March 27, 2025 • 24 mins
Way back in Season 2 of Encore we talked about the United Kingdom’s rich history of introducing some of the most iconic Boy Bands of all time into the world. From The Beatles to Wham! Westlife to One Direction, Pop Music is littered with some fine British Exports.
But of course, that’s really only half the story isn’t it?
Because through all the Boys noise there’s one incomparable group of Girls that rocked the world in the mid-to-late-nineties. Sporty, Scary, Baby, Ginger, and Posh - The Spice Girls!
This is the Story of Spice Girls’ Spice up your Life! With newly unearthed audio from the girls themselves!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Encore the stories behind the songs. Here's I
Heart Radio's Miles Galloway.
Well, way back in season two of Encore, we talked
about the United Kingdom's rich history of introducing some of
the most iconic boy bands of all time into the world.
(00:23):
From the Beatles to Wham, Westlife to One Direction, pop
music is littered with some fine British exports. But of course,
that's really only half the story.
Isn't it? I think it's harder for boys to do
this in a band. I think it's easy because all
they have to do is get their abs out and
all the girls go wild, all the raging hormones, do
you know what I mean? But I mean for, for,
(00:45):
for us, if it, if it, if it was easy,
everybody would be doing it, wouldn't they? Because through all
the boys' noise, there's one incomparable group of girls that
rocked the world in the mid to late 90s, sporty, scary, baby,
ginger and.
Posh, the Spice Girls. This is the story of Spice Girls,
(01:06):
spice up your life. Even though they'd only been in
the public eye for a little over a year, by 1997,
the Spice Girls had proven themselves to be not only
worthy adversaries to the boy band phenomena of the decade,
but true beacons of girl power. The vision is girl power.
Empowerment for women, just going out there having a good time,
(01:29):
having a laugh, doesn't matter what you look like, you've
gotta love yourself however you are, you can improve yourself,
but you're never gonna change it. So love yourself and
love the people around you, and that's what it's all about.
Originally formed in 1994 through open auditions for a father-son
management duo called Heart Management, the Spice Girls grew frustrated
with Heart by 1995 and left for super manager Simon
(01:53):
Fuller's 19 Entertainment.
Here's Mel C breaking it all down in a thick
Lancashire accent for much music. Anyway, one of us went
along to an audition for the girl band.
And um we, we stayed with the management for a
bit but we didn't really get on because we had
our own ideas, we wanted to write our own stuff,
and he wanted a manufactured band. So basically we thought, well,
(02:14):
let's go off, do this thing on our own. So
we left him. Then we got Em on board, and
then the 5 of us, that's when we formed Spice Girls.
We've got a whole load of songs, got our album together,
we managed ourselves for a year, and then we found
a wicked manager, got up, signed a record company, and
the rest is history. After signing with Virgin Records, Spice Girls.
Debut single, Wannabe reached #1 in 37 countries including Canada,
(02:39):
of course, and the debut album it was found on Spice,
was well on its way to selling more than 23
million copies worldwide, making it the best selling album by
a female group in history. That wannabe took us about
5 minutes to write, it was like, wow, pretty mad.
Do you ever have any like thing you disagree on
where you get into argument things, but.
(03:00):
We we're pretty democratic in that way, so it all
gets sorted out in the end. Fun fact, all of
these accolades, by the way, all occurred before the Spice
Girls had even begun touring as a live concert act.
The girls racked up legendary numbers on studio albums and
TV and radio appearances alone. So it was naturally quite
a big deal when the Spice Girls announced their first
(03:21):
ever proper concert in Istanbul, Turkey on October 12th and 13th, 1997.
Presented by Pepsi, the two night event called Girl Power
was to be recorded for British broadcaster ITV for a
special Christmas Day release, and then re-aired in the United
States as a pay per view special a few weeks later,
on January 17, 1998.
(03:44):
Not that they needed the extra publicity or anything, but
the Girl Power concert event would follow quickly on the
heels of the release of the Spice Girls' lead single
off their sophomore album, Spice World. Spice Up Your Life
released just 10 days earlier on October 3rd, was written
by Matt Rowe, Richard Stannard, and the Spice Girls themselves.
With everything happening so fast in and around Spice World,
(04:06):
it's honestly a minor miracle the song was completed.
Roe would tell author David Sinclair for his book Spice
Girls Revisited, it had been booked in that Spice Girls
were coming in to record their next single and write
it with us. It was at Whitfield Street Studios and
there was gonna be an MTV crew there filming them
as they did this, which there was. Well, how on
(04:26):
earth can you possibly do this? You can't write and
record a song in half an hour with a film
crew watching.
And he was right. Sinclair would also write that eventually,
amidst the chaos of label execs and filming crew getting
all up in their space, the record producers tersely ordered
all non-essential personnel out of the studio. Finally, now really
(04:48):
under the gun, the girls managed to finish the song,
going as far to sing the chorus altogether on one
track to expedite the process. One of the reasons Spicer
Your life was so mission critical is because not only
was it gonna serve as the Spice Girls' rapid reintroduction
to their adoring fans as Spice World's lead single on
the radio, the song and the entire Spice World album,
(05:10):
for that matter, was also gonna be doing double duty
as a key marketing tool for the Spice Girls' debut
on the silver screen in Spice World The Movie.
OK, let's take a breather here. Honestly, we've used the
term whirlwind to describe an artist's career or rapid ascent
to the top before here on Encore, but for goodness sakes,
(05:31):
did the Spice Girls find a way to break the
space-time continuum in order to get all of this work done?
Yes, sometime between taking over the world with their girl
power fueled brand of music, the Spice Girls somehow found
the time between June and August of 1997 to film
a major motion picture. I mean, who's the marketing mind
(05:52):
behind all this, like, do you sit
Speaker 2 (05:53):
down
Speaker 1 (05:53):
and decide
Speaker 2 (05:54):
we want this merchandise
to the round table, do you know what I mean?
It's a democracy. Do you know what I mean? We
sit down and, you know, vibe ideas off each other.
you know, on everything we do. I know you sit
there and say, oh, what about doing that? And what
about doing that? You know, and we just think nothing
is impossible. Do you know what I mean? That, what
we've done has just proven that to us, and it
(06:15):
proves it to anybody out there, you know, in whatever industry,
if you wanna, I know there might be a girl
out there at college and thinks, I wanna be the
next fashion designer. People are saying, no, you can't. You know,
you can do anything you wanna do, really.
It's just fear and you know, doubt that says no, really.
And that's what we're about, you can, you know, you
can achieve anything. But it's just it's a frame of mind,
(06:35):
positive attitude.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
A multimedia marketer's dream, Spice World the film was always
intended to be a companion piece to Spice World the album,
and vice versa, with one tiny little detail needing to
be smoothed out. The girls had yet to write or
record any of the music for either.
So yes, you guessed it, all of the writing and
recording of the original music for the film had to
(06:58):
be done simultaneously to shooting. When we were writing Spice,
I mean, it was when we first got together, so
some of the material was like almost 3 years old,
and I think we've grown up a lot, you know,
cause we've done so much traveling, we've been through a
lot as people, and um I just think that's shown
in our writing, we've really matured as artists and as people.
We wrote this during the film. We didn't, we didn't
(07:20):
go right, come on, let's write a song today, we
just wrote it during the film and the film was only,
how long did that last?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
8 weeks and we just really good track
track
track
Speaker 1 (07:30):
track. Can you tell us a little bit about the
track after track after track. Eventually, Spice Up Your Life
and the rest of Spice World, the album was completed
while on set.
An up tempo, Latin inspired pop song, the single was
made for the stadium atmosphere. The aforementioned combined choral vocals
mixed with a bouncy salsa piano riff, transformed the Spice
(07:54):
Girls already anthemic ethos into a full-fledged rallying cry.
To not only embrace your inner girl power, but to
mobilize that power in an effort to, well, spice up
your life. Of course, many critics found Spice Up Your
Life to be less of a song per se, and
more so just a blatant effort in self-promotion, which, to
(08:14):
be fair, the girls did have quite a bit on
their plate to promote.
As critic Tom Ewing would note, Simon Fuller was brutally
overworking them, trying to make Spice World the film and
Spice World the LP at the same time, was Fuller
taking a gigantic risk in quality terms while being meanly
cynically cautious from a marketing perspective, assuming nobody would care
(08:36):
about the girls in 6 months' time, so get the
product out while you can.
Admittedly as fun and assumedly good-natured as the song is,
you can definitely see the sloppiness that Ewing and other
less forgiving critics would find in the lyrics. Among the
mostly harmless empty calorie shout outs to the Latin and
dance culture that the song softly appropriates, flamenco, Lambada, hip
(08:59):
hop is harder, Moonwalk, the foxtrot, then.
Polka the salsa, as the wing would continue, as Spice
Up Your Life falls into a series of mashups, its
music doesn't have the wit to reflect. It isn't about
relationships or confidence or even partying. If it's about anything,
it's about a vision of pop in which every subculture,
(09:20):
every dance style, every race is interchangeably spicy, a world
that's only fun from a brand's point of view, not
a person's.
Speaking of race, there's also a pretty uncomfortable line in
the song that reads, Yellow man in Timbuktu, color for
both me and you. Luckily, with the benefit of hindsight,
the Spice Girls would go on to change the lyrics,
(09:43):
and a source would admit that in the name of inclusivity,
it wasn't something they'd be comfortable singing in the 21st century.
As Jerry Halliwell will tell much, the Spice Girls' message
was always supposed to be inclusivity.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
The
world should respect everybody's differences, whatever race, gender, whether you're gay, black, white, handicapped,
you know, and that way you respected that rather than
feared it, we'd all get along a lot better, I
mean that's a lot do.
You know, we're more than, you know, friends, we, you know,
it goes, it goes a lot stronger than that, which
is nice, and we laugh about everything as well.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Regrettable lyrics aside, history has been kind to spice up
your life, with enemies Elle Hunt looking back fondly on
the haunting harmonies, chaotically.
Plunking piano hooks, even calling the nonsensical bridge the best part. Similarly,
Evening Standard's Luke Abrahams reflecting on the track as an
instant wild, chaotic and nonsensical classic that captured the sheer might,
(10:38):
power and energy of the Spice Girls.
The Spice Girls were gonna need to feed off that
energy for what was to come next. Released first in
the UK on Boxing Day 1997, Spice World the movie
would receive its North American release one month later in
January 198. Here's a rundown of the film if you
haven't had a chance to catch it in the last
27 years.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
So you've been filming this
movie, tell me what it's all about.
What is it all about?
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Well, basically, it's about the Spice Girls.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
But
Speaker 1 (11:04):
um, it's
Speaker 2 (11:05):
a bit
Speaker 1 (11:06):
of,
Speaker 2 (11:06):
well Jerry says this word, but I don't really know
Speaker 1 (11:08):
what
Speaker 2 (11:08):
it
Speaker 1 (11:08):
means,
Speaker 2 (11:08):
but it sounds good. It's a parody of us, which
in terms which I understand a bit more, is it's
a mickey take, so we're taking the mickey out of ourselves.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
But um a lot of the situations that come up
in the film actually have happened do you know what
I mean, but obviously we've elaborated on it and made
things a bit more exciting and stuff.
Would you do it again? Yes, definitely. How about a
week into the film, cos there's so much waiting around
and because we've done a lot of shooting outside, like
because of the weather conditions, we had to like just
wait for the rain to start, wait for this, wait
(11:38):
for that, wait for the sun, wait for the clouds,
wait for the clouds to go. And it was like,
oh God, I really don't wanna do this anymore, just
give me, you know, get me back in the recording studio.
But then once we'd done it and got into it,
it was absolutely brilliant, really good fun.
Making roughly $56 million at the box office, the critically
panned eventual cult favorite still holds the record for the
(12:00):
highest grossing film of all time by a musical group.
I mean, were you guys surprised, surprised it was like
such a huge, huge movie, such a huge success. I
think we were surprised actually, cos, you know, we, when
we were doing it, we were just having fun and
sort of like acting ourselves.
And it was good, it was #2 in America under Titanic,
which we were really, really happy about. So it was
a very pleasant surprise. Spice Up Your Life would make
(12:21):
its live concert debut at the same time the girls
themselves did at the aforementioned concert special in October in Istanbul.
By November of that year, however, Spice Girls would make
an incredibly bold and controversial decision.
On November 7th, the exact same day, the girls would
perform Spice Up Your Life and win Best Group at
the MTV Euros, the Spice Girls would fire Simon Fuller
(12:44):
to begin managing themselves. How much, uh, how much, uh,
decision making, uh, do you guys have? All of it,
cause we, we manage ourselves now. So yeah. Don't don't
you think you need a manager? Don't you think it's time?
No. I mean, we, when we, we started out, we
had a manager and then we didn't have one, and
then we had one again, and now we haven't got
one again. And the thing is we're happier now than
(13:06):
we've ever been and it's, it is harder because we
have to look after ourselves, but it's nice cos we
do we've got helpers, we've got people that help us
and that advise us, but at the end of the day,
we kind of call the shop.
The net on everything and I think that would be
MelC would tell the pinknews.com in 2020 we'd made the
decision that we were gonna leave Simon Fuller, but he
(13:27):
did hold the cards with everything. And had a PA
and she had a Filofax. And Jerry had some secondhand
stitched up old granny bag. Jerry stole the PA's Filofax
because everybody's numbers were in it.
And then we had to go and rehearse for the
MTV Awards doing Spice Up Your Life, and she did
the whole rehearsal. There was a big catwalk and everything.
(13:48):
She did the whole thing with this bag on her shoulder.
According to Victoria Beckham, after firing Fuller, each girl took
charge of one aspect of.
The band's business. Beckham herself took care of their finances.
Mel C looked after their touring. Mel B took lead
on their record label dealings. Emma Bunton spearheaded their charity work,
and Jerry Halliwell was in charge of the brand's sponsorships.
(14:12):
The Spice Girls would finally announce Spice World the tour
to their legion of adoring fans worldwide. Beginning in February
of 1998, the Spice Girls played nearly 100 shows across
the world in less than 9 months.
Including 41 sold out dates here in North America, only
the major markets of Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver were lucky
(14:33):
enough to secure dates with the Spice Girls, and even
those come with a bit of an asterisk, but we'll
get to that in a second. Perhaps prophetically, Jerry Halliwell
explained the sheer pressure of the undertaking to MTV.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Uh, primarily we start with the preview tour. This is
a bit of a taste of what the world tour.
It's gonna be like that. And that is it, the,
the Pepsi Prey tours in Istanbul. We are at the moment,
Spice Girls are in training big time. We're getting up
at the crack of the dawn, you know, obviously you've
got to be physically and mentally fit for to do
(15:05):
something as grueling as, you know, a world tour. You know,
we want to give our best, you know, it's like
when you think back when you were at school, if
only I'd revive.
My exams, I would have got an A instead of
a C, you know, and we're trying to put that
in now, you know, for this world tour and thinking,
I want to give 100% on this because I don't
want to look back and say if I did, you know,
if I didn't give it as much I could've done
1000 times better. So you work so hard, you're gonna
(15:28):
be working so hard. When's your next day off then?
Go on then, working out from today, when is your
next day off? My next day off is next Sunday.
And do you know what you're going to do?
Do you know what I'll probably do on my next
day off? I'll probably have to practice my dance routine,
which will be a gutter privately, cos I'm the worst.
(15:51):
I have to make sure. That's my trauma. I mean
everyone's got their challenges, do you know what I mean,
and like all the others are, you know, trained dancers they,
you know, they've got that, it's a, you know, thing
that you learn through training of picking up routines. So
I have to go in my bedroom and make sure
I've got it.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Being their very first tour under the weight of such
massive expectations and now manager free, it's no surprise that
the tour, while definitely a commercial success, wasn't exactly without scandal.
Now managing all the previous sponsorships and touring commitments themselves,
the understandable cracks in solidarity were starting to show both
personally and professionally for the band, and they were about
(16:29):
to change forever.
Yes, if you're a Spice Girl's head like I am,
you know what comes next. I know I've delayed the
inevitable for long enough.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Today is Thursday, the 28th of May. I'm in Paris
and um yesterday I left Spice Girls permanently.
Um, I thought it'd be really good to basically record,
you know, life after, right from the beginning, um, to see,
you know, what basically happened. Um, so I'm in Paris, um,
(17:03):
with my brother, um, basically trying to hide from the media. Hi, um,
today is Friday. I can't remember twenty-ninth of May. It's
actually Melanie Brown's birthday, ironically, um.
Today I'm feeling really, really anxious and loads of mixed feelings.
(17:24):
Um,
I don't really know what to think so. I feel
quite nervous what the outcome is gonna be.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Between the days of May 27th and May 31st, 1998,
Jerry Halliwell abruptly quit the Spice Girls mid tour. Originally,
the girls didn't believe it and would write off Halliwell's
absence as a mysterious illness for a few days to
the media, but of course that House of Cards could
only stand for so long, especially when, you know, this happened.
(17:54):
This is a message to the fans.
Sadly, I would like to confirm that I have left
the Spice Girls.
This is because of differences between us.
I'm sure the group will continue to be successful, and
I wish them all the best.
I have no immediate plans. I wish to apologize to
(18:14):
all the fans and to thank them and everyone who's
been there.
Lots of love, Jerry. PS I'll be back. Yes, that
was the voice of Jerry's solicitor holding a formal press
conference in an effort to get her version of the
fallout out first.
While all parties insisted at first that the separation was
(18:37):
essentially blameless, a mixture of burnout and creative differences, the
rest of the girls would use coded but not entirely
unflattering language when referring to the situation, as they told
Master T at much. I mean.
You know, everybody says that, you know, we're still getting
on with Jerry, and I mean we still talk, we're
all still friends and you know, whatever she wants to do,
(18:58):
we wish her luck in and we're sure she'll do great,
but we, you know, we still get on well with
her and we do still speak. We haven't seen her
for a long time cos we've been away and she's
busy doing her things, but we're all still mates at
the end of the month. What exactly happened?
I'm not gonna tell you, are we? Come on. I think,
you know, basically what happened is that, you know, Jerry
just decided it was time for her to move on,
(19:20):
you know, she's got lots of other things that she
wants to do, um, you know, but us 4 are
still happy working as a band, so you know, she's
just gone on and done her own thing and we
wish her luck, and that really is what happened. I
think everybody wants to hear a lot of nitty gritty,
but there really wasn't any, and we're still friends and.
But as with most scandals that hit the UK, the
relentless British tabloids eventually scored.
Squeezed out information that there was a major clashing of
(19:42):
heads between Jerry and Mel B. The two fiery Spice
Girls had long taken on de facto leadership roles in
the group, and while very close initially found themselves at
odds constantly, perhaps due to their alpha personalities. Rolling Stone
would even report that one of Melby's issues with Halliwell
was her two left feet, a claim that seems innocuous enough,
(20:04):
but does carry a bit more weight considering Jerry's previous
comments today.
MTV about her not being a good enough dancer. The
final straw for Halliwell, however, was when she had been
booked to tell her story regarding a breast cancer scare
she had at 17. Jerry was very much an advocate
of breast cancer awareness for women of all ages, following
her own experience, and according to Halliwell, even though she
(20:26):
thought the interview was the perfect fit for the Spice
Girls Girl Power mantra, the rest of the Spice Girls
disagreed and got the interview pulled at the last second
without her knowledge.
Of course what Ginger Spice's departure meant for the tour
was that the Spice Girls were now embarking over 5
months of it as a foursome, including the entirety of
their North American leg when they originally plotted it as
(20:49):
a 5 piece. Entire choreography.
sequences, vocal arrangements and staging had to be reset and reorganized,
and the girls even offered refunds to disappointed fans for
their remaining gigs, an offer that according to promoters, not
many fans took them up on. One promoter even boldly
told Rolling Stone, it was never Ginger and the Spice Girls,
(21:10):
it was always the Spice Girls.
Now deep into the tour, and Son's a singer, sporty,
scary baby and Posh would complete the tour with Spice
World going triple platinum in the US and Diamond here
in Canada. Of course, it was never in doubt that
Spice Up Your Life would become a massive hit for
the girls, going to #1 in the UK and #2
(21:30):
here in Canada, perhaps their last truly iconic song from
their original.
Spice Girls would actually release one post, Jerry, but she's
still on the record single off of Spice World, the
awkwardly titled Viva Forever. The song with an already completed
stop motion music video that included an animated ginger spice
was ironically lauded by critics as some of their best work,
(21:53):
even as things were somewhat less than stellar internally.
The girls would then go on to release the solemn
single only track, Goodbye, originally written with Jerry. The song
was reworked without her and made to be about her,
with Mel C admitting, Goodbye was originally about a relationship ending,
but now it's about Jerry, and it's really sad.
The Spice Girls would release one more album without Ginger Spice,
(22:16):
sticking with the Forever theme as its title in the
year 2000. The album was a lackluster record both critically
and commercially and wouldn't even go to number one in
the UK, a first for the Spice Girls. After releasing
a slew of solo projects and starting families, the Spice
Girls themselves seemed most.
uninterested in Forever, released in November, the girls all but
(22:36):
stopped talking about it by December of that year, and
the T's 2001 tour that was meant to accompany the
album never came to fruition. Like many other girl and
boy groups before and after them, Spice Girls go on
a dreaded hiatus very soon after.
After 7 long years of hibernation, Spice Girls, yes, all
5 of them reunited at the 02 Arena to announce
(23:00):
a greatest hits album and the return of the Spice
Girls World Tour. The landmark tour included 17. Yes, you
heard me right, 17 nights at London's 02 Arena.
I'm also happy to report that Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto
finally got their complete Spice Girls experience on the reunion tour.
In fact, Toronto now has a little bit of Spice
(23:22):
Girls lore as the site of the last official concert
appearance of the complete Spice Girls on Tour. With all
the beef squashed from years previous, Spice Girls have remained
beacons of girl power popping up from time to time
to provide the world with capital.
The moments in ways that only they can. Their 2012
medley of wannabe and Spice Up Your Life at the
(23:44):
Summer Olympics in London became the most tweeted about moment
of the games. In 2019, the girls reunited as a
four piece again, but this time it wasn't Ginger Spice
that was staying home. The artist formerly known as Posh Spice,
Victoria Beckham, was unable to commit to the tour due
to her burgeoning fashion business. And in
In 2022, we were all invited to spice up our
(24:05):
lives once more with the reissue of Spice World called
Spice World 25 with an alternate take music video for
Spice Up Your Life. We've even been treated to a
little spice right as this episode is being written. Megastar
Sabrina Carpenter made headlines in March of this year for
Caly arresting and attending Baby Spice, Emma Bunton, who was
(24:25):
in the crowd at her most recent London show.
The crime spicing up her life, of course. I'm Miles Galloway,
and that was my last episode of Encore. Thank you
so much for listening. Over the years, 60 episodes. That
was the story of the Spice Girls, Spice up your life.
Encore is an iHeart Radio Canada podcast. Subscribe to this
(24:47):
podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. Download
the iHeartRadio app for more great podcasts, just like these.
This is Encore the stories behind the songs. Here's I
Heart Radio's Miles Galloway.
Well, way back in season two of Encore, we talked
about the United Kingdom's rich history of introducing some of
the most iconic boy bands of all time into the world.
(00:23):
From the Beatles to Wham, Westlife to One Direction, pop
music is littered with some fine British exports. But of course,
that's really only half the story.
Isn't it? I think it's harder for boys to do
this in a band. I think it's easy because all
they have to do is get their abs out and
all the girls go wild, all the raging hormones, do
you know what I mean? But I mean for, for,
(00:45):
for us, if it, if it, if it was easy,
everybody would be doing it, wouldn't they? Because through all
the boys' noise, there's one incomparable group of girls that
rocked the world in the mid to late 90s, sporty, scary, baby,
ginger and.
Posh, the Spice Girls. This is the story of Spice Girls,
(01:06):
spice up your life. Even though they'd only been in
the public eye for a little over a year, by 1997,
the Spice Girls had proven themselves to be not only
worthy adversaries to the boy band phenomena of the decade,
but true beacons of girl power. The vision is girl power.
Empowerment for women, just going out there having a good time,
(01:29):
having a laugh, doesn't matter what you look like, you've
gotta love yourself however you are, you can improve yourself,
but you're never gonna change it. So love yourself and
love the people around you, and that's what it's all about.
Originally formed in 1994 through open auditions for a father-son
management duo called Heart Management, the Spice Girls grew frustrated
with Heart by 1995 and left for super manager Simon
(01:53):
Fuller's 19 Entertainment.
Here's Mel C breaking it all down in a thick
Lancashire accent for much music. Anyway, one of us went
along to an audition for the girl band.
And um we, we stayed with the management for a
bit but we didn't really get on because we had
our own ideas, we wanted to write our own stuff,
and he wanted a manufactured band. So basically we thought, well,
(02:14):
let's go off, do this thing on our own. So
we left him. Then we got Em on board, and
then the 5 of us, that's when we formed Spice Girls.
We've got a whole load of songs, got our album together,
we managed ourselves for a year, and then we found
a wicked manager, got up, signed a record company, and
the rest is history. After signing with Virgin Records, Spice Girls.
Debut single, Wannabe reached #1 in 37 countries including Canada,
(02:39):
of course, and the debut album it was found on Spice,
was well on its way to selling more than 23
million copies worldwide, making it the best selling album by
a female group in history. That wannabe took us about
5 minutes to write, it was like, wow, pretty mad.
Do you ever have any like thing you disagree on
where you get into argument things, but.
(03:00):
We we're pretty democratic in that way, so it all
gets sorted out in the end. Fun fact, all of
these accolades, by the way, all occurred before the Spice
Girls had even begun touring as a live concert act.
The girls racked up legendary numbers on studio albums and
TV and radio appearances alone. So it was naturally quite
a big deal when the Spice Girls announced their first
(03:21):
ever proper concert in Istanbul, Turkey on October 12th and 13th, 1997.
Presented by Pepsi, the two night event called Girl Power
was to be recorded for British broadcaster ITV for a
special Christmas Day release, and then re-aired in the United
States as a pay per view special a few weeks later,
on January 17, 1998.
(03:44):
Not that they needed the extra publicity or anything, but
the Girl Power concert event would follow quickly on the
heels of the release of the Spice Girls' lead single
off their sophomore album, Spice World. Spice Up Your Life
released just 10 days earlier on October 3rd, was written
by Matt Rowe, Richard Stannard, and the Spice Girls themselves.
With everything happening so fast in and around Spice World,
(04:06):
it's honestly a minor miracle the song was completed.
Roe would tell author David Sinclair for his book Spice
Girls Revisited, it had been booked in that Spice Girls
were coming in to record their next single and write
it with us. It was at Whitfield Street Studios and
there was gonna be an MTV crew there filming them
as they did this, which there was. Well, how on
(04:26):
earth can you possibly do this? You can't write and
record a song in half an hour with a film
crew watching.
And he was right. Sinclair would also write that eventually,
amidst the chaos of label execs and filming crew getting
all up in their space, the record producers tersely ordered
all non-essential personnel out of the studio. Finally, now really
(04:48):
under the gun, the girls managed to finish the song,
going as far to sing the chorus altogether on one
track to expedite the process. One of the reasons Spicer
Your life was so mission critical is because not only
was it gonna serve as the Spice Girls' rapid reintroduction
to their adoring fans as Spice World's lead single on
the radio, the song and the entire Spice World album,
(05:10):
for that matter, was also gonna be doing double duty
as a key marketing tool for the Spice Girls' debut
on the silver screen in Spice World The Movie.
OK, let's take a breather here. Honestly, we've used the
term whirlwind to describe an artist's career or rapid ascent
to the top before here on Encore, but for goodness sakes,
(05:31):
did the Spice Girls find a way to break the
space-time continuum in order to get all of this work done?
Yes, sometime between taking over the world with their girl
power fueled brand of music, the Spice Girls somehow found
the time between June and August of 1997 to film
a major motion picture. I mean, who's the marketing mind
(05:52):
behind all this, like, do you sit
Speaker 2 (05:53):
down
Speaker 1 (05:53):
and decide
Speaker 2 (05:54):
we want this merchandise
to the round table, do you know what I mean?
It's a democracy. Do you know what I mean? We
sit down and, you know, vibe ideas off each other.
you know, on everything we do. I know you sit
there and say, oh, what about doing that? And what
about doing that? You know, and we just think nothing
is impossible. Do you know what I mean? That, what
we've done has just proven that to us, and it
(06:15):
proves it to anybody out there, you know, in whatever industry,
if you wanna, I know there might be a girl
out there at college and thinks, I wanna be the
next fashion designer. People are saying, no, you can't. You know,
you can do anything you wanna do, really.
It's just fear and you know, doubt that says no, really.
And that's what we're about, you can, you know, you
can achieve anything. But it's just it's a frame of mind,
(06:35):
positive attitude.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
A multimedia marketer's dream, Spice World the film was always
intended to be a companion piece to Spice World the album,
and vice versa, with one tiny little detail needing to
be smoothed out. The girls had yet to write or
record any of the music for either.
So yes, you guessed it, all of the writing and
recording of the original music for the film had to
(06:58):
be done simultaneously to shooting. When we were writing Spice,
I mean, it was when we first got together, so
some of the material was like almost 3 years old,
and I think we've grown up a lot, you know,
cause we've done so much traveling, we've been through a
lot as people, and um I just think that's shown
in our writing, we've really matured as artists and as people.
We wrote this during the film. We didn't, we didn't
(07:20):
go right, come on, let's write a song today, we
just wrote it during the film and the film was only,
how long did that last?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
8 weeks and we just really good track
track
track
Speaker 1 (07:30):
track. Can you tell us a little bit about the
track after track after track. Eventually, Spice Up Your Life
and the rest of Spice World, the album was completed
while on set.
An up tempo, Latin inspired pop song, the single was
made for the stadium atmosphere. The aforementioned combined choral vocals
mixed with a bouncy salsa piano riff, transformed the Spice
(07:54):
Girls already anthemic ethos into a full-fledged rallying cry.
To not only embrace your inner girl power, but to
mobilize that power in an effort to, well, spice up
your life. Of course, many critics found Spice Up Your
Life to be less of a song per se, and
more so just a blatant effort in self-promotion, which, to
(08:14):
be fair, the girls did have quite a bit on
their plate to promote.
As critic Tom Ewing would note, Simon Fuller was brutally
overworking them, trying to make Spice World the film and
Spice World the LP at the same time, was Fuller
taking a gigantic risk in quality terms while being meanly
cynically cautious from a marketing perspective, assuming nobody would care
(08:36):
about the girls in 6 months' time, so get the
product out while you can.
Admittedly as fun and assumedly good-natured as the song is,
you can definitely see the sloppiness that Ewing and other
less forgiving critics would find in the lyrics. Among the
mostly harmless empty calorie shout outs to the Latin and
dance culture that the song softly appropriates, flamenco, Lambada, hip
(08:59):
hop is harder, Moonwalk, the foxtrot, then.
Polka the salsa, as the wing would continue, as Spice
Up Your Life falls into a series of mashups, its
music doesn't have the wit to reflect. It isn't about
relationships or confidence or even partying. If it's about anything,
it's about a vision of pop in which every subculture,
(09:20):
every dance style, every race is interchangeably spicy, a world
that's only fun from a brand's point of view, not
a person's.
Speaking of race, there's also a pretty uncomfortable line in
the song that reads, Yellow man in Timbuktu, color for
both me and you. Luckily, with the benefit of hindsight,
the Spice Girls would go on to change the lyrics,
(09:43):
and a source would admit that in the name of inclusivity,
it wasn't something they'd be comfortable singing in the 21st century.
As Jerry Halliwell will tell much, the Spice Girls' message
was always supposed to be inclusivity.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
The
world should respect everybody's differences, whatever race, gender, whether you're gay, black, white, handicapped,
you know, and that way you respected that rather than
feared it, we'd all get along a lot better, I
mean that's a lot do.
You know, we're more than, you know, friends, we, you know,
it goes, it goes a lot stronger than that, which
is nice, and we laugh about everything as well.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Regrettable lyrics aside, history has been kind to spice up
your life, with enemies Elle Hunt looking back fondly on
the haunting harmonies, chaotically.
Plunking piano hooks, even calling the nonsensical bridge the best part. Similarly,
Evening Standard's Luke Abrahams reflecting on the track as an
instant wild, chaotic and nonsensical classic that captured the sheer might,
(10:38):
power and energy of the Spice Girls.
The Spice Girls were gonna need to feed off that
energy for what was to come next. Released first in
the UK on Boxing Day 1997, Spice World the movie
would receive its North American release one month later in
January 198. Here's a rundown of the film if you
haven't had a chance to catch it in the last
27 years.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
So you've been filming this
movie, tell me what it's all about.
What is it all about?
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Well, basically, it's about the Spice Girls.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
But
Speaker 1 (11:04):
um, it's
Speaker 2 (11:05):
a bit
Speaker 1 (11:06):
of,
Speaker 2 (11:06):
well Jerry says this word, but I don't really know
Speaker 1 (11:08):
what
Speaker 2 (11:08):
it
Speaker 1 (11:08):
means,
Speaker 2 (11:08):
but it sounds good. It's a parody of us, which
in terms which I understand a bit more, is it's
a mickey take, so we're taking the mickey out of ourselves.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
But um a lot of the situations that come up
in the film actually have happened do you know what
I mean, but obviously we've elaborated on it and made
things a bit more exciting and stuff.
Would you do it again? Yes, definitely. How about a
week into the film, cos there's so much waiting around
and because we've done a lot of shooting outside, like
because of the weather conditions, we had to like just
wait for the rain to start, wait for this, wait
(11:38):
for that, wait for the sun, wait for the clouds,
wait for the clouds to go. And it was like,
oh God, I really don't wanna do this anymore, just
give me, you know, get me back in the recording studio.
But then once we'd done it and got into it,
it was absolutely brilliant, really good fun.
Making roughly $56 million at the box office, the critically
panned eventual cult favorite still holds the record for the
(12:00):
highest grossing film of all time by a musical group.
I mean, were you guys surprised, surprised it was like
such a huge, huge movie, such a huge success. I
think we were surprised actually, cos, you know, we, when
we were doing it, we were just having fun and
sort of like acting ourselves.
And it was good, it was #2 in America under Titanic,
which we were really, really happy about. So it was
a very pleasant surprise. Spice Up Your Life would make
(12:21):
its live concert debut at the same time the girls
themselves did at the aforementioned concert special in October in Istanbul.
By November of that year, however, Spice Girls would make
an incredibly bold and controversial decision.
On November 7th, the exact same day, the girls would
perform Spice Up Your Life and win Best Group at
the MTV Euros, the Spice Girls would fire Simon Fuller
(12:44):
to begin managing themselves. How much, uh, how much, uh,
decision making, uh, do you guys have? All of it,
cause we, we manage ourselves now. So yeah. Don't don't
you think you need a manager? Don't you think it's time?
No. I mean, we, when we, we started out, we
had a manager and then we didn't have one, and
then we had one again, and now we haven't got
one again. And the thing is we're happier now than
(13:06):
we've ever been and it's, it is harder because we
have to look after ourselves, but it's nice cos we
do we've got helpers, we've got people that help us
and that advise us, but at the end of the day,
we kind of call the shop.
The net on everything and I think that would be
MelC would tell the pinknews.com in 2020 we'd made the
decision that we were gonna leave Simon Fuller, but he
(13:27):
did hold the cards with everything. And had a PA
and she had a Filofax. And Jerry had some secondhand
stitched up old granny bag. Jerry stole the PA's Filofax
because everybody's numbers were in it.
And then we had to go and rehearse for the
MTV Awards doing Spice Up Your Life, and she did
the whole rehearsal. There was a big catwalk and everything.
(13:48):
She did the whole thing with this bag on her shoulder.
According to Victoria Beckham, after firing Fuller, each girl took
charge of one aspect of.
The band's business. Beckham herself took care of their finances.
Mel C looked after their touring. Mel B took lead
on their record label dealings. Emma Bunton spearheaded their charity work,
and Jerry Halliwell was in charge of the brand's sponsorships.
(14:12):
The Spice Girls would finally announce Spice World the tour
to their legion of adoring fans worldwide. Beginning in February
of 1998, the Spice Girls played nearly 100 shows across
the world in less than 9 months.
Including 41 sold out dates here in North America, only
the major markets of Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver were lucky
(14:33):
enough to secure dates with the Spice Girls, and even
those come with a bit of an asterisk, but we'll
get to that in a second. Perhaps prophetically, Jerry Halliwell
explained the sheer pressure of the undertaking to MTV.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Uh, primarily we start with the preview tour. This is
a bit of a taste of what the world tour.
It's gonna be like that. And that is it, the,
the Pepsi Prey tours in Istanbul. We are at the moment,
Spice Girls are in training big time. We're getting up
at the crack of the dawn, you know, obviously you've
got to be physically and mentally fit for to do
(15:05):
something as grueling as, you know, a world tour. You know,
we want to give our best, you know, it's like
when you think back when you were at school, if
only I'd revive.
My exams, I would have got an A instead of
a C, you know, and we're trying to put that
in now, you know, for this world tour and thinking,
I want to give 100% on this because I don't
want to look back and say if I did, you know,
if I didn't give it as much I could've done
1000 times better. So you work so hard, you're gonna
(15:28):
be working so hard. When's your next day off then?
Go on then, working out from today, when is your
next day off? My next day off is next Sunday.
And do you know what you're going to do?
Do you know what I'll probably do on my next
day off? I'll probably have to practice my dance routine,
which will be a gutter privately, cos I'm the worst.
(15:51):
I have to make sure. That's my trauma. I mean
everyone's got their challenges, do you know what I mean,
and like all the others are, you know, trained dancers they,
you know, they've got that, it's a, you know, thing
that you learn through training of picking up routines. So
I have to go in my bedroom and make sure
I've got it.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Being their very first tour under the weight of such
massive expectations and now manager free, it's no surprise that
the tour, while definitely a commercial success, wasn't exactly without scandal.
Now managing all the previous sponsorships and touring commitments themselves,
the understandable cracks in solidarity were starting to show both
personally and professionally for the band, and they were about
(16:29):
to change forever.
Yes, if you're a Spice Girl's head like I am,
you know what comes next. I know I've delayed the
inevitable for long enough.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Today is Thursday, the 28th of May. I'm in Paris
and um yesterday I left Spice Girls permanently.
Um, I thought it'd be really good to basically record,
you know, life after, right from the beginning, um, to see,
you know, what basically happened. Um, so I'm in Paris, um,
(17:03):
with my brother, um, basically trying to hide from the media. Hi, um,
today is Friday. I can't remember twenty-ninth of May. It's
actually Melanie Brown's birthday, ironically, um.
Today I'm feeling really, really anxious and loads of mixed feelings.
(17:24):
Um,
I don't really know what to think so. I feel
quite nervous what the outcome is gonna be.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Between the days of May 27th and May 31st, 1998,
Jerry Halliwell abruptly quit the Spice Girls mid tour. Originally,
the girls didn't believe it and would write off Halliwell's
absence as a mysterious illness for a few days to
the media, but of course that House of Cards could
only stand for so long, especially when, you know, this happened.
(17:54):
This is a message to the fans.
Sadly, I would like to confirm that I have left
the Spice Girls.
This is because of differences between us.
I'm sure the group will continue to be successful, and
I wish them all the best.
I have no immediate plans. I wish to apologize to
(18:14):
all the fans and to thank them and everyone who's
been there.
Lots of love, Jerry. PS I'll be back. Yes, that
was the voice of Jerry's solicitor holding a formal press
conference in an effort to get her version of the
fallout out first.
While all parties insisted at first that the separation was
(18:37):
essentially blameless, a mixture of burnout and creative differences, the
rest of the girls would use coded but not entirely
unflattering language when referring to the situation, as they told
Master T at much. I mean.
You know, everybody says that, you know, we're still getting
on with Jerry, and I mean we still talk, we're
all still friends and you know, whatever she wants to do,
(18:58):
we wish her luck in and we're sure she'll do great,
but we, you know, we still get on well with
her and we do still speak. We haven't seen her
for a long time cos we've been away and she's
busy doing her things, but we're all still mates at
the end of the month. What exactly happened?
I'm not gonna tell you, are we? Come on. I think,
you know, basically what happened is that, you know, Jerry
just decided it was time for her to move on,
(19:20):
you know, she's got lots of other things that she
wants to do, um, you know, but us 4 are
still happy working as a band, so you know, she's
just gone on and done her own thing and we
wish her luck, and that really is what happened. I
think everybody wants to hear a lot of nitty gritty,
but there really wasn't any, and we're still friends and.
But as with most scandals that hit the UK, the
relentless British tabloids eventually scored.
Squeezed out information that there was a major clashing of
(19:42):
heads between Jerry and Mel B. The two fiery Spice
Girls had long taken on de facto leadership roles in
the group, and while very close initially found themselves at
odds constantly, perhaps due to their alpha personalities. Rolling Stone
would even report that one of Melby's issues with Halliwell
was her two left feet, a claim that seems innocuous enough,
(20:04):
but does carry a bit more weight considering Jerry's previous
comments today.
MTV about her not being a good enough dancer. The
final straw for Halliwell, however, was when she had been
booked to tell her story regarding a breast cancer scare
she had at 17. Jerry was very much an advocate
of breast cancer awareness for women of all ages, following
her own experience, and according to Halliwell, even though she
(20:26):
thought the interview was the perfect fit for the Spice
Girls Girl Power mantra, the rest of the Spice Girls
disagreed and got the interview pulled at the last second
without her knowledge.
Of course what Ginger Spice's departure meant for the tour
was that the Spice Girls were now embarking over 5
months of it as a foursome, including the entirety of
their North American leg when they originally plotted it as
(20:49):
a 5 piece. Entire choreography.
sequences, vocal arrangements and staging had to be reset and reorganized,
and the girls even offered refunds to disappointed fans for
their remaining gigs, an offer that according to promoters, not
many fans took them up on. One promoter even boldly
told Rolling Stone, it was never Ginger and the Spice Girls,
(21:10):
it was always the Spice Girls.
Now deep into the tour, and Son's a singer, sporty,
scary baby and Posh would complete the tour with Spice
World going triple platinum in the US and Diamond here
in Canada. Of course, it was never in doubt that
Spice Up Your Life would become a massive hit for
the girls, going to #1 in the UK and #2
(21:30):
here in Canada, perhaps their last truly iconic song from
their original.
Spice Girls would actually release one post, Jerry, but she's
still on the record single off of Spice World, the
awkwardly titled Viva Forever. The song with an already completed
stop motion music video that included an animated ginger spice
was ironically lauded by critics as some of their best work,
(21:53):
even as things were somewhat less than stellar internally.
The girls would then go on to release the solemn
single only track, Goodbye, originally written with Jerry. The song
was reworked without her and made to be about her,
with Mel C admitting, Goodbye was originally about a relationship ending,
but now it's about Jerry, and it's really sad.
The Spice Girls would release one more album without Ginger Spice,
(22:16):
sticking with the Forever theme as its title in the
year 2000. The album was a lackluster record both critically
and commercially and wouldn't even go to number one in
the UK, a first for the Spice Girls. After releasing
a slew of solo projects and starting families, the Spice
Girls themselves seemed most.
uninterested in Forever, released in November, the girls all but
(22:36):
stopped talking about it by December of that year, and
the T's 2001 tour that was meant to accompany the
album never came to fruition. Like many other girl and
boy groups before and after them, Spice Girls go on
a dreaded hiatus very soon after.
After 7 long years of hibernation, Spice Girls, yes, all
5 of them reunited at the 02 Arena to announce
(23:00):
a greatest hits album and the return of the Spice
Girls World Tour. The landmark tour included 17. Yes, you
heard me right, 17 nights at London's 02 Arena.
I'm also happy to report that Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto
finally got their complete Spice Girls experience on the reunion tour.
In fact, Toronto now has a little bit of Spice
(23:22):
Girls lore as the site of the last official concert
appearance of the complete Spice Girls on Tour. With all
the beef squashed from years previous, Spice Girls have remained
beacons of girl power popping up from time to time
to provide the world with capital.
The moments in ways that only they can. Their 2012
medley of wannabe and Spice Up Your Life at the
(23:44):
Summer Olympics in London became the most tweeted about moment
of the games. In 2019, the girls reunited as a
four piece again, but this time it wasn't Ginger Spice
that was staying home. The artist formerly known as Posh Spice,
Victoria Beckham, was unable to commit to the tour due
to her burgeoning fashion business. And in
In 2022, we were all invited to spice up our
(24:05):
lives once more with the reissue of Spice World called
Spice World 25 with an alternate take music video for
Spice Up Your Life. We've even been treated to a
little spice right as this episode is being written. Megastar
Sabrina Carpenter made headlines in March of this year for
Caly arresting and attending Baby Spice, Emma Bunton, who was
(24:25):
in the crowd at her most recent London show.
The crime spicing up her life, of course. I'm Miles Galloway,
and that was my last episode of Encore. Thank you
so much for listening. Over the years, 60 episodes. That
was the story of the Spice Girls, Spice up your life.
Encore is an iHeart Radio Canada podcast. Subscribe to this
(24:47):
podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. Download
the iHeartRadio app for more great podcasts, just like these.
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.