The Spice Girls are asking fans to share messages and videos on social media with the hashtag IAmASpiceGirl to celebrate a quarter-century since 'Wannabe' was released.
Fans of the '90s will be able to indulge their passion for all things retro as the EP will be available for pre-order on limited-edition vinyl, as well as on cassette from Friday, July The video for Wannabe was shot in the entrance and staircase of the former Midland Grand Hotel in St Pancras, London, and the song went on to sell 1. Overall, the group has sold more than 90 million records worldwide.
The group started out as a five-piece, but became a quartet when Horner quit in May citing exhaustion amid rumours of a falling out with Mel B. Going on hiatus in December , the band reunited in to announce a world tour. They suffered no fools, and took no prisoners. They brought everyone around them to their level," their PR Nicki Chapman once said. For example: When the Spices announced their first reunion tour in , one hapless journalist asked if the band were "unfit to do the dance routines" after having children.
But the absolute gold standard, wheels-falling-off-and-car-crashing-into-a-ditch Spice Girls interview was conducted by Jamie Theakston in Luckily, someone's put it on YouTube. He was also the brother of the Spice Girls' manager Simon - which is how he ended up writing a script for the band's first and so far only feature film, Spice World: The Movie.
I think it was about a young single mother of one of the girls, fighting hardship to form the band. The girls hated the idea, so Kim asked if he could have a shot. The story, such as it is, involves the band preparing for a concert, while dealing with unscrupulous journalists, space aliens and bomb on a bus that mysteriously vanishes.
Frankly, I think we did. Pop stars were often cautious about sponsorship deals. But the Spice Girls had no such qualms. Modern pop artists, starved of income by the economics of streaming, often subsidise their careers by following the Spice Girls' example - but for Simon Fuller, it wasn't about the money.
They're no good at maths. The rest were pretty easy really because the girls' characters were already really strong. Jennifer Cawthron, who was also from Leeds, came up with that one because Mel B was so loud and had tried to take over our whole photo shoot.
By , the band were already coming up with replacements. In private, though, Geri called Mel B The Ox "because I could operate perfectly on the most outrageous hangover - or even do a full performance faultlessly after several bottles of champagne - while she would be throwing up in the loo. The last time all five Spice Girls performed together was at the closing ceremony of the London Olympic Games in The band emerged from, then stood astride, five London black cabs, as they played Wannabe and Spice Up Your Life to rapturous applause.
According to Mel C, they had rehearsed the performance for a week and a half but were still absolutely petrified. Victoria even had a panic attack inside one of the taxis and almost refused to come out. That's how you know a real friend. In fact, shambolic is more like it. But it went perfectly. The Spice Girls' world tour saw them play to 2. In the midst of it all, both Melanie B and Victoria Beckham became pregnant - and went to great lengths to hide it from their crew and fans.
Nobody knew why and we'd have to say, 'We're just getting fat'," Mel B disclosed in the tour retrospective, Forever Spice. Then it got ridiculous because I'd have to have a plastic cup in my room to wee in.
I needed to wee three or four times during the show and the toilets were miles away. Officially, the explanation was that she was suffering from exhaustion. But in her autobiography If Only, the singer said she'd been frustrated that the band had prevented her from giving a TV interview about surviving breast cancer in her teens.
This was about saving lives," she wrote. Ginger Spice was no more. And for Victoria, "there was one big plus - for the first time ever, I got to sing on Wannabe". Relationships were strained for several years, but the band eventually kissed and made up. Geri even apologised for quitting on the final date of the band's reunion tour.
I was just being a brat. It is so good to be back with the girls that I love. According to a definitely-not-made-up story in The Sun in , a teenage Prince William was so besotted with the Spice Girls that he tore down his Pamela Anderson poster and replaced it with one of Emma Bunton. He later popped into the Windsor branch of Our Price and bought a copy of their debut album using a bank note with his grandmother's face on it. It was at that same show where Geri reportedly squeezed the buttocks of the future King of England.
Why am I going to stop at the prince? Their first appearance came on an episode of Cilla Black's Surprise Surprise, a booking they secured by "cornering the show's producer in a toilet and zapping her with an a capella version of Wannabe," Victoria later recalled. They were folded into a segment where a teenage girl called Sally had won the opportunity to present a show on Manchester radio station, Key , and interview a famous band.
She managed to hide her disappointment that it wasn't Boyzone. Current affairs magazine The Spectator was the least likely place to find the Spice Girls in , but when Simon Sebag Montefiore bagged an interview with the quintet, he certainly got his money's worth.
It made headlines everywhere. Ever the diplomat, Geri later walked back her comments. I just admire people with ideals," she wrote in the official Spice Girls book, Girl Power.
Dominating the front pages after the Brit Awards, Geri's most iconic outfit was originally supposed to be a simple black cocktail dress. The star sold the outfit - which had a CND flag on the back - in to raise money for breast cancer charities. No, not the short-lived Spice Girls musical the less said about that the better but the band's eighth single, and the first to be released after Geri left.
The stop-motion video, created by Aardman Animation, had been commissioned five months earlier but its message was eerily prescient. The couple dated for six years, and Mark popped the question in , just after her Spice Girls audition. The other girls quickly helped her realise "it was all a mistake". Eventually, she decided the girls were right and they split up the day after her 21st birthday. Two years later, she met David Beckham, they had their first date in Mel C's flat, and the rest is history.
The video for Wannabe was supposed to be filmed in Barcelona, but when planning permission fell through the group decamped to the then-unused Midland Grand Hotel in London's King's Cross.
We had to bounce through the place singing Wannabe and sweeping away the cobwebs. The all-night shoot was freezing cold. If you look closely, you can see the band's breath turning into condensation when they sing. The temperature had other effects too - the video was banned in some Asian countries because of the prominence of Brown's nipples.
The Spice Girls' cartoonish personas and instantly-catchy singles attracted a broad coalition of fans, notably children, who the music industry had previously considered a small market. TV shows like Fireman Sam and Teletubbies suddenly found themselves in the top 10 too.
It's all Mel B really, really wants to do Horner posted old photos of the group and described "Wannabe" as "the song that changed the lives of five girls from Britain". To mark the occasion, the band has previously announced they would release a limited edition "Wannabe25" EP on Friday, including the original track, the original demo recording, a remix and a demo of previously unreleased ballad "Feed Your Love".
The Spice Girls formed in Horner left in , while the remaining members went their separate ways in
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