spice is nice

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

At the gym this morning I got all confused because a) they had GMTV on the screen where they usually have the BBC and b) because they were interviewing the Spice Girls and on the screen it said 'Today'. After I had realised that a) 'Today' was the name of the programme and b) this was not the real Spice Girls as they are now and c) nor was it a tribute band, I switched my headphones to the little box on the machine to listen to the interview. It turned out to be a repeat (well, duh) of the FIRST appearance of the Spice Girls on GMTV, TEN YEARS AGO TODAY. Sporty claimed that they were all 'naughty girls' and then they mimed to 'Wannabe'. ('We wrote it ourselves and we're really proud of that' says Geri.)

TEN YEARS since the first zig-a-zig-ah! Blimey, eh? Made me feel like a lot of time had passed, and that sort of thing. Now I may be mistaken, but I seem to remember a) that the Spice Girls were really quite important for pop as a whole (and I even went to see the MOVIE! In Leicester Square and everything! With freakytigger and a million small children. Err, and some other shifty-looking student-seeming types I seem to recall) and b) that they came totally out of nowhere. Of course, this may not be true.

So my questions for you:

Did the Spice Girls suddenly appear from nowhere and turn pop inside out?
Could something comparable happen today?
Can you imagine what it might be or by definition would this be impossible and we just have to sit and wait?

Comments

[koganbot]

In the U.S. there was no Shampoo; I'd think TLC'd be the relevant predecessors, and some other little girl r&b acts whose names escape me (and Brandy and Monica and Aaliyah and whoever). And no way did the Spicies dominate U.S. pop, what with all those r&b teenyweenie girls doing something somewhat different, and hip-hop of course, and rock still rocking around (Butthole Surfers and Primus were scoring hits in those days, remember). But given that, it opened the way for the Spicies to really discover/create a tweenie 'n' pretweenie market way way way beyond what New Kids much less Tiffany had done. Spice Girls fans were almost all girls age 3 to 15, huge among 8 year olds, 6 year olds, 4 year olds, the wee ones not just being an adjunct to the teenybopper audience but a big part of it. And as Alan says below, little girls going for girls rather than boys is a HUGE shift, happening much more for the Spice Girls than for TLC and Tiffany (and Madonna was something else, since she's never relied on the teenies as her prime audience, though of course her attitude is an influence). Spicies just scooped up a market that had previously gone to Monkees-Partridge Family-Bobby Sherman-Jackson 5-New Edition-Bay City Rollers-Osmonds-New Kids. And even with Backstreet Boys and *NSync and Jesse McCartney and B5 coming along since, most of the stars are girls.

(Question, since I paid no attention to the Osmonds. How important to culture was Marie?)