20 Million Spice Girls Fans Can't Be Wrong.

10/28/1997 3:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
John Kordosh

"Young, ambitious pawns of a greedy record industry," said Carla Rivera of the L.A. Timesin September of 1997. She was talking about Milli Vanilli--and really, who isn't, these days?--but, what the heck, she could've been talking about the Spice Girls.

Or maybe not! The Spice Girls have transcended Milli Vanilli, Duran Duran , the Monkees and all previous paradigms of pawndom. Even Frankie Goes To Hollywood. And Gerry & the Pacemakers! The Girls are the only group ever to have their first four singles hit #1 in the U.K. Ever! They had three songs in their country's year-end top 10, the first band to do that since the Beatles! Have played with a live band on occasion! Have made me use a ridiculous number of exclamation points in one paragraph!! Eight!!! Or 15!!!!

Face it, the Spice Girls are worth every penny of the reported 60 million British pounds (approximately 36 quintillion American dollars) they've each earned. At this writing, they've delayed the release of their next single so that Elton John's "Candle In The Wind 1997" could enter the charts at #1. I'm serious. Nowadays, the Spice Girls can only be compared to the Beatles...really, no other band has had such a dramatic musical/ sociological impact since the Fab Four. Not even Bananarama.

Although some might contend the Girls are a management-led concept, the notion is easily refuted. "We are not some management-led concept," said Geri Halliwell. See? (By the way, Geri is also known as Ginger Spice. The other Spices have similar aliases: Melanie Chisholm is Sporty Spice, Melanie Brown is Scary Spice, Emma Bunton is Baby Spice and Victoria Adams is Posh Spice as well as You Should Get To Know The Writer Of This Story Better Spice. I'm pretty sure they stole this idea from the Smurfs.)

In truth, the Spices got to be in their ridiculously successful group by answering ads in trade papers, sort of like the Beatles did many years ago. Of course it's more satisfying when key band members meet in a dusty record store looking for the same obscure blues album--kind of like Crosby, Stills & Nash probably did--but destiny knows many paths. And, like the Beatles, the Spice Girls' music is fueled by a prolific songwriting duo (Richard Stannard and Matt Rowe). That the Beatles' prolific songwriting duo also just happened to be in the Beatles is something I chalk up to amazing coincidence. And, like the Beatles, they're better than Oasis.

Just kidding! Oasis is way better than the Beatles!

Hey, speaking of Oasis, did you know Noel Gallagher sniffed, "When are the Spice Girls going to do a gig?" when both bands attended London's Capitol FM Music Awards earlier this year? (Oasis's Knebworth show had been named Best Concert Of The Year, edging out both Blur and the Beatles.) Noel was evidently peeved that the Spice Girls had only played to backing tapes at the time. One is reminded of the controversy when Paul, George and Ringo recorded a "song" from a John Lennon (Surly Beatle) demo tape. It's all relative, Noel. (And, in fact, a survey of 500 Spice Girl fans by the BBC revealed that 68% of them wouldn't want to hear the Spice Girls live! I only wish those 500 people were big fans of the Rolling Stones.)

In any case, the bulk of the Spice phenomenon, like Beatlemania, has been sociological. In May, the PA news service reported that, incredibly, 84% of all Anglican bishops surveyed in England could name at least one member of the Spice Girls. (It was probably the one who said the Spice Girls are more capable of getting pregnant than Jesus.) Here And Now, a BBC program (the British word for programme), reported that Spice Girls imitators can get paid over two thousand British pounds (178,000 American dollars) per show!

Gullible punters, to be sure! The gals have also created a boom in the sales of platform shoes, just like the kind Emma fell off of in a Turkish TV studio ("Baby Spice Trips Off Her Platforms"). I expect they'll be off to the ashram any minute now.

Can the Girls maintain their stratospheric profile? Don't bet against it; they're a feisty bunch. Halliwell (that's Ginger or Maryanne Spice, I forget which one) said: "We want to bring back some of the glamour back to pop, like Madonna had when we were growing up. Pop is about fantasy and escapism...we want to be relevant to girls our age." Well, heck, don't we all? "We were the ones who were always rejects," said Victoria, who has evidently never actually looked at her own band. But: "We feel as though we're breaking down a lot of barriers, as women going up against boy groups and against people's expectations," Geri added. "Boy" groups? Hey, Noel, I think they're talkin' 'bout you again!

I knew the Spice Girls had made it in the biggest of ways while checking out one of the two or three Spice Girl sites on the Internet. You can find this yourself at www.spicegirls.com. In a profile of Baby Spice it actually says: "Emma is thought to like eating doughnuts."

I simply can't imagine a level of fame beyond that.