exciting than the Verve's.
