The Spice Girls' 'Spice': Everything You Didn't Know

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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret history and little known fascinating facts behind your favorite music, movies, TV shows, and more. We're two guys with too much free time on our hands. My name is Jordan run Tug and I'm Alex Hegel, and today we're talking about the Spice Girls debut album Spice, which was released in the US twenty five years ago this year. That's incredible. I can't believe it's been that long. I felt every year. Now I'm gonna go out on a limb high gol and guess that you were not the world's biggest Spice Girls fan. And it's not because I had like any particularly advanced taste in pop culture at the time. I mean, I like listen to the Casey case on Top forty Countdown on Sundays. I like still taping stuff off the modern rock radio like I was not. That's adorable, but you know, it's dumbers. The first CD I ever bought, which I think must have been this year with my own money, was Eagle Eye Cherries Debut because I liked Save Tonight. So no, I'm not coming from a position of like authority or a high moral value on this. My sister is four years younger than me, so she was like very much the target audience, and I just remember having it in our household constantly, and also like every girl in my elementary school like running around and like throwing the peace sign in my face and screaming girl power. So that's my memory of the Spice Girls. So fair to middling, I would say, all right, I really enjoyed the Spice Giles because I was and am a huge Beatles fan, and I really thought it captured that whole energy of you know, just fun being in a gang with your friends. It felt very just very up. I liked how sort of effervescent it all felt and catchy. I mean the songs were really good too. I mean, yeah, this song's bang are still really good and it's interesting. I mean, you did mention the whole like girl power thing at the time. I mean, granted was what ten When this album came out, it felt like I wasn't allowed to openly like it, and I deeply regret feeling that way now, because I mean, these songs for everybody much in the same way that feminism should be something that everybody participates in. Well, I think this is sort of the first time. First time I remember like feminism coming into the conversation in pop culture in such a like concentrated way as part of something that was so otherwise like frothy. And I don't know, man, if you get like a bunch of teen girls being like girl power, it's a great thing. Um the sort of machiavellian put together aspects of this or maybe another part of it. But you know, let's not put the card ahead of the spice here. Do you have a favorite spice girl? It's probably posh really yeah, I just yeah, I mean Victoria Beckham's cheekbones. Man, I don't know, I so pretty lady, role pretty lady. My favorite spice girl was Jerry because she reminded me of my first love, who was mad Line, the little French orphan, the animated character. Have we not wow? Judging from your your seeming the genuine laugh. Maybe I've never told you this. I think you have told me that before. But I don't understand the connection between like it was purely the red hair thing and I my first actual real life you know, human being crushed looked a lot like mad Line and Jerry, And yeah, I was in fifth grade. I went out during recess and picked her flowers that I left on her desk, and I got poisoned from doing that. And also she wasn't impressed in any way because I didn't knock the dirt off of it, since she came back in from recess and it was just a clump of weeds and dirt on her desk, and I think she was upset. And then the next day my hand swelled up, and I've pretty much been just re enacting that scene in various relationships for the last twenty five years. Good lord, all right, well, folks, with all that in mind, keep listening to find out what zig zigga actually means, Margaret Thatcher's surprise influence on the legacy of girl power, and how Baby Spice almost died during this say You'll Be their video shoot. Here's everything you didn't know about the Spice Girls first album, Spice. The Spice Girl's phenomenon began with a classified ad in a London trade magazine called The Stage. The listing read wanted are you just the letters? Are you? Are you twenty three with the ability to sing slash dance. Are you streetwise, outgoing, ambitious and dedicated. Heart Management Limited are a widely successful music industry management consortium currently forming a choreographed singing slash dancing all female pop act for a recording deal. Open audition March four, Please bring sheet music or back in cassettes. First of all, Prince write that what is the R? Why would you spell out are you? And then put all of those other large words in there if you're paying by the line for a classified So Heart Management not a consortium. Three guys, a financier by the name of Chic Murphy, and then a father and son duo Chris and Bob Herbert. Chris Herbert, in the grand tradition of money men becoming personality wranglers, was an accountant and then got involved in the music industry. In he took a liking Wikipedia quote to twin friends of his son Chris, and attempted to market a group that he pitched as the eighties answer to the Bay City Rollers. That did not take apparently, and by the nineties they are putting together the Spice Girls. This classified ad drew over four hundred women to this audition, and they were split into groups of ten, and first they were asked to perform a dance routine to the song Stay by the group Eternal, which really like a Spice Girls song. It does, Oh, it very much does. Yes, they definitely had the sound in mind. And then they had solo auditions where all of the hopeful sung a song of their choice. Melby at her Spice Girls auditions saying Whitney Houston's the Greatest Love of All. Melsie sung the Pointer Sister's classic I'm So Excited, also very good. Victoria Beckham sang Mine Hair from the musical Cabaret because she had a background in musical theater. Uh, god damn posh even then, good lord um. And so the four hundred odd women were narrowed down to I say odd, I meant like, not exactly four hundred. Not that they were strange people. They might have been. Maybe they might have been. I don't know. Uh. They were narrowed down to about twelve before a final audition. Interestingly, Jerry Hollowell missed the original audition, and there are conflicting reasons as to why. The two most reported accounts so that she was working and unable to make the appointment and the other was that she had returned home from vacation in Spain and was too sunburned to attend, which I mean, that's the thing about you know, Ginger's burn. That's so that could be real. Jerry gave an interview to Marie Claire where she explained that she missed this audition because she was in Spain, not being sunburned, but visiting her grandmother. Kind of yeah, very nice. She returned to the UK and decided to ring the Herbert's to see if they were still looking for somebody for this group they're putting together. It turns out they were, and she got a chance to audition and got the gig. And Jerry wasn't the only Spice Girl who missed the audition. Melsey also was sort of a late arrival because she had tonsil itis and missed one of the early rounds of the auditions. And then she basically called them and begged them and said, look, I can't even talk little one sink and we wait, and the management said, at I'm sorry. You know, we we We've got everybody we need. And then I guess a couple of weeks later, one of the girls hadn't worked out and they called her back to come on do another round of auditions, and their performance obviously impressed the management group because they invited to join. And that wasn't the only near miss for the Spice Girls lineup that we know and love. Yeah, the Lost Spice Girl It should be just like the title of its own seventeen part podcast. So the five girls who were initially chosen as part of the lineup moved into a house together in Maidenhead. I love this call out you put in Headley Grange, the haunted former workhouse that was the rehearsal choice for the seventies Rock Dinosaurs was not available at the time, nor was Mick Jaggers Baronial Estate Star Groves. Um. I love how these managed people just throw their you know, they're putting a group together and they it's almost like boot camp. I think Luke Pearlman did that with with in Sync. I think he had them living in like a barracks at his house in Orlando or something. And do they do that with like K pop groups too? Dude? I would I ever tell you my BTS story? No, When I was at people, like right before BTS became like the world conquering phenomenon. They were definitely on the upswing. They were very much known quantity, and they were huge. They came to people. What did I miss this? I think so um. But they were marched into one of the conference rooms looking drawn and emaciated and like they had just been on a forced march here from Korea. And they got a bunch of like Korean take out, which seemed to be the only joy in their day. And I was not allowed in the room while they were like eating or pre hanging out. And then they come back out made up in their clothes and just on like mugging and laughing and like just camera ready. But that was the starkest transition I have ever seen in any celebrity of just going I'm like I want to die, and my body is reflecting that too. Here is my like one hundred watt star power just on the turn, like over the course of an hour. It must have been really good Korean food. Um. Anyway, the girls who are put in this pressure cookare environment. Emma Button is not among them. Instead, there was a seventeen year old day Michelle Stephenson, who left voluntarily. But the story behind that is somewhat murky. Some say she was fired, uh classic Beck's sound bite. She would later claim that Stephenson was fired because she just couldn't be arst to put in the same amount of work as the rest of the girls. But Stevenson is adamant that she left to look after her mom, who had been diagnosed with lung cancer. And if you take a quick look at the where Are They Now file, she said that she has no regrets about leaving those Spice Girls, and she went on to become a tele Asian producer, television presenter, I'm sorry, and then she started working as session singer and doing songwriting work. She's been a backing singer for Ricky Martin and do Iglesias. So yeah, she's still in the industry. She apparently has no regrets hashtag no regrets. Enter Emma Bunton, recommended by the girl's singing teacher. But she actually had a bit of history with Bes with Victoria, and this is interesting. They all kind of knew each other and this is a really fascinating bit of apocrypha. Male b and Jerry Halliwell apparently meant on an audition for the movie Tank Girl, which is that utterly insane movies starring Lori Petty. Have you seen Tank Girl? Years and years? My main Lori Petty Association is a league of their own where she was kit or Gina Davis's sister. She isn't that right? But yeah, I forget most of Tank Girl. That movie's wacky. So imagining one of the Spice Girls and it is even wackier. But um yeah, so Emma was shooting to become an actress. Spice worlds so pretty wack you have to say, yeah, that's true. So they all shared a small terraced house in the London suburb of Maidenhead, and speaking to The Guardian in twenty nineteen, Emma Button gave us a little view into the life of the Spice house. Melsie and Jerry were in charge of taking out the bins and she was on cooking duty, and she said, I used to make beans on toast for everyone, while Melby used to cook corned beef and rice because British food is disgusting. Hearing you read all these British isms is giving me so much joy, especially because I'm a huge anglophile and you not so much. Not so much. It cuts off right around Eric Clapton. Do you like British food? Does your angle behind? Well, I don't. I mean chicken pop pies great, cheppers pies great, they make good Bland curry for my weak stomach. They're candy rules, British candies the best candy. British sweets are the best sweets. Wow, Willy Wonka is a real story. Yeah, I'm just gonna keep trying to stump you by saying like baffling things that you then have to edit around. Another fun inside look into the Spice House um hashtag spice House Baby Spice is apparently frightened of large things, which is a deeper bizarre factoid. But there's a Rolling Stone cover story in the Band in July by Chris Heath. Incredible story. Incredible. It's more for what's included than what's left out. As like a hagiographical work. He says this of babies of Emma Button she can't look at an airplane close up. She thinks it might stem from when she visited the Center of London as a little girl and saw a gigantic model of King Kong on the side of the building. One thing she very much wants to do while in New York is avoid seeing the Statue of Liberty. I think she'd scare me. Ma says she might fall on me. Ah, good lord, what is that? Is bizarre? Anyway, Apparently, as far as I know, scary Spice is not scared of not scary things, Posh Spice is uh not scared of tacky things, sporty Spice is not scared of inactivity, and ginger Spice is not afraid of what's the opposite of ginger mayonnaise. I don't know, some kind of British food. Surely, uh continue, uh now this is really mind blowing to me. The group We're not originally called the Spice Girls. Early in the group's development, they were known as Touch. Just actually has that name been taken? Since that's a good group name, Touch for the kind of music they're doing for pop group, that's a good pop group name. So yeah, Early in the group's development they were known as Touch, but then they became known as simply Spice. But then they ultimately added the girls part. And there are two reason sided for this. One is that there's an American rapper who went by the name Spice, so they changed their name to avoid the confusion and the other stories at the industry. Inside it was just referred to the group kind of dismissively as the Spice Girls, and the name just stuck. I just want to get into a quick aside about the rapper Spice. He's a Californian man named Robert Lee Green Jr. And he went by Spice one, with Spice being an acronym for sex, pistols, indo cash and entertainment, which rules uh. He started putting out music in two It was apparently Buddies with Tupac and was on the last song that Tupac recorded before being shot. Spice was also shot in two thousand seven, just sitting outside his parents house, but he has since recovered. You know who hasn't been shot any of the members of the Spice Girls. This is kind of an amazing badass story about I mean that that they were really were living girl power. They got out of the really terrible management contract by stealing their demos from their office and literally skipping town. So you know, as we talked about earlier, the band was put together by the father's son team Bob and Chris Herbert Heart Management, but the situation really backfired for them, and they were basically sort of destroyed by their own Frankenstein monster hoisted by their own petard, if you will. The girls and the Spice Girls disagreed with the material that they were being asked to sing the stuff they're being told to where who should sing lead? Because I guess in the early days they wanted the band to have like kind of the opposite of what they became a uniform look. Everybody was supposed to wear the same, like basically Adidas track suits and stuff, which is so weird because the opposite happened. They all kind of became known for their distinct individual personalities. So the group were really dissatisfied that their management and the split came in October, and the reasons for this very The Spice Girls claim it was because management were forcing them to sign what they thought was really on uptable contract, and the soon to be X management team claimed it was because they were planning to throw out one of the five Spice Girls and the intended victim knew it and uh, the Spice Girl that was about to get the axe basically played on the loyalty of her fellow Spice Girls and said, let's get out of this and just kind of amazing that they didn't say who it was that they wanted to. I was gonna say, who do you think it was? I don't know. The most information that they gave was they said that she was a strong enough character to persuade the other girls to leave the management contract. And they also said, kind of catale, you always find the least talented is the biggest danger in the group. I mean, based on that, no shade, but I kind of think it's Posh. I can't see her as staging a you know, fast a walkout and a heist, like stealing their their demo masters. I don't know, well, because Posh didn't sing live right and she was like, I'm not the best singer in the group, and if I remember correctly, she was no great shakes as a dancer either, so all she had with those cheekbones and apparently I'm cutting way with a SoundBite, So, um, I don't know. That's interesting. That's a real one for conjecture. Yeah, so we don't know who was going to be the spice girl that was supposedly going to get the ax. But Jerry, Melcy and mel B paid a visit to Heart management's offices where they absconded with the master recordings. I don't even know if that's the right use of the word absconded, but we're leaving that kidnapped, kidnapped, stole. We'll just go with stole the demo recordings for the songs they had written so far, including Wannabe. And they met up with the rest of the Spice Girls at the side of the road and drove up north. I mean, this is a full on heist here, uh, and the Son of a Bitch I'm in yeah, I mean, this is the real Oceans eight here. This is like, it's pretty incredible. And then they so they drove up north where they booked their own sessions with some songwriters, negotiated new management deal with Simon Fuller, who basically is the king of British pop in the nineties. He created pop Idol, which became American Idol in this country, X Factor. He signed Madonna, Chrysalis, when Yeah, when he's an A and R guy, I didn't really signed when he signed signed on holiday, I did not realize that. Wow. So they kind of they basically bought their way to freedom. They paid off the original managers and signed with Simon Fuller. Simon was persuaded to sign the group to his management company after hearing one of the demos, and amazingly, it wasn't want to be or say you'll be there, or to become one. It was the more low key R and B song, something kind of Funny, which is kind of more of a deep cut. That was the song that he really thought had hit potential. Yeah, no, it's kind of a deep cut. The girls celebrated their record deal by throwing Posh Spice's panties out of a taxi window, as one does. They talked about this, Uh, I think it was an article in the Guardian. Yeah, they were so excited when they were signed with Virgin Records that they tore victorious knickers off this is a quote and through them out a taxi window. And speaking of the Spice Girls underwear, the quintet had a real sort of novel use for their knickers, as it were. In the aforementioned interview with Rolling Stone, in they revealed that they often didn't use scrunch ees to tie up their hair. Instead they used their underwear, which was a trend apparently inspired by mal b h. The girls revealed in this interview that they used a G string that was their favorite because there was less material to get in the way of tying it. Um, probably, we'll get us out of here. What's the next guy? We got good, lord, let's get We're in the weeds here. We gotta get out of here. Uh. Well, you can't talk about the Spice Girls without talking about their nicknames. And none of them came up with this or anyone involved that wasn't part of the original structure of the group. Those incredible and after signing with Simon follow they were interviewed by Peter Lorraine for Top of the Pops magazine and this was I remember these articles everywhere in the nineties like teen Beat Tiger read these guides to the Spice Girls, and you would get every single pop group had one. You had, like their favorite food, their nickname for their dog and anyway. So he said, we thought we could make up some stupid names for them, but it was never quote from him, by the way, Yeah, that was quote. Sorry, that's Lorraine's quote. We thought we could make up some stupid names, but it was never meant to be adopted globally. They were going to call one of them old Spice just hilarious, but he declined to mention who Yeah. Jennifer Cotherrne, one of the magazine's staff writers, explained how the nicknames were chosen. She said, and I quote, Victoria was posh Spice because she was wearing Gucci style mini dresses and seemed powdy and reserved. Emma wore pigtails and to lollipop, so obviously she was baby Spice. Melci spent the whole time leaping around in her track suit, so we called her sporty Spice. I named Melby scary Spice because she was so shouty, and Jerry was ginger Spice simply because of her hair. Not much thought went into that one, or any of them. Really, Baby Spice does not sit well with me anyway. So Top of the Pops publishes this article with an illustration of a spice rack and lo and behold, a legend is minted. What do you what do you say about this? Nicknames? Man? Um pretty rough? Uh? Sexy baby? Yeah? The only black one's nickname is scary Yeah. That that's the one that really because she was shouty. Good lord, British people, man, all right, moving on uh please tweeted that's using the hashtag sexy baby. Um. You mentioned this earlier, but it's ironic that they that the whole part of this brand is every single one having such a distinct personality, because originally they were pitched as like sort of like the uniformly dressed group. You bring this up the early shots of the Beatles all in the matching suits. Uh. And as recently seen, Jerry was talking about this, she told Marie Claire, we bought tight white vintage Adidas T shirts for everyone in the band because when you're in a band, you should all look the same, right, she says. We wore them at our first ever performance for our family and friends and a community center in Finchley neighborhood and hear the bile was rising at your throat the British names still, all the all the neighborhood names are so funny to me. Uh. It quickly became obvious that Victoria and Emma weren't exactly comfortable in the T shirts we'd picked out. It was also obvious that the only way forward was to celebrate our individuality and let everyone be herself. So we did yes, and that really this starts to get to the heart of girl power. The Spice Girls, they really started out a sort of the female answer to all the boy bands who had been cluttering up the charts. I mean, the new kids on the block and what have you. And this was pre Backstreet Boys and in Sync. But who are the other boy groups around this time? Boys? Two men would probably be, but they were actually yeah, I mean they're like I think they were marketed as such, like all wearing like the big baggy sweaters and like that kind of thing. But would have been new kids would have been the biggest phenomenon at the time, right, Yeah, maybe new addition, although that was probably a little a little further back than that. But uh. But so the Spice Girls were kind of marketed as sort of an answer to these boy bands, and the idea seems really obvious now, But when They're pr first started toting this group around the team magazines, no one was interested. And the rationale was that girls don't want to see girls in hands, they want to see good looking boys to pin up on their walls, which is an insanely reductive approach to how people appreciate music. And the magazines were wrong, as it happens. And this was due not just because of the quality the songs, which are so great, but also, it has to be said, because of the whole message of girl power, which was such an instrumental part of the group's image, uh and just something that cropped up in all the interviews they gave. It was just a big part of their story. And it's difficult to imagine this now, but five women in a band sharing equal vocals and songwriting credits. This was a novel concept in the mid nineties. And obviously they were manufactured, you know, in quotes to some degree. But the Spice Girls were the quintessential girl gang. You know. They were working class women projecting individualism and spreading the word about feminism that was understandable and palatable to their teenage fans. And the Spice was particular approach to girl power was seen as the sort of boisterous, independ and sex positive response to something called lad culture, which is more of a British thing. It didn't really make it too much over into the States. If you aren't familiar, right, it's like it's like the notion of like it's like meathead, like loudish. I mean, think you on Liam Gallagher, like whacking themselves with guitars like cricket bats and then dumping points of beer over each other's heads. I mean, that's that's lad culture and the Spice girls, you know, saying about putting their friends before boyfriends, and about having confidence in yourself and not letting people put them down, and kind of most importantly, they seem to just be having a blast. I mean, I mentioned this at the start of the episode. I mean, it was that whole thing that the Beatles sort of embodied. Where did they just look like they were having the time of their lives whatever they were doing, they were just at like the top of their game and everything. They were just on the buzz of their fame, and it just seemed like they were really enjoying themselves and that was just so infectious. And you know, I'm mean, obviously, there have been critics, especially at the time, who dismissed Girl Power as basically a shallow marketing tactic, and you know, went even further and accused the group of commercializing feminism, as you know, as a way to sell records. But to a generation of young women at the time, that message stuck, and you know, it was the first step in a lot of people's education towards feminism. I didn't realize this, uh Hallowell said that she didn't come across the term girl power until the single by Shampoo. And this is funny to a week before Wannabe hits the charts. This band Shampoo has a single come out called girl power, and they were They were eclipsed by those who they by those they spawned. Yeah. I think the whole girl power slogan I think you're out of like the riot girl movement, and I think was first coined by Bikini Kill. It was interesting. The late feminist writer Kathy Acker interviewed the Spice Girls for The Guardian, and early on in her Peace, she summed up the period feminism, especially to female intellectuals, had become extinct. Where of all the women gone to? She asked? Then came a twist named the Spice Girls. The Spices, though they deny it, are babes, the blonde, the redhead, the dark, sultry fashion model, and they're more. They both are and represent a voice that has too long been repressed. The voices not really the voice of young women, and just as important, of women not from the educated classes. The Spice Girls and girls like them and the girls who liked them resemble their American counterparts in two ways. They're sexually curious, certainly pro sects, and they do not feel that they are stupid or that they should not be heard because they didn't attend the right universities. If any of the speculation is valid, then it is up to feminism to grow, to take on what the Spice Girls and women like them are saying, and to do what feminism has always done in England, to keep on transforming society as society is best transformed with lightness and enjoy. That's a great quote, it is. Yeah, it's a great piece. That's Kathy Acker in The Guardian. A google and check it out. It's a really great article. Alright, so Jordan's in their own words, what was girl powder to the Spice Girls? Yes, there was an interview also from nine, also in the Guardian by Cheryl Garratt I think her name is, where she asked each of the Spice Girls what their definition of girl power is and Victoria said, it's looking at yourself in the mirror and saying this is me. I'm going to make the best of it. I'm going to have fun. I'm going to have a positive attitude and not going to be dominated by anyone, especially not men. We're up for equality for having a laugh. Melby says, it's giving yourself that little bit of liberation. If you want to stand up and go arg then do it. You decide the kind of life you want to lead, whether you're black, white, gay, single parent, whatever, just go for it. I don't think I even realized the class component to the Spice Girls. I actually really like that definitely as a really interesting nuance to it. Mel C said this, there is a new attitude. Girls are taking control. If you want to wear a short skirt, then you go on and wear it. You should wear what you want. It's worth noting that Melc also has a girl power tattoo or words of that effect. She's a tattoo and her upper right arm, and it's two Japanese symbols women and strength, So girl power. In other words, what did Jerry say about girl power? None of us are conventional beauties which come on and in a way and in a way that's really inspiring for girls because it shows you don't have to be gorgeous to be up there doing it. That's the one that rings the falsest to me. I mean, we're two straight white guys. I'm not really going to weigh in on their definition of feminism, but calling none of the Spice Girls conventional beauties feels like a stretch to me. And finally, Emma says, the message we're putting across is we're doing it girls. So can you even if you have to shout a bit louder barge through all these people, then do it. And you know, there are all these jokes at the time when the Spice Girls came out that oh you know, it took a boardroom full of male music executives and marketing gurus to come up with the concept of girl power. And that's not true. I mean it. As you mentioned earlier, this was a slogan that grew out of the riot girl movement and it was initially coined by the US punk band Bikini Kill. I wonder if favorite cross paths gonna guess no, yeah, the Spice Girls come in and hit Olympia Washington, the d i y circuit. As you meditate on that, we'll be right back with more too much information after these messages, you know, who was a who the Spice Girls cited as a pioneer of girl power. Highel who Jordan's Margaret Thatcher first female prime minister. I guess when you view it with that single fact to oid first female prime minister of England, that's pretty cool. But then when you dive in much more, uh yeah, I mean, what's the reader's digest version of Margaret Thatcher. She destroyed the mining unions in Wales, in Scotland, she got architect of the Falklands War. Whatever. Please read this so that I can choke down my bile. Yes. There was an interview that the Spice Girls gave to a what's traditionally seen as a right wing magazine called The Spectator just after their first album came out. When the Spicycles were asked about conservative ex Prime Minister Argret Thatcher and Ginger Spice proudly announced, we Spice Girls are true. Thatcher rights. That's the quote. She went on to suggests that Thatcher still a pretty, I can't even say a divisive figure, a figure pretty much of scorn of most of the youth of Britain at this time. Jerry called her the original Spice Girl. The pioneer of her ideology girl power. Uh posh. I guess weighed in on this too. We met Tony Blair. His hair is all right, but we don't agree with this tax policies. Um. This was like a whole miniature scandal all the time about the Spice Girls being uh conservatives and although sport. He later said in a different interview, and this is her quote, I think Thatcher is a complete prick. So my favorite quote on Margaret Thatcher of all time is this a comedian named Frankie Boyle. He was talking about the funeral for Margaret Thatcher and how much it cost three million pounds and he said, three million for the funeral of Margaret Thatcher. For three million, you could give everyone in Scotland to shovel and we could dig a hole so deep we could hand her over to Satan in person. I love Frankie bole So I mean, when when this whole interview with this conservative magazine came out, the news papers went absolutely nuts, and the Spice Girls were on the front page of all these British tabloids and there were articles for weeks in every newspaper debating the significance of the Spice girls political positions, and three of the Spice Girls had very divergent views. Melcy was labor which is like democrats here, Melby described herself as an anarchist and how much Emma Goldman did you read Melby like talk to me about your oh my god, and Emma has declared herself uninterested in politics. But yeah, the message that was picked up was that the Spice Girls were basically a conservative trojan horse and this was like discussed on the floor of Parliament. They became known as the Spice Vote, which was basically became as much of an issue in the British election in as like the soccer mom's vote had been in America. And uh, on May one, Britain elected Tony Blair as a new Prime minister by a landslide, and after all that, none of the Spice schools voted. That's truly the perfect capstone to this. Well, speaking of toilets, uh, one of the most famous bits of the Spice Girl's lore may have been inspired by Melby's trip to the toilet. Well, that's right, I'm talking about the phrase zig zig ah okay, so wanna be you know, the opening riff to that is inspired by Summer Nights in Greece Bam Bama Bay, the guy named with the tremendously British name of Richard Biff Stannard and his musical collaborator Matt Rowe, written under an hour group received writing credits on it, so was a collaborative work. Halliwell in particular inspired a ton of stuff. She would jot down a bunch of ideas in a notebook, different scribblings, different jokes, lyrics, song titles, and mel B wrote the here's the story from a to z app Uh. She wrote it in the toilet in eight minutes, and she's credited for Ziggazig go ahead Jordan's Yeah, we could tag team this one. But there are many, many, many, many theories about what exactly zig Zigga really means. Some critics have theorized that it was about female sexual desire. There's the musicologist Sheila Whitely said that it was a made up phrase, the kind of Lewis Carroll invented, like jabberwockie, which is, yeah, that's that's a very um generous read of what zig zigov probably means. And this, this whole theory gained a lot of purchase in when Melci told the journalists, you know when you're in a gang and you're having a laugh and you're making up silly words. Well, we were having a giggle and we made up the silly words zig zig ah and what are some other theories? Heigel, Well, Jordan, I'm so glad you asked. Some people have pitched it as being shorthand for sucker, which is yeah, as well as care. This brings us back to the toilet. Yeah, so Moby says, working in the same studio as them, there was an eighties pop singer who she didn't name, who was smoking a cigar in the toilet. Who was it? Was it? Richard Marks, Phil Collins, Mike from Mike and the Mechanics, one of the Mechanics. It's probably a basis David uh And one of the guys who co wrote the song, Richard Stannard, says, it does mean something, but we're never going to tell anyone what. I'll say one thing, it's quite rude. So in the annals of pop music, question Marks, it's probably up there with your so vain as far as and yeah being about Dave Coulier or not. And you know, despite all that, they didn't even want it to be the lead single. That is absolutely nuts to me. I mean, yeah, apparently the record company I just didn't think that Want to Be was the song to launch the group, and they wanted to use the song love Thing, which I mean, I hate to call it a deep cut because Spicy Schools don't have that many songs, but it's not one of their better known ones. And I guess the group, sort of led by Mail b and Jerry Halliwell, were so adamant that their debut song should be want to Be that Hallowell apparently told Simon Fuller, their manager, you know, it's not negotiable as far as we're concerned. Want to Be is our first single. So they really put their foot down and they got their way, and it's they were right, and they were absolutely right because the song broke a thirty two year old Beatles record on its release. Uh. In addition to the many commercial plot it's received, I Want to Be entered the US Hot one hundred at number eleven, and it remains the highest debut on the chart by a brand new British act, and the Beatles have previously held this record from four When I Want To Hold your Hand debut at number twelve. What do you say about want to Be? Um It is indelible pop song um Si, typically proven to be the catchiest song of all time, according to a two fourteen study by the University of Amsterdam and Manchester's Museum of Science and Industry. Participants in this project identified want to Be in just two point to nine seconds, probably due to the laugh that she does at the start of the track, which talk about uh right, yeah. What other songs did this beat? Jordan's It beat lou Bega's Mambo number five, which was recognized in two point four eight seconds, as opposed to Wanna Be two point to nine, and it also beat I of the Tiger by Survivor, which clocked in at being recognized after just two point six two seconds. I refuse to believe you can't identify the Tiger from a downbeat of that song, Like that's one of the most recognizable openings of all time. But you know, another person who finds want to Be catchy is Jerry because she's sang it at her own wedding to f one racing boss Christian Horner, And I guess she played like a ballad version like what's the like the slow moving torch song version of Wanna Be? Yeah, I mean, because the song sung to a man is kind of a threat, so I guess I haven't really thought too much about it until right now. But anyway, speaking of harmonicas, moving off of Wanna Be to another incredible track on The Spicycle's debuts, Say You'll Be There. You know, the harmonica solo on that song was played by the same guy who played the harmonica break on Karma Chameleon. Like Culture Club, I love that. I mean, there aren't too many harmonica solos in the Top forty in the last twenty issue years. But harmonicist, if that's what you call somebody who plays a harmonicas, that sounds right. Harmonicist Judd Lander can like claim on playing two harmonica solos on top forty hit in the last probably thirty years at this point. But yes, jud Lander played the harmonica solo on both Say You'll Be There and Culture Club's Karma Chameleon. Um Say You'll Be There also borrows from an obscure nineties R and B track. This is so funny to me because like there's always these lawsuits that come out with a big song. But this is truly one of the most bizarre cases, so please yes. Not long after Say You'll be There enter the charts, it became the target of a few plagiarism cases, and the first came in December, when an Israeli soldier named a Deep sheetschman I think it's how you say her name, accused the group of copying her song bow a Lie, which translates to come to me uh. And this was realleast two years before we Say You'll be There in Israel, and her lawyers threatened to sue, and a spokesman for the Spice Girls later declared, where there's a hit, there's a writ there's always someone who crawls out of the woodwork claiming to have written a hit song. We look for were to seeing her in court. Um I think they settled. I'm not actually sure how that one left off. But there was another lawsuit from an American singer songwriter named Jonathan David Buck who goes by John B. And his lawsuit was a little bit more successful. He claimed that the chorus of say You'll Be There was similar to an R and B track he'd written for a group called After Seven called what are you to me? Very prince like it's let her you? Let her are number two me? What are you to me? And you can check this out on YouTube. There are definitely a lot of similarities, and there's enough similarities that I think he ended up having his name added to the song's credits when it was reissued in later years. So there's that. But I mean, in the analys of pop music plagiarism lawsuits, surely this song stands alone in having acclaim against it levied by an Israeli soldier. Yeah. No, that's a new one. I've never heard that. I don't know do we know how that one? How that left? No? I actually just googled her and yeah, I can't find that it got settled. Well, whatever it was, it went away, which is probably all the spiceman all what Simon Fuller ever wanted. It's true. Uh, speaking of say You'll be There and sun Stroke, Yes, I mean Say You'll be There has a really amazing video that would do who would it do? Proud Bruce Lee? No? Get dare you bring up Bruce Lee's name? Keep his name out of your mouth? Well, okay, it's Bruce Lee, as done by Quentin Tarantino casting a sportish pop group, we'll go with that. And Emma Bunton was the m v P of the shoot because she was trained in karate. Baby Spice was trained in karate because her mom was an instructor, so she was kind of the one on to say it will be their shoot. The taught the other girls had a you know, properly kick and punch and this These girls really pushed themselves to the limit for their work. They shot this video in the desert, the middle of Mojave Desert from five am to nine pm, and Victoria was like standing on the hood of a car in the middle of the desert. You know, I mean that's just like a hot plate, and you mean you are an aunt on a sidewalk and they're doing that basically, And she was doing that for like forty minutes at a stretch and she later said you could ring the sweat out of the cat suit she was wearing. Afterwards, she was so hot. I was trying to speak as quickly as I could and not give you it in there anyway. Unfortunately, Baby Spice couldn't stand the heat and ended up collapsing due to sunstroke after doing her martial arts moves in the middle of the desert all day, and despite this, she later said that it was her favorite Spice Girls video, which suggests some kind of Stockholm syndrome because that sounds absolutely awful. Speaking of grueling video shoots, yes, the video for Wanna be one of the most unforgettable videos in the nineties. Really they're they're just tearing up a fancy hotel in London. It was originally gonna be shot at a house in Barcelona, but the director Johann Comments failed to get permission for this house in Spain, so the shoot was relocated much more locally to the Midland Grand Hotel in London. It's still there. It's uh by St Pancras Station up in North London if you ever want to visit. I think that staircase is still all there. But that wasn't the only minor downgrade going from Spain to just locally in London. They initially approached Tony Blair two guests in this video. Um, I guess Jerry Hollowell approached the I don't think he was Prime Minister just yet. I think it was before he was elected at the brit Awards when the group were still basically nobody's and she went up to and said, Mr Blair, I'm Jerry and I'm in an old girl band. We're gonna be huge. We're about to make our first video. Would you be interested in appearing in it? And apparently he was not, which is a shame because that would have just been the perfect cool Britannia touch at that time if they got Tony Blair to be on their music video for Wanna Be. This is truly wild. Do you know the other music video that Johann Commits directed, No Save Tonight by Eagle a Cherry No Where, Yeah, no way. That was the only two he's done well, really incredible. Well, apparently he was in August of two thousand. He was just like out on a night of the town in Manhattan, was crossing the street and he was hit by an suv. The driver of the suv had been shot in a gang incident and was trying to flee the scene, but lost control of the vehicle and drove it up onto the sidewalk, killing Cammits. And then that driver died from his gunshot wounds. I guess the guy was more of an ad guy. I mean he gone Advertising Industry Awards for doing ads for Nike and Volkswagen. That is that is really interesting. Wow. Um, hard to really cut back to, uh, to the the lighthearted want to be video, But yeah, this shoot was it was extremely low budget. It was around I think it was a hundred and sixty six thousand dollars, which is cheap for these sort of things. And it was cheap enough that the Spice girls actually dressed themselves. Um Jerry wore a twenty dollar outfit she got from a notting Hill flea market reportedly. And the music video it appears to be shot in one take. That's like one of the things that's cool about it. I think they actually spliced it together. There's there's two very subtle edits that occur, but it's still pretty amazing. And they rehearsed it to be done in one take, so they worked really hard to work out through this entire elaborate ballet, not just with the you know, the actors Spice girls doing the thing, but having to get the cameraman with the with the steady cam going. It's funny that this was so cheap because this isn't the era that music videos were expensive. Um, just a year earlier, the Scream video, which was Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson. That video cost even million dollars. Still the most expensive video. It is it is. Do you know who has the next three entries in this list? Madonna? I guess Katie Perry, Oh, Madonna. But Joseph Cohn, who did a bunch of those Katie Perry videos, has seven of the top most expensive ones. Unsurprisingly, Michael Jackson has a boatload. Here's a weird one that pops up in the middle, the Fred Durst directed clip for the song Roland from two thousand, budget of three million dollars to make a video for that. Wow. Yeah. So anyway, Uh, it was apparently very cold in this hotel and they didn't want to do it anymore takes and than they had to. Um and uh, it was apparently quite cold in there. And why was that? Well you can see you can see quote Wikipedia, Wikipedia, Brown's erect nipples. Uh, and you know mel c can probably be in there as well. So this uh, wardrobe, I guess we'll loosely term it a wardrobe bow function actually have fairly dire consequences. Because dire, we'll say, I'll say dire in quote suggesting anything and this has dire consequences When the director was later killed in a freak accident. Is feels like a cognitive disconnect, but go off, okay, fair, yes, m. The video was actually banned in some Asian countries for this what i'll I guess i'll loosely term a this wardrobe bow function um and the Spice Girls record company Version Records was really not happy about the video for that reason, and they also just didn't like it artistically. They thought that the lighting was too dark and gloomy, and a lot of the takes that are in the final video show the Spice Girls like bumping into furniture and looking behind them, and you know, because a lot of what they're doing they're like moving backwards and stuff, and it just looked to the record executives at least, it looked kind of unfinished and unprofessional, uh, and they asked them to reshoot it. Actually. The other thing I think is really amusing too is that they thought that basically the Spice Girls looked too threatening in this video because they're just you know, dancing through a hotel and kind of getting in like stodgy people's faces. And they thought that was just like a bad look, especially for the video for their debut single. I guess so, I guess I could almost kind of sort of maybe if squint understand where they're coming from, but still seems stupid. So the label asked for reshoots and also for an alternative version of the video for the American market, but the Spice Girls refused, and that was totally fine because it went on to win Best Dance Video at MTV Video Music Awards, So it all worked out just fine. You know what else was banned in the Far East? What was that? Jordan's the song to Become One. So this song was apparently inspired by the quote special relationship developing between Hallowell and writer Matt Rowe. Melby hinted at this in her autobiography, saying, when he and Jerry started making eyes at each other, I knew what was going on, even though they denied it. I knew them both too well for it to be a secret for me. Producer Richard Stannard commented about the fondness between hallow Well and Raw Was that yours the fondness? Probably? He said, I don't want to get into the side of things. They were very close. They clicked it's a good euphemism, and I think the lyrics and to Become One came from that, especially the first verse, which they wrote together. I really hope that Jerry Halliwell and one of her song co writers had I hope that this song came from there, the flame between them. So you know what's really interesting. They changed the second verse to be supportive of gay rights. The second line of the second verse, any deal that we endeavor, which is a clunker boys and girls feel good together. They changed it in the single version two once again, if we endeavor, love will bring us back together to make it less heteronormative. And Button later said that this change was necessary because they realized that the group had become LGBT icons. I think that's actually remarkably progressive of them. Hong Kong disagreed. The Hong Kong release of the album To Become One was left off for reasons that were never made totally clear, but probably obvious to anyone with two years and a heart, But they left the song naked on there. There are so many people I know that would sing to Become One around the house when they were like little kids, and their parents would just kind of look at them. Um. Yeah, numerous friends of mine can't listen to that song now because they just remember singing it in the car where their parents are side eyeing them. Yeah. What else was left off the record? Jordan's Yes, there was a track in the early stages of recording this album called see You Next Tuesday. Yeah, a little on the nose there, and apparently the song is never surfaced in its entirety see You Next Tuesday. Of course, if you take the sea is the is the it's an anagram for it's not even an antagram acrostic, it's a mnemonic. What is it? What is it? Jordan's it's a it's a I actually don't know what it is. It's dumb, is what it is. It's an anachronism. It's dumb. It's what every It's what every edgy person discovers. At some point. The Toolbag from vander Pump Rules has his DJ His DJ night was called see You Next Tuesday. Like I used to do trivia nights and it was on a Tuesday, and there was a team that always came that always called themselves see You Next Tuesday. So funny, ha ha ha but for anyone, for any particularly sheltered people out there. I mean, the c is is the letter C, the U is the letter you, and the first letter of next and the first letter of Tuesday spell out a rude word. But apparently wasn't even that that they've left it off. You know. Melcy just said that the track was left off because it was a pile of So that's that's the quote. Doesen mince dozen mince words? Yeah, her words, not mine. It was vetoed for the twenty anniversary reissue of the album, but Melsey also said that she still has plans for it because she thinks it sounds like a long lost Lily Allen song, which I kind of like. I can hear that. Yeah, I like that too. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more too much information in just a moment. So we got to talk about spice Mania. I never thought I would hear you say that. We got to talk about spice Mania, the absolute global insanity that greeted this group. But yeah, this is wild to me. Their first arena a concert was like after they had already become a complete global world conquering phenomenon. This is October twelfth and thirteenth, a full year after their first album was out in the UK, which is just wild. When they were about to go on, Jerry told the other girl she was scared, and Victoria, once again proving that she is the champion of the SoundBite, replied, don't worry. They're only here to see your big hair and your big boobs. My most indelible memory of this band is the Union Jack dress, So Jordan's take us away. Yes, the Union Jack dress, which I always thought was like this custom made hot couture, like you know, a lot of thought and effort, in time and money went into this, was actually just an ordinary dress that I think Jerry herself sewed a tea towel on. That British flag is just a tea towel that had been sewn on to an ordinary mini dress. It was a black Gucci mini dress that she had been given to perform at the at the brit Awards, which were like the British Grammys, and you know, it was a Goocci dress expensive, she'd been given it to performing and she just thought it was two, in her words, boring, and she decided she wanted to and this again her words celebrate being British, and she asked her sister to actually stitch this Union Jack t towel onto the front of this black dress as you know, a patriotic gesture. It was just that was always meant to be and to avoid being associated with the National Front, which was like this right ring extremist group in the UK. She had a peace symbol stitched onto the back of the dress too, and the group went on to win two brit Awards that night. Uh. In so, a year after this performance, she auctioned off this by this point instantly iconic dress at the London branch of Southebys and it sold for three D twenty pounds and the buyer was um Peter Morton, who ran hard Rock Cafe, Rock hotel els and all that. And uh it's actually it's still I think holds the world record for the most expensive piece of pop star clothing ever sold at auction, and Jerry gave the proceeds of the sale to children's cancer charity. Very nice. We touched on this earlier, but apparently, uh, you know, Bex was not the strongest singer of the group in the early days when she joined she was still Victoria Adams. She hadn't yet married world class soccer player and handsome man David Beckham. The group was still called Touch at that point. When she replaced Melanie lack o he Um and she was apparently too good of a singer. According to The Mirror, she was twenty two. She was told her voice would overpower the others, and she was replaced by Beckham. Lack of he now works for the National Health Service as a hospital administrator in Cambridgeshire, and she still sings in a band. Saving lives and making the saving lives was making music go hand in hand. But good old Victoria, despite her cheekbones, h was not known for her singing voice. She's the only one who doesn't have a solo verson want to be. She's the only one who didn't put out any solo records after the band broke up. And uh really wow, I say, really, I'm the one who wrote that fact. I know this, but I still that really that still surprises me. I just remember her being like the scary, intimidating one. But it turns out she was the self proclaimed when she said she was the most reserved one, and then she knew this I mean, she told The Independent in that they would turn her microphone off live because my voice wasn't up to the other girl's standards. She said, they used to turn my mic off and just let the others sing. Luckily, because I used to wear heels, I just used to jig about a bit and I got away with it. But it never came easily. I was always much more reserved than the other girls. But one thing about Paul that uh is authentic is that she was loaded. Her father was an electrical supplies retailer and she was a kid. She used to ask her father to not bring her to school in the family rolls Royce. But again, I gotta give this woman her way with a SoundBite. She was asked once with the most offensive thing the British press ever wrote about her, and she said that I wear cheap makeup. Chanelle does not come cheap, darling. She is awesome. Did you ever see when she and um David Beckham were interviewed by Ali g No, I haven't seen that. It's so funny. I think it was for it was for some charity show. It might have been like Red Nose Day or um Comic Relief or something like that. It's so funny. She is so funny and quick and as evidenced by all these sound bites, but also like really humble and self deprecating and great. It made me like her so so so much more than I already did. It's definitely worth check out. As much of a himbo as Beckham is, I bear him no ill will I like. I remember one of the page six items I read about him was that he was spending a lot of his pandemic time beekeeping, which I was just like that, so endearing, Like you're just famous for being good looking and mega rich, and you what do you do? And you're like doted years like yours, your decline into middle aged you beekeep. I love that. There any other famous beekeepers out there? I feel like there's a lot of them. Flee Flee from the Chili Peppers is probably one of the most famous. It's a bit on the nose, I know, I know, we have. Well, he's got a lot to atone for. I can hate that band all right. Speaking of things, I hate, Prince Charles Jordan take it away. Yes, at the height of spice Mania, Ginger spice pinched, Prince Charles butt and say it with a straight face. I I forgot that I had written this literally until I was reading this line right now. Um, yes, uh, change your spice pinch Prince Charles, but and asked him if he had his um, his little Charles Pierce. Yes, thank you. This is in May of ninety seven. Yes, there is some backstory to this that we should probably get into. The Spice rules are performing at a charity gig called the Prince's Trust Benefit Concert, and they were on the receiving line that they do it all these charity shows where everybody it's like at the end of a wedding, all the talent lines up and the royal family goes down the line and shakes everybody's hand and pretends to be interested for six seconds and then moves on. Um and Jerry Hallowell and Melby broke royal protocol by planting kisses on both his cheeks because there's you know, there's all sorts of protocol for how you approach royals, and you know you don't turn your back on them, and you address you know, speaking less spoken to and you know mouth well, Um, Jerry got somewhat close. She supposedly grabbed his bottom and when asked about this by Rolling Stone, she replied, I pinch everyone's bottom. Why am I going to stop at the Prince. He's just a man, just like anybody else who wants to laugh. Sure. Oh later, when Melby was sticking her tongue out and showing off her tongue piercing, Jerry asked Prince Charles if he had a Prince Albert and uh, Prince Albert, named probably Apocryphale after Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Charles's great great great grandfather, is Um, well, it's a ring through the head of the penis, folks. Um. Sports fans. Never let anyone say that we don't have any take home value on this show. Um. But if you didn't know that, don't feel bad, because apparently Prince Charles didn't know either, and he asked point blank, what's a Prince Albert? And H and I guess I think. The British comedian Stephen Fry was also on the line, and he tried to clue him in and said, um, it's it's a it's a piece of intimate jewelry, sir, all time great euphemism. Yes, And then am I guess? During as this whole exchange was going on about bottom pinching and Prince Albert's Emma Baby Spice was asking after Prince William, who at this point was fourteen years old, and he apparently he supposedly took down his Pam Anderson poster at boarding school and replaced it with one of Emma Baby Spice was his favorite Spice Girl, so she asked about him, and Prince Charles said, don't be a cradle snatcher. It's pretty rich considering Prince Andrew's stature in two giving my air horn app open. Yeah, oh man, And Prince Charles was not even the only global figure that the Spice Girls had to run in with. Yeah, I love this so much. The Spice Girls met Nelson Mandela. A lot of listical site Nelson Mandela is calling the Spice Girls his personal heroes. I can't tell if he was just doing a bit no offense. I'm I'm guessing he's just doing a bit, but um, I guess. During this visit, Melby stole some of Nelson Mandela's toilet paper and gave squares of it as gifts to her hair and makeup people all due respect. That feels like a piece of Ira you would own Yeah, no, um, square of Nelson Mandela's toilet paper. Yeah this, Yeah, and hopefully uh this is early on in this show, and I'm sure this will be a much beloved recurring segment of uh useless ephemera that I own. I have framed over my desk a piece of carpet from John Lennon's house. I also have a piece of carpet from Elvis Presley's graceland. I have what else do I have? I I have like a fishing log haming away, Yeah, deck would from the Titanic, a piece of the Berlin wall, all sorts of use crap. Yeah. Um, so I do have to say, as I researched that fact toy, I was privately jealous that I don't have a piece of a square of toilet paper from Nelson Mandela's house. Also, but the Spice Girls wouldn't have to steal Nelson Mandela's toilet paper for long because Spice is the best selling girl group album of all time. We mentioned earlier about the debut success of Wannabe, but the record debut at number six on the Billboard two hundred. Eventually we reaching number one for five weeks and selling one point four six million copies within its first twelve weeks of release, became the biggest selling album five point three million copies sold by the end of the year. After the album went to number one, Virgin gave each of the women a five hundred dollar Tiffany's voucher, which seems kind of chintzy. Richard, what is that? You're record made us untold millions? Here's and it allowed me to make a spacecraft. Yeah, here's three figures of a gift card at Tiffany that. I mean, what can you buy it? Tiffany's that's five I mean that's like that doesn't even buy you a full thing. Yeah, it gets you in the door. Uh. There have been a reported thirty one million copies of this record sold worldwide. It's the biggest selling album by a girl group in music history and one of the most successful albums of all time. That's up there, and like Michael Jackson and like a C d C back in Black Territory, right, Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna check that. But it has to be total certified copies three million, which puts it in the Backstreet Boys Millennium. Purple Rayan Joshua Tree Bridge over Troubled Water. You know my favorite it does that's yes, But do you know what one of I love the fact that Back in Black is supposedly one of the most He's like the number two per wiki at rules so hard, right after thriller Back and It's crazy. I love that. Good for them, But I'll tell you who didn't make this one of the best selling records of all time? Critics? How's that for a clunky segue? Also the Recording Academy no Grammy nominations. Rolling Stone gave it one point five stars in a review written by Christina Kelly. The magazine said, following in the footsteps of Take That and New Kids on the Block to other bubblegum pop groups that were also huge in England, Spice Girls offer a watered down mix of hip hop and cheesy pop baladry, and like New Kids in the Block, Spice Girls are five attractive young things, each with a distinct personality. Allow the village people God brought I know, brought together by a manager with a marketing concept. Despite their pro woman posing, the girls don't get bogged down by anything deeper than mugging for promo shots. And giving out tips on getting boys in bed. So some salient points there, but has not aged well. I do think it's really interesting that people were towing them as being a marketing creation for having such distinct personalities, but that was their own direction that their manager was like, we want you all to be interchangeable anyway. The Spice Girls, I mean, despite all those kind of bad reviews, it kind of set the stage for a lot of the There was that great the New Chuck Classroom in book that just came out called the Nineties, where and he makes the point of they're kind of being two very distinct nineties where the first half, at least musically was sort of the grunge era, and then the second half, the dividing line being Kurcle bay AND's suicide in and on the second half of the nineties being would he loosely termed the t r L era, which you really see being filled with uh pop groups. I mean, you get your Britney Spears, you se aguileras, You're instincts, your Backstreet Boys, and the Spice Girls phenomenon. I think is is sort of among the first of that crowd to really connect over here. I can't remember exactly when all those others came out, but I think it was closer to so it kind of set the stage for um, for the pop explosion at the end of the decade. And um, you know, I mean this was a time when in n alternative rock, hip hop, and R and B dominated the global music charts. I mean, the Spicy Cools even said this in there. I think it was their first ever interview in May six with the outlet Music Week, Jerry Hallowell said, we want to bring some of the glamor back to pop like Madonna had when we were growing up. Pop is about fantasy and escapism, and the Spicyols phenomenon was credited as changing the music landscape by reviving the pop music genre and like I said, bringing about this wave in the late nineties and early two thousands of these team pop acts like Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera in Sync ninety eight degrees. I mean, go on and on Limp Biscuit. You forget how much they were on MTV. Dude. I mean one thing, Fred Durris is whatever, but that dude played the game. They were on t r L so much. I remember seeing that Yankee. That's stupid backwards Yankee cap more than the face of my loved ones. Um Anyway, what else you got speaking of fred Durst, Yeah, I mentioned the piece written by Cheryl Garratt in The Guardian and she has a really great quote in ten years time, this was right after I Want to Be Single came out in ten years time, long after the lesser brit pop guitar bands have been forgotten. You'll hear want to Be on the radio. You'll hear them tell you what they want, what they really really want, and you'll smile because it'll bring back some memory of something you were doing when you heard them sing of their ziga ziga. And by then there'll be a whole generation of twenty year old girls who will owe just a little bit of who they are to the Spice Girls, which, as it happens, it's not a add thing at all. It's a good note to end on. I feel like, yeah, well, folks, thank you for taking this trip through Spice World with us, which is not available on streaming services. By the way, if there is anyone who works for any of these streaming platforms, please put that movie on because I would love to see it aside from you know, my old VHS copy. Please thanks for listening, folks, this has been too much information. I'm Alex Hegel, I'm Jordan Runtalg. Thanks for spending this time with us. Too Much Information was a production of I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan runt Talk. The supervising producer is Mike John's. The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtalg and Alex Heigel, with original music by Seth apple Bomb and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts on iHeart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows agin that Let Band at backas and s