The Spice Girls Biography

The Spice Girls consister of five singers - Victoria Beckham, Melanie Brown, Emma Bunton, Melanie Chisholm and Geri Halliwell. The group was initially the brainchild of a father and son management duo, Chris and Bob Herbert, who were keen to form a “girl band” that was capable of competing with the “boy bands” - such as Take That, Boyzone and Westlife - who dominated the British pop music scene in the early 1990s.

In February 1994, the Herberts - who, together with financier Chic Murphy - traded under the business name of Heart Management - placed an advert in The Stage magazine, which asked the question, “are you street smart, extrovert, ambitious, and able to sing and dance?” The management team received literally hundreds of replies, but eventually narrowed their search down to a final five girls, which included Geri Halliwell and Melanie Brown, along with three other hopefuls, who were replaced at various stages of the initial training procedure, as the Herberts fine-tuned their line-up. The new girl band was originally called “Touch”. The Herberts moved the girls into a house in Maidenhead, where they all claimed unemployment benefit while they worked on songs for demos, and dance routines for their future stage act. Emma Bunton was the last to join the group, after one of the earlier hopefuls, Michelle Stephenson, dropped out when her mother became ill.

By March 1995, the girls were growing increasingly frustrated at the lack of a solid record deal and they parted company with Heart Management. After searching around for some time for a suitable manager, they eventually teamed up with Simon Fuller of 19 Management. In September 1995, they signed a record deal with Virgin Records. Having changed their name to The Spice Girls along the way, the new girl band finally released their debut single “Wannabe” in the UK in July 1996, amid a flurry of anticipation and hyped-up publicity. The song entered the charts at number 3, before moving up to number One the following week, where it remained for seven weeks running.

Right from the start, The Spice Girls were set on changing the whole concept of pop music as it had existed up to that point. In their first interview with Paul Gorman, a contributing editor for the influential music magazine, Music Week, he was impressed enough to write the following account of their music: “Just when boys with guitars threaten to rule pop life, an all girl, in-yer-face pop group has arrived, with enough sass to burst that rockist cherry!” The song “Wannabe” soon became a global hit, and went on to make number One of no less than an astonishing 31 countries, thus becoming the biggest selling debut single by an all-female group of all time.

The massively successful “Wannabe” also helped the girls to break into the American pop market, (no easy thing for a British band to do) and it arrived on the Hot 100 charts at the very respectable position of no. 11. At the time, this was the highest level that any British record had ever debuted at, even breaking the previous record held by the Beatles for “I Want To Hold Your Hand”. The Spice Girls went on to take America by storm, and reached the prized Number One spot just four weeks later.