Spice Invaders

Spice Invaders is an obsessive breakdown of the history of the Spice Girls and what they meant to the people who grew up with them. Join us each week as we chat through the evolution of the Spice Girls, from beginning to end. This is a chronological podcast, you're gonna want to start at episode 1. ✌️✨ *** Spice Invaders is hosted by Cheryl Stone, Elyse Maxwell, Megan Arppe-Robertson, Sinead O'Brien and Stephanie Smith. It's produced, researched and written by Sinead O'Brien and Cheryl Stone, and produced and edited by Ashley McDonough. Theme music created by Lukus Benoit.

E11: Goodbye 12/06/2021

E11: Goodbye Transcript 12/06/2021

E11: Goodbye Transcript [Cold Open] Elyse Do you know what I just realized? I meant to do this on our like second last episode, and then I forgot to do it but I was going to tell you guys I was backing out of the podcast with no notice as like a joke with one episode left, and then I forgot to do it. Ashley Oh, no hahaha Steph What a great prank! Megan Ashley can you go back and edit that in? [Spice Invaders Theme Song] Ashley It’s our last recording! Elyse I know! Ashley It's so strange. Sinead It's insane. Elyse Bittersweet for sure. Sinead Yeah. When I was working on the conclusion this afternoon, I was like- didn't get like emotional, but I was like, oh. Elyse Aww. Cheryl We ready to start? Ashley Yeah Elyse Yes. Cheryl Awesome. So we're gonna pick up where we left off last time at the end of the Spice World tour. Melanie B married Jimmy Gulzar on September 13, 1998. OK Magazine pays 350,000 pounds for exclusive photos of the wedding. Sinead And if you'd like to see one of those exclusive photos, you should go to your Spice Girl chat. Elyse Oh, my. That is a white cowboy hat. I am confused about the theme because he looks like it's like a fancy Western vibe. But then Mel B is in, like, a masquerade Trojan dress? Steph Yeah... And the three girls (cause there's obviously no Geri) look like they're wearing white suits that I feel like they wore for an event or a video or something? Or they just repurposed them? Sinead They wore- I don't know if these were the same white suits, but for the LA premiere of Spice World. They did wear white suits. Megan Quite casual for a wedding. Elyse Yeah, Geri must have been invited, right? And then... I wonder if they, like, actively uninvited her or she just didn't show up? Sinead Mel B's wedding was organized pretty last minute. So, like- I shouldn't say last minute. It was like- it was four month engagement at the most. And she got engaged to Jimmy maybe like three weeks before Geri quit the Spice Girls. So I don't think she was invited because it wasn't like it wasn't like the classic like send wedding invites out a year in advance. Because she, like- Elyse Was she pregnant? Sinead Yes, she was pregnant. With Phoenix. Elyse Oh, okay. Sinead Yeah. And the reception was at a house that she had just purchased like literally one or two months before and they like threw a party there for it. Elyse Damn, they everything at the same time! That's so stressful. Wedding, baby, and house in like three months. That's crazy. Ashley And tour! Elyse Yeah, and tour. Cheryl AND her first single! The day after her wedding, she drops her first solo single and the first solo that any of the Spice Girls released: "I Want You Back", which was written by Missy Elliott, who's also featured on the track. It debuts at number one on the UK and European charts. Elyse Wow, big year. That's pretty good. Megan Was that like a known thing? Everyone knew she was recording a single? Sinead Yeah! Megan Yeah? Sinead Yeah and actually interesting tidbit: it made Missy Elliott the first Black female rapper to debut on the UK charts. And she was the first Black female rapper to get a number one single in the UK and also in Europe, because of this collab with Mel B. Megan That's very cool. Elyse Awesome that she did that but also it breaks my heart a little bit because Missy Elliot is so incredible and has such a deep catalogue and the fact that she only got there because she was on Mel B's album, like bums me out a little bit. But I'm glad that she got there. Steph I mean, I guess it just worked out as like an entry point into the charts for her there. Sinead For sure, because I think she was more much more popular in the US. And also we know that hip hop is more popular in the US than I think anywhere else. Elyse Oh, that's fair. I wasn't thinking about the different markets. That makes sense. Sinead So back to the- I'd mentioned to you guys that Mel B had bought a house. Um, she was actually dealing with a really shitty issue at this time, which was super racist neighbours. So she bought a two and a half million pound home in Little Marlow Buckinghamshire, which is decently close to London, and she held her wedding reception there. She held the wedding ceremony at a little chapel that's adjacent to her property. However, after she settled in, she received racist hate mail from neighbours into her mailbox which said that she didn't belong there. Yeah. She didn't talk about this for a long time but according to her in an interview, one of the letters said quote, "Get out, you don't belong. You can't buy something like this." And she said that it really disturbed her but she quote, "I still threw some good parties there, really loud to disturb the whole village." Megan Good for her. What is wrong with people? Like actually! Steph Yeah, that's insane. Sinead The neighbours- when she came out with the story, which I think was in 2018, other people Little Marlow were like, "no, that didn't really happen" and then police actually confirmed that it had because Mel B's team had brought them the letters because they were worried it was a security issue and she was a very famous woman so she had a security team. So it was like these Little Marlow people were like "no, that never happened" and then the police were like "actually it did and like even we're confirming it." Megan How would you know?! Like okay, so if one of my neighbours sent another of my neighbours a letter, like they're racist too! Just denying it, like they probably know nothing about it. Either way. Elyse Such a weird line, like, "you can't buy something like this"? It's such a weirdly direct... almost like subversion of all of the like dances that people do to disguise their racism? To be like "oh, it's not about race it's about class". That person was straight up like "Nope, we don't care how much money you have.We don't care if you're the same class. You're you're not white. And so you can't be here" Like, it's really jarring, that one line. Sinead For sure it is. [Chimes transition sound] Cheryl The next Spice Girl to release a single is actually Mel C. She collaborates with Bryan Adams on "When You're Gone". It's released on November 30, 1998. It's a song that I in particular know well because it got a lot of airplay in Canada because of our CanCon laws. Bryan Adams had co-written the song with Elliott Kennedy. As we know from previous episodes, he worked on the first Spice album. But Bryan Adams actually wanted Sheryl Crow, who never called him back, or Janet Jackson before he agreed to work with Mel C, and Elliot Kennedy made that happen for him. They actually didn't record it in the studio. He recorded it in Vancouver and she recorded in London and the song reached number three on the UK charts and only hit number twelve in Canada. Steph That's surprising. Like, I remember that song so well because... yeah, I mean he was Canadian so it obviously got played a lot because it was also during Bryan Adams kind of heyday. I'm so surprised for all the air play it got- and I could, I have it in my brain right now. I can probably sing half, at least half, the words to it. Elyse Could you please sing like one line because I can't remember the song at all. I think there's a Matchbox 20 song that's "When You're Gone" and that's all I can think about. Ashley I don't remember the words but it's like- [starts singing] Sinead I know all the words. It's like "baby when you're goooone, I think that I'm in love".. [Everyone except Elyse singing] Ashley And then it's like "OH BABY when you're gone" Elyse I don't remember that song at all but I'm really enjoying this haha [all laugh] Sinead You don't remember?! It still plays on the radio, like ,frequently. Megan Look it up, Elyse, you'll know it Steph Listen to a radio station in the Collingwood area and it will come on at least three times a day. Elyse I will drive out immediately. Sinead Even on alternative radio in Toronto, I've heard it. Elyse Okay, okay I'll keep my ears open. Megan I can even remember the music video, which for me is saying something because I didn't like watch a lot of TV. Sinead I remember for me, I think it was the first time that I'd ever heard a Spice Girls sing on their own. And I was like, Oh, she can actually sing. Because she can and she sounds good on that track. Megan She sings quite high in that song, too, which is higher than I think you hear in most Spice Girls songs. [Chimes transition sound] Sinead Another interesting thing that happened in the fall of 98 was when Victoria was visiting Elton John's villa in the south of France. And Geri called her out of the blue because Geri was also staying in the south of France at George Michael's villa. And so Geri said "Hey Victoria, do you want to come over and like have dinner at George Michael's house" and Victoria was like "alright". And then when they were like about to do it Geri was like "Oh, actually I think we should go out to this like very public restaurant" and so Victoria was like "Okay", and there were like paparazzi waiting for them there and so Victoria wrote about in her book that she felt like Geri had been using her to just like drum up attention with like this like meeting. It was the first time Victoria had talked to Geri or seen her since they had broken up and I guess- I think during this time Victoria , I guess, was the only one who was even friendly towards Geri, because the others- there's nothing about any of the others seeing her around this time. Elyse That sucks, that's so manipulative, and like- Sinead Yeah, Victoria felt very used and felt like Geri wasn't- she thought Geri was looking for some kind of reconciliation or something, and it was just like, no, she's using me to get paparazzi attention. Elyse That's so shitty. Oh, Geri. Cheryl So with all of these singles coming out, in December of 1998, the band releases what will become their third Christmas number one, "Goodbye". It's the first single without Geri's vocals. The song had actually been written on the Nashville stop of their tour, with producers Matt and Biff who were flown out there. Biff was later quoted as saying, "it was about moving on and saying goodbye to the old Spice Girls. It wasn't a goodbye to Geri. It wasn't really literal. A lot of that song was written when they were touring in America. We wrote it in Nashville. So I think it has that sentimental feel to it because everyone was kind of homesick and knackered." Sinead But like, in contrast to what Biff said, to fans and critics "Goodbye" was really seen as either a tribute to Geri or a goodbye to her, even though, as he said, parts of the song were written when she was still a member of the band. But like the fan perception was that this song was about saying goodbye to Geri, Elyse It kind of bums me out because I feel like Geri really did them dirty in this whole thing. And they had every right to be furious with her and they were very strong and were like, you know what, fuck it. We're finishing this tour. And like, I feel like they had- they were so business-minded about it. And they showed so much resilience, and it, like, irks me that we all wrote this narrative around it of all like, "oh, they're like, saying goodbye to their friend who they love" and it's all like amicable and it's just such a misrepresentation of how much she screwed them over. Cheryl I also think that it erases the fact that the girls need to make a step into becoming adults as performers and they were trying to do it with "Goodbye". And that step just gets totally erased also when you make it a Geri narrative as well. Elyse That's interesting. Ashley On the flip side, if they were secretly okay with her being gone, then this is just kind of a really masterful, like, manipulation of people's emotions you know what I mean? Like "Goodbye my friend" like "I'm gonna miss you" like lalala, when meanwhile, they're just like, "fuck yeah, we can fucking do as many dance moves as we want!" Elyse That is a great point and I would so much rather think that. I like that. Sinead The other thing that Goodbye is notable for is it's, uh, really intense music video. And I asked Steph to be our special music video correspondent this week. Steph Well. Boy, do I have a treat for you. I have now watched this video five or six times, which I'm going to tell you is like probably... seven times too many. Cheryl I love this song. And I know it's seven times too many. Okay. Steph There's definitely like a theme that was developed for it and there was like, I'm assuming quite the pitch meeting for this. It's like very dark and mystical. There's like a weird old movie patina filter on things, it feels like? It starts with the girls and there's obviously only the four of them. So each one is in their own car driving up to this big castle. Ashley I also just want to note that they're in like black cars and it's like raining and it's like very ominous. Steph Yeah, it's so very dark and mystical. There's wolves running around- Sinead Like through the forest there wolves galloping. Steph I think the wolves are supposed to be symbols of the girls. At the very least is Emma and Mel C because they're the only ones in white and I only ever could count max three wolves so maybe it's not. They go into this castle that is like frozen and everyone is frozen inside. There's couples, lovers, and there's like weird little like firework explosions that happen that seem just sort of trigger- I don't want to say plot points... But yeah, it's like plot points in the video, I'm gonna say, are triggered by fireworks. Things start floating from the sky, but it's different for every girl. So that's fun. Looks like Emma got toilet paper falling from the sky. Then there's another firework explosion and all of a sudden everyone's magically melted and the girls just leave. Sinead They broke the curse of the castle. Steph Yeah, they're so spicy they reheated them. Megan This doesn't seem to align with the lyrics nor the sentiment of the song at all. Sinead No! It makes no sense! Elyse Is it just about not being cold to people? Steph I mean at the end I guess they leave so that could be like saying goodbye. And they mention a love- like love and stuff in the song and like it's definitely lovers that are like frozen in time. Sinead It's just like they're... they're so glam, like old Hollywood glam and these cars with the wolves running around when they're like going to this castle so you're like what the fuck are they doing are they like going to some kind of party or something? And then they enter this house with all these frozen couples and you're just like?? And at the end like I guess they broke the curse that was like cursing all the couples in the house. Ashley Or it's like a rebirth or like resurrection or something? Because if they're viewing this as their entry into like the new era of Spice Girls... I dunno, could be that. But it's so funny that you say that because the very beginning I honestly thought they were going to a funeral or cemetery because I stopped it before they got to the castle. And to me it's like funeral vibes. They look like they're in a funeral procession. Sinead Like you think you're about to see Geri's casket and then instead they- Ashley I genuinely did. I genuinely thought they're gonna like allude to that. And then I was like, I'm gonna start watching so I can hear about it later. But I wanna watch the whole thing now. Steph Yeah, it's wild. It's truly wild. I don't know who thought of it...but they were high or something. That's my special take on Goodbye! [Chimes transition sound] Cheryl After releasing this trainwreck of a video to the world, the girls agree to take a six month break, largely owing to the fact that Mel B and Victoria are pregnant. In February of 1999, Mel B's daughter, Phoenix, was born and Victoria's son Brooklyn was born a few weeks later in early March. Also, during this break, Mel C starts to take her solo career even more seriously, so she temporarily moves to the US to work on a record. Megan They're starting to release singles on their own, Geri left, they're taking a break to have babies, like did you guys as fans... was this... were you thinking this is the end, like this is it? Sinead 100% Steph I think Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera came out also around this time. So it sort of eased the transition. Sinead Honestly, for me, from when Geri quit is when I started divesting from the Spice Girls. Like, I didn't even think they could really be -I mean, I was very young- but I didn't think they could really be a band anymore because she was gone. Ashley Same because I don't remember them taking a break. I don't even remember them having kids... I remember Geri leaving. I don't remember this period at all. And if that lines up, Steph, then like I definitely would have been distracted by Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. Megan It just goes to show though, that all that work they did to stay in the news cycle, stay in the media, no matter sort of what it was about, was really critical if you forget about them that quickly. You know, they were so big, such a big part of your life, and then they're just gone when you're not hearing about them. So they really did have to do that hustle to stay on top, I guess. Sinead For sure. So the next time there's really major Spice news, we're flashing forward actually seven months to July of 1999. And this was because Victoria married David Beckham in a huge ceremony with tons of press attention. They were married at Luttrellstown Castle in Ireland. And there was clearly like an aesthetic choice to position them as like kind of the next generation of British royalty. You know, they got married at this castle, Victoria wore a crown during the ceremony of the wedding, and they also sat on these like giant wedding thrones. They sold their wedding photos for a million pounds with OK magazine, like it was one of those exclusive contracts. I'm going to send you guys a couple pictures of their wedding aesthetic because it's wild. So the top picture is ceremony... Elyse So their baby has a cowboy hat! What is it with cowboy hats and these girls' weddings? Steph They love a cowboy hat! So strange. Elyse So weird! Steph Maybe they made a weird pact. They were like everyone has to have one cowboy hat at their wedding. Like, Victoria and David kind of got off easy because you could just throw it on a baby and no one's gonna be like "ew" at the cowboy hat on a baby. Elyse Omg and then Emma has like a weird fedora! Sinead It's like it's like a hybrid cowboy fedora. It has a real angle to it. Elyse It really does. It's a jaunty cowboy. Cheryl Also in July of 1999, Geri releases her first studio album Schizophonic, which is the first full album released by a Spice Girl, or in her case former Spice Girl. The album itself reaches number four in the UK... /episode/index/show/spiceinvaders/id/21387011

E10: The Beginning of the End 11/29/2021

E10: The Beginning of the End Transcript 11/29/2021

E10: The Beginning of the End Transcript Steph Like, we're attributing jetlag to breaking up the Spice Girls? Ashley Alright, what are we talking about today? Episode 10! Sinead As we talked about last episode, they fired Simon Fuller, the press was really shitty to them about it, it was very dramatic. With Simon gone, the girls are ready to get into the real business of running the world -lol- and being able to publicly claim that they're doing it for themselves. They have hired Nancy Phillips who is running the office for them and the girls are officially managing themselves. The band found themselves at London's Victoria Palace Theatre the first week of December 1997, meeting the queen. They did actually follow all of the typical royal protocols this time, although there was a little bit of drama that people felt that Geri didn't curtsy deep enough, which the press speculated was because she was wearing a very low cut dress and couldn't curtsy any deeper. I'll send you guys a picture of that in a second. Elyse What a stupid thing. Ashley They're just obsessed with her boobs. Sinead Yeah, I mean, I think it's just misogyny and I think it's just looking for any reason to criticize them. It wasn't like with Charles where they were always kind of pushing boundaries with the queen. They did not, like they were very much on their best behavior. And the queen told the Spice Girls that she already knew about them because Prince Harry had told her, which I think- Elyse Those boys were OBSESSED, I feel like that's come up in half of our episodes is how obsessed the princes are the Spice Girls. Steph I feel like we should interview Prince Harry. Elyse Yeah, I can't imagine why he wouldn't want to... be on the show... Steph I can't imagine either. Sinead Anyway, if you want to check your Spice Girls chat, you can see all five of them looking very proper, which is unusual. Elyse Oh, they look so beautiful. Sinead You can see that Geri's dress is quite low cut. Elyse It's very Marilyn Monroe. Ashley Yeah, almost loose even it's like tighten up those straps. You know, the fabrics hanging off. Sinead Mel C looks beautiful and extremely like demure. It's like a different person. Ashley Mm hmm. Sinead She really does. When I saw these pictures of them meeting her it was the sweetest and most polite and... like they knew how important this was or quote unquote important whatever if you believe in the queen. Like she's the- Megan She exists! Ashley No, she's like Santa Claus to me. Sinead I don't believe in queens. I'm not going to tell you you shouldn't believe in queens- personally, I don't think they exist. Sinead If you don't subscribe to like their weird cult of like "you need to treat them this way because they exist" then you might just be like fuck them, whatever. I think, I mean, all of them are working class girls from England meeting the queen. That's a big deal. They all were very sedate and sweet to her. Megan So she only knew about them because of Harry? Like, she watches no news... Does not listen to the radio.... I don't understand? Sinead Didn't know that their son- her son kept getting embroiled in weird situations with them in the press? Ashley I'm like really shocked that she wasn't briefed on that because it would have been all over the press. Sinead I'm quite certain that the only show the queen knows about is Murder She Wrote. It's the only one she'll watch. She has it all on DVD and she refuses to admit to the existence of any other media. Steph I feel like she's into Murdoch Mysteries, too. Sinead No, I think it's Prime Suspect because Prime Suspect made the mould for a lot of woman crime dramas and it's British. Prime Suspect is like the archetype of like every British crime drama with like a rough-and-tumble woman at the head. Prime Suspect is where all of that came from. Elyse Oh I didn't know that! Okay, yeah, I agree with you, that's what the queen's into. Cheryl She's very picky about women solving murders. She's like no, no, no- Steph So Mrs. Marple Cheryl Yeah, Sinead I liked that- also, we've just like white girl projected on the queen that she's only interested in true crime. Megan I was thinking that it's like, is this like a known thing like, did I miss a queen press release? Ashley Literally what I was thinking like, why is she only into crime haha Steph She's the original white lady intro true crime. When we have Harry on we'll ask him if she's into true crime or not. Cheryl As we talked about previously, shortly after this event, Spice World premieres in theaters on December 26, 1997. It was an instant hit with audiences. Their singles are actually doing really well and the girls actually end 1997 as the most played artists on US radio. They're still incredibly financially successful. Their merch is flying off the shelves for the 1997 Christmas season. However, while this is happening, and as we just saw, the press continues to tear at them at every opportunity. And we have a headline- Steph "Any more Spice and you'll be ill"? Megan That's a weird headline. That's a bad headline. Sinead I think it was just, I mean, it's obviously hitting back on a lot of what we talked about in episode nine, which is just that the press was constantly at them for being oversaturated. And because critically, the movie was panned, I think it was easy to lean into that. But this is where this movie becomes incredibly successful when it's released to public audiences. As we talked about last time, it was the biggest grossing like celebrity band movie ever. It was also around this time that some prominent music figures claimed that the Spice Girls were the Antichrist. Steph What?! Megan Who think they're the Antichrist? Sinead I will tell you. So first- Ashley Like musicians? Sinead Musicians and famous record producers. So first, we have noted convicted murderer/record producer Phil Spector, who at this time this is before he murdered. Steph Okay, okay, so this is pre-murder Phil Spector- Sinead Pre-murder Phil Spector. And if you guys aren't familiar with Phil Spector, he's like a huge, huge deal in the music industry. Like he has worked with every famous act between like 1965 and like 19- or 2000, or even later than 2000. He claimed in an article that they were the Antichrist and it got headlines, this was in November of 97. His reason was essentially that they destroyed the music industry by virtue of being popular at all because he thinks their music is bad. On top of that, in Christmas of 1987, Thom Yorke, who is the lead singer of Radiohead a band that I fucking loved in the 90s, now I feel bad, also claimed in an interview that they were the Antichrist. Okay, and they are specifically- both of them have said the Spice Girls are the Antichrist. He said: "I'd move to an island where you can't get hold of any Spice Girls stuff at all." Steph Maybe they thought "2 Become 1" really was about Jesus and his mom. Elyse Um, you know what, though, it doesn't make me think back to that time when like, it was very in to shit all over anything feminine. Like, it was very much the time -I guess it's still the time- but I remember a lot of the whole like, "not like the other girls" attitude in like movies, media, even like, honestly, I felt that way too. Like I didn't want to be thought of as being just like another one of the girly girls. I wanted to be the cool girl. And I think that it's just like so much of that, that they embody so much femininity, that it was very cool and very easy to like... that is literally the antithesis of everything good. Sinead Absolutely. And I think in a way the Spice Girls don't help their case in 1997, because they don't prioritize the music the way they prioritize the rest of their career, but it's still good pop music. And I think part of, like, for Phil Spector and for Thom Yorke, I mean, these are like big rock and roll types, who obviously are like rock and roll's the best genre of music. It's the only legitimate genre like anti-pop sentiment is common. And it does tie into what Elyse said about pop typically being something that's directed towards women, they essentially were just mad that the Spice Girls were popular because they personally didn't like their music, ergo, they are the Antichrist. Ashley Did it have anything to do with, like, the saturation like in terms of merch? Sinead Yeah, the Thom Yorke interview that he did definitely was a lot about like, why am I seeing them in every shop? That's not how you consume music, which I think he has like a shred of a point. But then it's destroyed when he calls them the fucking Antichrist because they're not the fucking Antichrist. Again, if you believe in God... still, they're not the Antichrist. Cheryl I often generally feel like to trash this place girls music is to miss the point of the Spice Girls. They are musicians, yes, technically, but like they are an experience and they are a brand. You know what I mean? Like it's like, yes, okay, fine. Say what you want about the music... Yes, it did last, but like, also, that was never the point. It helps, but I don't think it was ever the point. Ashley Yeah, but despite that, they're still competing in the same charts that the other bands are so like, regardless of their intention, like they're playing in the same pool, so... Cheryl I think it also just makes me think like, these are a bunch of dudes who are bitter that the music business changed. Elyse Totally Sinead 100%. And we've talked about quite a few times now the sort of like, feud between Oasis and the Spice Girls. Well, on New Year's Eve of 1997, British newspaper headlines ran citing a poll from the public which voted Oasis and the Spice Girls the worst bands of 1997. Megan That love-to-hate. Even if you were like "oh the Spice Girls, I can't stand them", you knew all the songs, you knew the Stop dance, I'm sure you do still today. Cheryl During this time, the girls are actually taking a year outside the UK to avoid taxes on the millions they are earning. Several members of the band spend Christmas of 1997 in Dublin. It was chosen as a rehearsal hub for the upcoming tour because of its proximity to the UK, so they could invite over friends and loved ones, and because it met the tax requirements for the year. Victoria actually said that being this close to the UK would have been unfathomable with Simon in charge as he liked to set them up further away. Sinead And while they were in Dublin doing their rehearsals for the Spice World Tour, they actually like video linked into the American Music Awards, which were celebrating their 25th year in 1998 and they really wanted the Spice Girls to be on it. And they actually won fan voted awards for Best New Album, Best New Artist, and Best Group. This was February of 98, after they were supposed to have failed. They were doing fine. Cheryl Also in early winter 1998 Victoria's engagement to David becomes public. She was actually really adamant that they have a proper engagement before going on tour. They had actually been engaged before previously in a very private thing in the days before Princess Diana's death. They were keeping it secret and they had just like moved the rings they normally were to their ring fingers for the day until the paparazzi caught them and the photos were published. For their proper engagement, the pair spent a night at sort of a spa hotel hybrid after a successful football match. And not only did he propose she also proposed to him, and said "don't forget about girl power, I have to ask you" Elyse That's cute. Steph That's cute. Cheryl It's cute. Sinead Sure throwing that word around a lot, eh? Sinead That might be one of the closest things to actually feminist, though, that they've stumbled upon- Elyse That is so true. Sinead -that Victoria wanted an equal engagement instead of just it going one way. Elyse I mean it's a numbers game. Like, if you say in every other sentence eventually you're gonna stumble upon something that's accidentally radical. Sinead You are correct. Cheryl Okay, but are the 22 engagement rings she has acquired also Girl Power? Sinead In my opinion, yes. Elyse Uh, I think they are... neutral. Sinead Going a little bit forward. "Stop" was released as a single on March 9 1998, which was my ninth birthday. It peaked at number two in the UK behind "It's Like That" by Run DMC, which actually finally broke the group's streak of number one singles because every single they'd ever released prior to this was a number one. Ashley I do think it's ironic that the first song that is not a number one is called "Stop". Elyse What foreshadowing haha Sinead I also find it very funny because there was sort of all this talk about it being a flop because it was number two, and it was a sign that they weren't doing as well anymore. But like, everyone knows that song, and everyone knows the dance to that song. So it's very funny to me that it's like, "oh, no, they're stumbling". But it's like 25 years later and we're like, everyone knows that song though. Like it's a... it's one of their most iconic songs, you could probably argue Cheryl Also like, number two is not a bad place to be, guys. "Stop" was also much better received by critics than most of their other singles, drawing comparisons to The Supremes from Rolling Stone and Billboard magazine. Most critics complimented the song's Motown influence and sound. Sylvia Patterson of NME called the track "an obscenely catchy Motown swinger" and "a proper pop genius destined to be number one until Japan falls into the sea". And most of us remember this really iconic video with the dance moves and then going through a residential street in Ireland and doing the Stop dance and interacting with members of the community. Elyse I'm very surprised that the critics liked that song. Like now that you say it had Motown influences I can hear it, like I see what they're saying. But I guess I was taken aback by that originally, because the lyrics are so basic. And like, I love it. It's an amazing song. Like, who doesn't love it? And it's so fun to dance to. But I'm just very surprised that of all their songs, that's the one that critics were like, "Yeah, okay, that's not bad". Sinead I'm also wondering, too, if it's just because by this point, this is their sixth or seventh single that's being reviewed. And maybe they're tired of just being like "fuck pop music". Elyse Yeah, maybe Sinead Because so many of the earlier negative reviews have since been revised, like in retrospectives, and there's so much like... Like "Who Do You Think You Are" now is like considered one of the best songs of the 90s. But it got trashed at the time. It could be that they were finally just tired of saying everything pop sucks, I'm not sure. Cheryl I also wonder though, how much of it is this is the sound that like is written for a girl group. Like, the Motown sound is written to be performed by a girl group, I think as part of this. And I think the other part of it too is it's the sound that they successfully replicate really cleanly, like a lot of their other tracks, sort of pick and choose influences, whereas like this track almost like adopts as much of Motown as like it physically possibly could hold and still make it on a chart. Whereas like other tracks, it's like, oh, here's like a little bit of hip hop influence and a little bit of the Latin influence, you know? Elyse Mmhmm like they picked a lane for this one is what you're saying. Cheryl Yeah. Elyse Yeah, that makes sense. Sinead Despite their devastating entry at number two, they did perform the song at the BRIT Awards in 1998. They also received this special award, quote, unquote, that's what it was called for "being one of the biggest bands on the planet". It was a pretty cynical move on the part of the Brits that was read as a way to get the girls onto the show, because they weren't nominated for any awards, but they wanted the ratings. And so they created this special award, and it was only given out once to the Spice Girls that one time in 1998, it's never been used again. Elyse You can tell when they had a brainstorm to name that award they went with the first thing that came up, they put one phrase on the board and they're like, yep, that's it, let's go, don't rethink it's fine. Sinead Cheryl and I were interested to see what other awards were they doing in 1998 and the Grammys completely ignored the Spice Girls in 1998. They were not invited. Actually, I shouldn't say that they may have been invited, they were certainly not invited to perform. They were not nominated for anything, they just were off the radar. Elyse Their loss. Cheryl So while all of this is playing out, in late February of 1998, the Spice World tour kicks off in Dublin. The tour saw the group perform to an estimated 2.1 million fans over 97 total shows, covering the UK, Europe and North America. The North American leg of the tour would have 41 sold out shows play to over 720,000 fans and gross $60 million US. It is to date the highest grossing tour ever by a female group. So with the tour chugging across Europe, things actually become increasingly difficult for Geri. Performing live, we've talked about previously, was always kind of Geri's weak spot. She hasn't been to stage school, she has no formal training in singing or dancing. And those skills don't come to her naturally either. Previously, when doing a media circuit, she'd been able to rely on her wit and her charm in press tours, filming Spice World, and filming commercials. You know, you can get away with being charming there too. But in a concert tour, it's a very different beast, really not a good venue for those talents. Elyse I have a counterpoint. Geri says very explicitly in her autobiography that the thing that started to really wear on her was the travel. And she said the shows were amazing; "the shows were easy for me because you could rely on the adrenaline", she said there was still magic there. But it was as soon as you came offstage, you didn't have that adrenaline anymore. And the travel was, in her words, "life sucking" and she just felt like a hamster on a wheel. And that that's really what took the toll. It wasn't the performances themselves. Steph So Geri leaving the Spice Girls, like we're attributing jetlag to breaking up the Spice Girls? Sinead No, no Elyse No, it was way more complex. Sinead Yeah Steph I know I was just being a bit of a shit. Sinead There was a lot of factors. The tour changed the power dynamics in the band, where Geri had always kind of been in, especially since Simon had been fired, in quite a leadership... /episode/index/show/spiceinvaders/id/21298640

E9: Kill or be Killed 11/22/2021

E9: Kill or Be Killed Transcript 11/22/2021

E9: Kill or Be Killed Transcript Sinead: Really interesting quote from Victoria who said “Simon Fuller had always said a man will ruin this group, meaning one of our boyfriends from the outside. But the man who started to tear the Spice Girls away from each other was him.” Elyse: How ironic. Spice Invaders Theme Song: [over trumpet music] It’s got theme song vibes. Like danceable, funky. [Laughter]. So 90s. Girl power. Spice Invaders. Ashley: After Spice World, what happened next? Sinead: Are we ready? Ashley: Yeah. What are you going to talk about today? Sinead: Well, last week we teased about Simon Fuller getting fired. So first we're going to talk about the men behind the scenes of the Spice machine, and the publicity stuff that the girls had in South Africa before they fired Fuller. Cheryl: One of the dirty secrets of girl power is actually that many of the top rules are held by men. Jumping back in time briefly, The Dublin Evening Herald ran a piece in June 1997 with the headline “Manpower Made The Spice Girls.” The article rehashes Chris Herbert’s role in the group’s origins, uncovers that even less powerful roles like “personal lawyer,” “Accountant” and “official photographer” are filled by men. It exemplifies something that a lot of news outlets are sort of hinting and sniffing around at the time, is that there's a heck of a lot of men behind the scenes of the Spice machine, and some of them are responsible for the level of fame the band was enjoying. And no one is quite representative of this tension, like, as much as Simon Fuller who, as we know, is their manager. There's a quick jump into what a manager actually does. They are really key players in a musician's career, they ensure music ends up in the right hands and negotiate contracts, they help set up gigs. They oversee the day to day business affairs of an act. And they work in the best interest of the act on larger projects and other professional matters. And they act as an advisor when it comes to long term plans. Knowing all that, we also know that the band schedule and the demands on them are insane. At this time, there's naturally some conflicts that are going to happen between the girls themselves and their management. But Geri and Mel B, whose relationship has been characterized as intense, both by them and everyone around them, when they were getting along the relationship was fantastic. But when they weren't, it could get ugly, which of course, when everyone involved working over 100 hours a week, conflict is kind of inevitable. And with this happening, Fuller is an unusually involved manager, he admits later to David Sinclair in the girls biography, “I got involved in everything. There wasn’t a single row I wasn’t in the centre of, basically pulling them off each other or else siding with the one that was about to get pummelled to death or kicked out of the group. It’s one thing to be a manager who chooses the songs, guides the image and all the other things. But it’s quite another when you’re actually brokering the peace on a daily basis. That’s kind of full on.” So Victoria remembers the hands-on management style quite differently. She refers to the Fuller strategy as divide-and-rule to keep the girls separate and happy. She says “It was very rare that we were all five together without our hands-on manager busying around. No wonder we didn’t talk.” Sinead: Another key player in the Spice machine, Gerard Tyrrell, their media lawyer, arranged one of the biggest publicity moments in the girls' careers. And this was going to be on the exact same day that “Spice World” was going to be released. Sinead: Do we want to talk about how men were like behind the Spice Girls? Their whole team, like all the power players behind them, are basically all men. And they got a lot of criticism for that in the press. Steph: Like, I know they did choose Fuller to be their manager, but like how many? Like what are the players in the music industry at this point? Did they even have much choice over men like I get but they're probably gonna they got chastised over everything in the media, but like they couldn't have done anything, right. Even if they maybe did it right. They would have still gotten criticized for it. But did they even have a choice to have many women supporting them other than presumably, like a secretary or two? Sinead: There were definitely female managers by this point in time. I think it's actually Victoria who said that they chose to go with a man. No, it might have been Geri that I'm thinking of, who chose to go with a male manager because they felt they were already kind of a liability being the five of them as girls and like the model being unproven. There are other women for sure who were managing and in like sort of executive type roles, certainly way more men but there were not it wasn't like there were no women. Megan: Thinking back about like all the history you guys have taken us through and what I read like when they were doing their crazy running around to this producer, to that producer, showing off trying to take meetings like, you know, doing their work to make it, not a lot of women they were going to see or collaborating with, maybe there weren't a lot available, but I find it hard to believe it in the 90s there were no women in music. So I do wonder, was it just because the men were more successful and that’s who they were targeting? Or those are the ones they had successful collaborations with? So it just makes me wonder, I don't know. Steph: I mean, building off of what you just said, Sinead, if the girls were afraid, being like a first real girl group, and then not wanting to risk on top of that being with female management, female managers might have been doing this like the same thinking like, we can't ruin our career. If we're just kind of actually finally getting a foothold in the door, Why would I ruin my career with something that's not going to be a sure thing? I'm going to try and go, I'm going to keep going, building with a sure thing. And then when I'm, like, more established, I risk, they would have essentially been working against each other, even though they were going to try and accomplish the same thing. Oh, the world. Ashley: It’s a fair point. Sinead: Yeah, no, it definitely is. Elyse: I think there's also like, the reverse way of looking at it, which obviously isn't how the press would look at it. But I think you could just as easily say, like, look at how many people these women are employing and like they’re men, but they're kind of their boss, which I don't know, maybe that's kind of a cool reverse. Sinead: So, speaking of some of those men, on November 1 1997, the band headed to Johannesburg to perform at the two nations concert, which is a concert presented by the nation's trusted charities supported by Nelson Mandela in post-apartheid South Africa. There were 28,000 tickets sold. Some of them were given away actually in some of the poorer townships around Johannesburg, to celebrate the musical and cultural ties between Britain and South Africa. The real story of course, obviously was behind the scenes, the band would perform three tracks for free and in exchange the Spice Girls would get to meet Nelson Mandela in front of the press. So basically, they brokered a promotional stop that would become international news. According to Mandela's reps they were dissatisfied with the idea but they eventually agreed because of the star power of the Spice Girls for the charity concert, they thought it was worth it. And Mandela reportedly said to Gerard Tyrrel “don't worry, I'm used to being used” with a smile. Elyse: Oh, no. Cheryl: So due to all these machinations the girls have ended up in front of the world’s cameras standing wedged between Nelson Mandela and Prince Charles, cameras flashing in their faces. Steph: Oh, another Prince Charles moment. They love him so much. Sinead: That motherfucker’s back. [laughter] Cheryl: And he says more stupid stuff. When Mandela was asked by journalists how he felt about the girls, he first claimed to be too old for them, to which Geri responded “You’re as young as the girl you feel, and I am 25”. Which I think we should just do a sidebar is a vast improvement over her saying she's 16. Ashley: I also just think it's weird that she says the girl you feel, it just sounds so intimate. It's like, you could say the girl you see, she could just say me. The girl you feel..like [laughter] Sinead: But Ashley, you have to understand Prince Charles is there. It's an opportunity for Geri to be sexy near him. Ashley: I guess… Steph: I was going to say, Geri truly wants to fuck the patriarchy. [laughter] Elyse: I think I interpreted that completely differently because it's in her book too. But it's you’re as old as the girl you feel. It's like you feel inside. Ashley: But then she said and I'm 25, right? Elyse: Oh my god. Yes. But I think I thought of it as like, a cute quaint, like, I feel I'm 25 and I feel 25. Oh, that's so much grosser. Sinead: Mandela went on to claim that these are my heroes, and that this is one of the greatest moments of my life. Steph: I never thought I could relate to Nelson Mandela. But there it is. [laughter] Elyse: Geri and Mel B also stole his toilet paper because they thought it would be fun to keep some of his toilet paper, to have Nelson Mandela's toilet paper. They took a few squares of loo roll. Sinead: I actually have a quote of Mel B talking about that during the press conference after where the press asked them like what did you do at Mandela's house because they were there for like a private event. And then they talked to the press. Mel B said quote “I said to him, I've just pinched some bog roll from your toilet and he just looked at me” Megan: Did he even know what that meant? Pinched bog roll? Sinead: Maybe, maybe not. Steph: Maybe he put it together like they stole toilet paper. I don't know. [laughter] Sinead: I don't think that that man knew how much toilet paper was in his house. So it was just like a weird thing. Like I wonder where his toilet roll is now? Does Mel have it at her house? Elyse: They must’ve kept it. One of them must? Sinead: Or it got accidentally used because how would you know? Steph: Well, did they take a whole roll or did they take just some squares? Sinead: Oh, they took a whole roll. Elyse: Oh, well, we have another we need to have a segment where Geri and Mel B's recollections don't align because I think Geri just said she took a few squares, Cheryl: Victoria claims they took five pieces and some pebbles from a plant so that everyone would have a piece. Ashley: I love how they all conspired to steal. Sinead: They each took a square of toilet paper and a rock. Cheryl: Yeah. Megan: Well, we've seen their outfits where would they hide an entire roll? Elyse: True. You could fit a few in the NASA suit. Megan: I only saw sort of positive press about this meeting like both sides seem to enjoy it. Did anyone read anything otherwise? Sinead: There was cultural criticism at the time and there has been since so David Sinclair, who wrote the biography of Spice Girls said, “Here was the ultimate symbol of a pop world that had been turned on its head; a world in which the earnest politics of 80’s protest had been replaced by the frivolous show business gesture of the 90s. For many observers the very idea of a man of Mandela’s gravitas being maneuvered into meeting with the Spice Girls was a trivialisation of everything for which he stood”. Ashley: Yet he said it was one of the greatest moments, like, what? Sinead: I mean, I feel like he was being sarcastic. Elyse: Really? Ashley: Have you heard a clip? Sinead: Yeah there’s video of it. Ashley: And he sounds sarcastic? Sinead: No, I mean, he's just being polite. I think he was grateful because they had the star power for his charity, like it was very much a quid pro quo of the entertainment industry. And it's not like that's unusual. He needed more star power, because he was raising money for post apartheid South Africa, like this charity, and like building connections and stuff, and the their team behind them are just masterful at taking a moment and making it into a huge amount of press for themselves. Cheryl: So yeah, the concert itself is positioned as like, the concert is about the cultural partnership between the two nations. So Britain and South Africa. But beyond Mel C’s remark that This couldn't have happened 10 years ago, because of apartheid. The girls really don't acknowledge the backdrop of this moment that this takes place on. Sinead: And like they and their team were principally concerned about their image, not a lot more. Megan: They've been in political trouble before. Maybe they were kind of told, like, just don't get talking about it, so no one will ask for your opinion. Sinead: It's definitely possible. I mean, I definitely think part of their media training was not to say controversial things if they could, or if they were going to, it was like fun, controversial things, not like life or death, controversial things, because that quote that I told you guys from David Sinclair about the 80s protest, he's referring to the fact that in the 80s, like, there were super groups featuring Bono and Bruce Springsteen making songs, protesting apartheid and wanting that system to fall and there was a huge cultural and economic boycott of South Africa. Artists refused to perform there because of apartheid. So like, there was such a significant history and the criticism is that they say stuff like, oh, we stole some toilet paper from his house, or like Emma also said, “It felt a bit like we were his children cuddling up, he was very warm like a father”. Like it's just kind of shallow and vapid like, but also they're just doing their job, and they were put there by someone else, too. [Chimes] Sinead: After they met Mandela, the group was finally given a couple of days off at the Sun City resort outside of Johannesburg. This was the first time they'd had time off since before they simultaneously shot Spice World and recorded the album and they were not in great spirits at the resort. Mel B actually wrote in her journal, “I feel like a headless chicken. I am physically drained. I can’t stand it any more. And no one gives a shit. No one.” As we’ve discussed before with Elyse, Geri similarly had been struggling in a major way. She had been asking Simon for a week off for a while, seeking treatment for what she would later divulge was an eating disorder, which he would not allow, telling her “There are two reasons Geri. [why she couldn’t have the time off] One, it sets a bad precedent amongst the girls. If you take a week off then everybody will be asking for one. And two, we sold 18 million copies of the first album. That set the benchmark. We want to sell 19 million copies this time.” Megan: But it's just like, they all might want a week off? As if like, they don't deserve a week off. Like, I don't know, that's horrible. Cheryl: Yeah. So while the girls have sometimes decompress, Simon Fuller isn't present for this trip, he's recovering from back surgery and so for the first time in a long time, the girls actually get a chance to talk to each other about the experiences and pressure they're all feeling and as well as their growing resentment of Simon’s interference. Robert Sandal at Virgin later says,“I think what happened in South Africa, when he wasn’t there, was that they started to compare notes and started to catch him out. Because he’s a very feline and rather creepy character like that. They realised how he’d been trying to keep them slightly at arm’s length from one another”And so with this time, and with Geri and Mel B at the helm, the group decided they were going to sack him. Sinead: Do any of you want to add anything about negative feelings that your Spice Girl had towards Simon Fuller prior to him being fired, Elyse I figured you might have some? Elyse: Yeah, I mean, it was obvious she was not happy with him. She being Geri, sorry. But it wasn't just her, like from her bio it sounds like the entire group was really, really tired of him and dealing with him and the restrictions. And I was actually just looking at a quote from Geri's book where she says “a list of why we should sack Simon put spirit back into the group, proves to the world we are not a manufactured band, we have nothing to lose, just hire someone to finish September” and then that evening, they all immediately got on the phone with their lawyers and started hashing out a plan. So I think it was kind of you know, simmering beneath the surface for everyone. And Geri included, particularly after he wouldn't give her the time off. Sinead: Yeah, so as soon as the band returned to London from their Sun City trip, Mel B and Geri contacted their lawyers to set up meetings. They wanted to drop the paperwork to be ready as quickly as possible so that they could just fire him and move on. Cheryl: So Victoria reflecting back on this moment notes “It probably sounds really calculating that we got rid of Simon Fuller when he was in New York, totally bedridden, unable to move with back trouble, but one thing I learned from the game warden in South Africa was that to survive you have to be ruthless. There’s no room for sentimentality in the wilds of Africa or the music business. It’s kill or be killed.” Sinead: I'm cringing at multiple layers of that Elyse: Yeah, big time…. [laughter] Cheryl: It's funny actually reading Victoria's book that she keeps trying to put herself in the driver's seat behind this decision. But she's also one of the biggest brands that's gone back to work with Simon after. [Chimes] Cheryl: As the next step in our story, the girls fly to Rotterdam for the MTV Europe awards but that morning 19 Management and Simon Fuller were notified that they were being fired. Steph: I don't know I like how exactly, I'm pretty sure that this is true because Mel C said in a podcast, Alan Cummings podcast, that Geri stole a PA’s filofax like just like Rolodex of numbers because they didn't have anyone's contacts and then put it in like a big tote bag and they were rehearsing for the show. And she just kept the tote bag with her the entire time while they were rehearsing because they didn't want to lose it or have it be noticed like it was stolen. Sinead: To add to your story stuff because 19 Management had been so involved in the girls daily affairs, the only mobiles they had were 19 Management property and they like could be cut off at any time. So after 19 was notified, the girls had to head into dress rehearsals, which is where that filofax got stolen, but they actually also stole their choreographer, Camilla Bates's mobile phone, because Geri needed to make sure that she had one. So she took it from the choreographer to the point that she was secretly holding it on stage during the rehearsals. Camilla kept looking for it and calling it and it would start ringing on the stage. And the girls... /episode/index/show/spiceinvaders/id/21237419

E8: The Spice World Movie Episode 11/15/2021

E8: The Spice World Movie Episode Transcript 11/15/2021

E8: The Spice World Movie Episode Transcript Megan: I will be very happy to never have to watch that movie again. Sinéad: And I'm gonna watch it every year until I die probably Ashley: Yeah, same. Steph: I mean, I own it in three different... like, I have the VHS, which actually- Sinéad: I made Dave watch it and he was like “fuck you and this movie” and I was like “you can leave this marriage,” Spice Invaders Theme Song: [over trumpet music] It’s got theme song vibes. Like danceable, funky. [Laughter]. So 90s. Girl power. Spice Invaders. Sinéad: Okay, so today we're going to talk about Spice World the movie starting with how the idea came about, and then how it got made. It's a year into fame, spring of 1997, the band and Fuller were creating their own media to dominate the landscape. They first released in March of ‘97 a book called Girl Power, and it sold 200 copies just in a single day. They also produce Spice Magazine, which had six annual issues, and it was released under the tagline “the only official Girl Power magazine”. And then in April of ‘97, they released a behind the scenes video documentary called One Hour of Girl Power, and that sold like 500,000 copies. As we discussed on the “Capitalist Spice” episode, they were totally saturating the market with their wares, but also their story. They were selling the idea of who they were, even though it didn't really match the reality of,like,a producer-created band. And so that's where we get to the film is that's kind of the ultimate sale of like the myth of the Spice Girls. So doing a proper film allows the band to tell their story, the way they want to frame it, and reach millions of fans who will pay for the privilege just of seeing them. And it kind of adds a sense of gravitas to their career. Only the most profitable, like, musical group could even justify the expense of making a movie. We talked about before, back in 1985, when the band was on their first trip to the US. They had meetings with movie companies like DreamWorks and stuff. They also had a meeting with Disney, and apparently Disney pitched a script to them, which was rumoured to have had a young single mom fighting to form a band with the Spice Girls. Elyse: Wait like they were already the Spice Girls and she was like I want to be in, or they didn't exist yet? Cheryl: I think based on sort of like piecing things together it was sort of like an origin story where like the single mother was like bringing like the young baby Spice Girls together somehow. And then like, I don't know how the adult Spice Girls would feature, but like the idea of sort of like bringing, like teenage Spices together. Elyse: That seems like the shitty version of a movie that you do after the main movie when you want another generation of Spice Girls, like Spice Girls Generation Two or something like- Sinéad: Like, Dirty Dancing Havana Nights. Elyse: Yeah. All the Spice Girls had babies that are exactly the same as the original Spice Girls. Yeah, I'm glad they didn't do that. Sinéad: Yeah, so they really didn't like it. And shortly after Disney pitched it I guess their option on the project ran out so they weren't involved with Disney anymore. [Chimes] Sinéad: Fast forward to May of ‘97, the band traveled to Cannes to announce to the world that a Spice Girls film was on the horizon. They were actually, like, on a rooftop of a building in Cannes. I'll send you a picture in a second. They did a really charming interview with a BBC journalist which you can find on the internet. We'll definitely link it in the show notes and stuff. The journalists asked whether or not they could act and Victoria cheekily replied, "I'll tell you something. If we can't, you'll soon find out." Like, and they were all sitting on his lap and she's like, "I don't know. You'll just have to find out." Elyse: Wait, they were all sitting on his lap? Sinéad: Yeah, they were on a boat, a speedboat. Ashley: Just a casual detail haha Sinéad: Well so it's Cannes, right, it's Cannes, there's like yachts....We don't have time to show you the video in this episode, but it is worth watching. Steph: Because they arrive by speedboat, a lot. It's like a thing to arrive in places in Cannes by speedboat. Elyse: Oooh Sinéad: And so they were doing an interview with him on a boat. And it was like one of those little, like, bench, you know, the like, bench seats on like a little speedboat. The five of them were all, like, crowded on it with him. Elyse: Yeah, the kind they sang “Good Boy Lollipop” on. Sinéad: Exactly. Megan: So they went to the Cannes Film Festival to announce this? Sinéad: Yes. Megan: Isn't that like... I don't know. Like, it's not a masterpiece. Sinéad: Megan, what are you talking about?! Steph: Excuse me. This is a star studded cast. The who's who of British television and film. It was nominated for many awards. Doesn't matter what awards they were... Sinéad: Most of them Razzies... Steph: Doesn't matter, doesn't matter! Many awards! Megan: Just how embarrassing. Sinéad: Okay, um, now that Megan has slandered the band. Megan: Sorry haha Sinéad: If you look in the Spice Invaders chat, I sent a picture of them on the roof of Cannes and like the insane Spice mania fans all around them. Elyse: Oh, wow. Megan: That is a pretty cool photo. Elyse: Yeah, it is. Steph: Mel B's wearing the jumpsuit she wears in the end of the movie. Elyse: Oh, yeah. Sinéad: So anyway, after it was announced, the film which had not yet been made, had already been sold to distributors in every market. It was noted at the time that in order for the film to be ready for Christmas of 97, the announcement of it in May left, like, shockingly little time for production, which obviously we talked about last episode, how they had so much to do. It was ridiculous. And the same thing is true for the film. Cheryl: I think also going back to sort of the questions that were raised about, like, why Cannes. Part of the point of going to a film festival is to sell the distribution rights. So you want to go to the biggest film festival you can and going to Cannes says like “I have a certain amount of status even if this project isn't necessarily a star studded, glamourous, serious film affair.” Going to that festival means like, we are somebody. [Chimes] Cheryl: So before the cameras get rolling Fuller and the Spice Girls start assembling the team that will actually make the film. Simon Fuller gets into the role of executive producer. This role is a little bit flexible, but it sort of handles everything from getting the funding and attracting investors to the project, to elements of legal, script, marketing, and like advising the project would become his wheelhouse. His first hire is actually his brother, Kim Fuller, who has experience working in television. Kim joins the team as the screenwriter for the project and executive producer. Steph: Kim Fuller would also later go on to write From Justin To Kelly . Cheryl: And I believe the S Club 7 made-for-TV movie. Elyse: That is an example of someone leaving this Earth better than they found it. Megan: What a resume. Ashley: He truly found his niche. Elyse: Yeah. Steph: Yeah. Cheryl: I also like picture walking into meetings and being like, “so I wrote Spice World, you're also a music act. What do you think?” Just like for the rest of his life. Elyse: That's the whole pitch, eh. Cheryl: Yeah, yeah. Steph: It seemed to work. [Cimes] Cheryl: Bob Spiers is the well established director of Absolutely Fabulous fame, and other British productions, is brought on to direct. Elyse: Oh, that'll be how they got her name from Ab Fab. Steph: Jennifer Saunders. He also did Fry and Laurie which is probably why they're in it. He also did Are You Being Served and Fawlty Towers. So I'm not really sure why John Cleese is not in this film? Elyse: He did Fawlty Towers? Steph: He did some of the episodes, yeah. So where's John Cleese? Elyse: I know that we're pro Spice Girls. But I do side more with Megan that I do think the movie is an atrocity -a fun atrocity- but it's an atrocity. And the fact that he started with Fawlty Towers, I just think is absolutely insane. Because it's like one of the best comedies ever made. Megan: I didn't mean to like hate on the movie. It's fun. I quite enjoy watching it. The scenes themselves are fun. It's just like it's not a good movie though. Like if we're looking at like- Sinéad: It's a terrible, terrible movie! I was just joking when I said you slandered it. Steph: But it's so fun to watch. Elyse: I have breaking news. Steph asked by John Cleese wasn't in this because of the director of Fawlty Towers. He was asked to be but he turned it down. He was supposed to play Mr. Step, the drill sergeant! Which would have been so good! Megan: All I can think of is the Department of Silly Walks when they're doing that. Elyse: I feel so cheated. Sinéad: Does he say why he turned it down? Elyse: No cause John Cleese is an asshole. Sinéad: He is a fucking asshole. Elyse: Probably just didn't want to have any fun. He's a conservative little butt! I hate him except I love him. I grew up loving him. And now I realize he's a piece of shit. Sinéad: All our faves are problematic. It's perennial. Elyse: That's a nicer way to say it than piece of shit, he's problematic. Sinéad: He's really transphobic though. So I think we can say he's a piece of shit. Elyse: Okay, great. Great. I'll stand by it then. [Chimes] Cheryl: So one of the things I find really fascinating about this project is that the group themselves, they're credited as actors with the idea of the project, but like a very sort of high level that doesn't actually have any, like, power or like titling to it. But they're not writers, they're not producers, and they're not consultants on the project. Like on one hand, hiring smart people and letting them do their thing is good business sense. I mean, you know that you don't have the time when you're also recording an album to get down and dirty with all the nitty gritty details of making a film. But this also means they have very little formal creative control over the project. And despite their claims of girl power, and you know that they do what they want to do as artists, it seems really at odds to not have them... to not act in a role as producer or writer. So the script starts being written in January of 1997 by Kim Fuller. This is a completely unheard of and rush timeframe. Do you use the format of the Beatles film, A Hard Day's Night, kind of the only other movie with a band in existence at the time, but it follows the band for a short period of time while they just kind of live it up and embrace their brand, which is exactly what Fuller intended. Kim Fuller, reflecting back on the film, said "you can't expect the girls to act characters, so let's just let them be themselves. I'll make it a week in their life and make it surreal and kind of weird." Elyse: It's definitely those two things. Sinéad: So during Kim's writing process, the band would visit his house when they were in London and, like, share stories with him. Some of these stories became inspirations, such as the scene where the girls show up to the diner with Nicola and Blair Wannabe and dance on the tables, because that was kind of similar to what they did when they lived together in Maidenhead, and they were promoting themselves as Touch. And another one was not a direct comparison. But there was a story where the group fled a double decker bus that was in motion. And that kind of translated into the Spice bus speeding through the city with Victoria behind the wheel. In terms of their involvement, according to Kim, quote "Geri was much more involved in talking about the script than any of the others. She was more ambitious and she was helpful. She would say to me, well, actually, Victoria wouldn't say that, and then you change it around to make sure the lines were ringing true." One of the major challenges that Kim faced in writing was needing a central point of conflict or tension for the band to push against in order for the film to have an actual plot. Arguable plot. He said, "I put the mad Richard E. Grant manager as someone that they could all kick against, because I rather like subverting reality. But he wasn't supposed to be playing Simon. We did the Svengali joke with Roger Moore. He was more the Simon figure." I always assumed Simon Fuller was the Richard E. Grant character. Megan: Me too. Elyse: Yeah, I'm just surprised that Simon Fuller was okay with being cast as a Svengali type of character like a puppet master. I'm just surprised that he didn't... I don't know, quash that. I guess it maybe doesn't matter. Maybe you expect, you know, people like him to be playing that role. But that's like a pretty brutal depiction. Steph: Yeah, but the whole thing was like a bit also over the top from their own personality. Like they're poking fun at some things throughout it about their personalities and stereotypes. So maybe he was just like, man, it's par for the course that then I get this sort of exaggerated version, or like he believed it to be more of like an exaggerated version, you know? Elyse: Yeah, I think maybe it seems like seems a little bit heavier now, because of what we talked about in the last recording as well, which was just how sort of miserable everything was getting and how it was the first time Geri's energy was depleting because he wouldn't give her a day off. And like, maybe because that conversation is really fresh in my mind. And there are even like, direct lines in this movie that I'm like, Oh, my God, that is so reflective of what they're going through. And if you don't know that, or it's not being talked about, it seems just kind of meta and silly. But when you do know, it's like, oh, this is truly art imitating life. Sinéad: I agree with that. And I think that Kim Fuller claiming that Clifford wasn't Simon is almost like defending Simon a little bit, I think. Like, because I do think in real life, they were really feeling the pressure from Simon, as we talked about, and we will talk about later, which really directly is the Clifford character. He's the one putting the pressure on them. But anyway, that's just my thought on that. Cheryl: I also think it's really hard to complain when someone like Roger Moore steps on set to play you. Elyse: That's very true. Roger Moore with a teacup pig. Steph: With many little animals. That's really the key. Ashley: I know, I never really noticed that until today. Like every time there's a new animal... Steph: ...different animal. [Chimes] Sinéad: Because of all the hype around the project, and the intense popularity of the girls themselves, actors were clamouring for roles in this film. The band spent at least one afternoon flipping through pictures of British acting royalty. They actually picked Alan Cumming because Geri saw his photograph and recalled that she'd seen his performance in Hamlet and she really liked it. Kim Fuller brought on several key actors from his time working in television, the most notable being Richard E. Grant who plays the role of Clifford, the girl's manager. Apparently Grant's eight year old daughter heard the voicemail where he'd been offered the role and demanded that he accept it. Steph: That's amazing. Elyse: Wow. Megan: That's very sweet. Steph: I mean, I would do the same if my father was offered a role in Spice World. Sinéad: This is a great moment to talk about our favourite cameos, who was in this movie, like shockingly surprising, famous people. Also famous people that maybe weren't that famous when this was filmed, but have become more famous since, because this movie has it all. My personal favourite is Dominic West who plays the photographer in the fashion scene. Elyse: Yeah, oh yeah! Steph: I forget that one all the time. And I'm like, who's that guy? Sinéad: It shocks me every time because for me, I know him from The Wire and he is like, has an incredible, like enduring role in that series, which started filming not long after he would have filmed the Spice movie, but he certainly wasn't very famous when when this was filmed. Elyse: So this was the movie that started it all for him. Steph: Yeah. Sinéad: That's how Baltimore police decided you'd be great fit after being a photographer at a fashion shoot. Do you guys have any other celebs you want to talk about in the movie? Elyse: Well, I mean Meatloaf! Steph: Obviously Meatloaf! Elyse: How do we not talk about Meatloaf, that stud drivin' his bus? Steph: This also- this movie came out when my brother and I were going through a huge Meatloaf phase. Elyse: Oh yeah. Megan: As one does. Steph: We had his cassettes...um, yeah. Elyse: You know, Kevin McMaxford, the editor? He is played by Barry Humphreys aka Dame Edna! Sinéad: Whoa! Steph: I didn't know that! Elyse: Yeah, yeah! Dame Edna the drag queen! Sinéad: I didn't know that! Elyse: Yeah, I didn't now that either! Megan: That's cool! Sinéad: I've never seen him as anything but Dame Edna! Elyse: Same, that's why I didn't recognize him! Sinéad: Although seems like a missed opportunity to not have a drag queen in the movie but whatever. Elyse: Yeah... Steph: Don't they? They do though. At the end of... Elyse: Oh yeah at the rave! Megan: There's tons of drag queens you know when they go bring their pregnant friend out to a club. Elyse: Amendment then. Opportunity to have a drag queen get their SAG membership with a line. Their SAG card. Sinéad: You all are I'm sure familiar with that creepy paparazzi guy, the bald guy? Elyse & Steph:: Yeah, yeah. Sinéad: Um, so he actually played Riffraff in the Rocky Horror Picture Show movie. Elyse: Are you serious? Sinéad: Yup. And I didn't know that until I was like, wait, what the fuck- cause I knew Riffraff's name was Richard O'Brien. And then I was, like, could be a coincidence. And yeah, that's Richard O'Brien. Elyse: I can't believe I didn't know this. I was literally just looking at Richard O'Brien because I was just getting tickets actually for Rocky Horror, and I was looking him up and I didn't see Spice World. Wow. Steph: Is he ashamed of this movie? Sinéad: And then for me, the other like, notable millennial adjacent cameo is in the like, memory flashback of them in the cafe. The bartender is Fleabag's dad. Elyse: Oh, really? Steph: Oh, I remember hearing this. I've never I haven't seen Fleabag yet. Sinéad: It's Fleabag’s dad, but 20 years younger with a ponytail. Elyse: No way. Sinéad: On the infamous people attached to the movie file, do you guys know who Gary Glitter is? I wasn't sure.... /episode/index/show/spiceinvaders/id/21158006

E7: Too Much 11/08/2021

E7: Too Much Script 11/08/2021

E7: Too Much Script Sinead: I feel like we should open it in the way where it gets some funny one liner from the episode, that becomes the first line and it might not have anything to do anything, and then we just jump right in. It makes me laugh every time. But I don't know if it's gimmicky, I don't know. Ashley: Well, we already do that, like you mean [laughter] Steph: There’s the open! Spice Invaders Theme Song: [over trumpet music] It’s got theme song vibes. Like danceable, funky. [Laughter]. So 90s. Girl power. Spice Invaders. Megan: This is Spice Invaders, an obsessive breakdown of the history of the Spice Girls, and what they meant to the people who grew up with them. Ashley: Dun-dun... that’s what that reminds me of, you know what I mean? Like Law and Order [laughter] Megan: Law and Order dun-dun. Is that trademarked, can we use that? Ashley: I mean it’s my voice, they can’t do anything. [laughter] Elyse: Oh yeah! Let’s just use your voice. [laughter] Sinead: Okay, so last time we talked a lot about like, the capitalist machine behind the Spice Girls, and how all encompassing that was in 1997. Today we're sort of jumping off that part midway through ‘97 to see how they made it work like in practice. Elyse: Woohoo! Cheryl: So we're in late spring and early summer of 1997 and this is a really intense time for the band. Filming has started on Spiceworld the film, as the group is concurrently recording Spiceworld the album. We're gonna get into Spice World the film in more detail in the next episode, but it's worth noting that this is like two full time jobs. It's an incredibly demanding schedule, the president of virgin UK at the time, Paul Conroy refers to the girls as “the hardest working group in Christendom”. The girl's daily schedule starts at about 7am for a call time and would end at around 11pm so when they left the recording studio Elyse: Ooof. that's a long day Steph: At least they’re young. Sinead: Yeah, but they were literally like grinding their body into the ground Elyse: That’s crazy. Steph: Yeah no shit, that’s insane. Cheryl: Yeah, so according to Matt Rowe, who we met when he worked on Spice the album: “When they came in to record ‘Spice Up Your Life’ [...] it was the middle of the chaos. It had been booked in, that they were coming to record their next single, and write it, with us [...] there was going to be an MTV crew there filming them as they did this, which there was. Well, how can you possibly do this? You can’t write and record a song in half-an-hour with a film crew watching”. Megan: Didn’t they write ‘Wannabe’ insanely fast? Steph: Yeah, like 15 minutes. Sinead: They definitely did write a lot of their earlier songs quickly, but at the time when they were recording the Spice album, that was their only job was recording the Spice album, they were in the studio for a lot of time. Like they didn't have any other demands on their schedule, the way they ended up having them with Spiceworld because they're concurrently filming a movie as Cheryl mentioned. Cheryl: And it's also like working in creating is still like a really vulnerable process, like you can't do like perfect documentary-style stuff, while your songwriting and remember too like the way they work. Like it's not like they're just songwriting too, they're trying to think about the song and the choreography at the same time. And all of this does not look great for a documentary. So yeah, they're trying to literally do three things at a time, not just record the album. Megan: This is so much on their plate, like, especially since being home with COVID all the time, If I have to do two things in one day, I'm like, that's too many things, I can't imagine. Elyse: Yeah, they must be just like so far into burnout by this point that all of that like creativity and excitement and adrenaline of just starting the band, you have to imagine that like, it would be a completely different experience trying to write a song, when you're a little bit into it, and you've been traveling and you're doing like 20 hour days, and you're probably a little annoyed with each other, even if you're still great friends, like it just would be a little bit less rosy than when they wrote that 15 minute song. And that would be really hard to live up to. Megan: And they've been exposed now to like what the backlash of the media can be like too, right? So there might be a bit of that hanging over. Elyse: So true. Sinead: For sure, because of all of the demands on their time, their management had the idea actually to create, like mobile recording studios, so that the girls could leave the film set and walk across a parking lot and go into a studio. But according to Paul Watkins of the Absolute production team, he said: “We’d sit there literally all day long and quite often we wouldn’t even get them at all [...] Because we were so desperate to write with them, we were literally holding on to any kind of input they were giving us. Geri would literally run into the studio and she’d say “I just had this idea: Stop right there! Thank you very much” and then said she had to go. And that’s all she did.” Elyse: I just got goosebumps when you said that. Megan: Me too! Elyse: That's so cool, that she just ran into a studio and then “Stop” happened. Sinead: Yeah, and Elliot Kennedy, who you guys might remember is the producer that they really loved working with on the Spice album. He actually backed out of working with them on Spiceworld because he'd heard from the other producers that the girls just didn't have time to create music properly or have a creative process. He said “I did a couple of backing tracks for Spiceworld. But when I heard from Absolute and Matt and Biff how it was going and what a nightmare it was turning into I thought ‘I don’t want to get involved. This is not what I’m into”.The music was just taking a backburner to their other celebrity ventures. And they were insanely famous already by this point, lik, not even having a second album out and they just didn't physically have time to be involved in a second album the way they were with their first one. Cheryl: But having said that, the Girls claim that there's a lot of themes that were going on in their own lives at the time, that are actually on the album. Mel C has said that “Stop” was about their feelings towards fame and the frustration the group had about being overworked. Elyse: Really?! Cheryl: Yeah. Elyse: I didn't know that. That makes it kind of sad. Like Stop right now. Thank you very much. I need somebody with the human touch, that's horribly depressing about being on the road. Megan: You got to slow it down baby, gotta have some fun. [laughter] Sinead: It's pretty on the nose. Elyse: Yeah, it is now that you say it. Sinead: I mean children-us couldn't even fathom this like what the demands, like 30 year old us are like, Oh, this is horrific. Children-us are like “Oh, they're famous. They're so lucky.” Like we didn't understand. Elyse: No. Like not even remotely close. [laughter] Cheryl: ‘Too Much’ was about how fame impacted them as a group, with Geri writing the first lyrics while leaving the set that was buzzing with paparazzi floating around and trying to get in. The intensity of the fans and the media made it very difficult for the band to go anywhere which added further constraints to the album recording process. In his biography of the group, David Sinclair said “What later became one of their most chilled out hits was thus written, and the vocals recorded, in a caravan in the middle of a virtual riot”. Elyse: Whoa...that is so stressful to think about. Sinead: There would be so many people in some of these like smaller places that they were showing up to film and also record the same time, that the local police would be like overwhelmed and like would have to like call in like additional people from other places to come and do like crowd control. So they quite literally in that situation were mobbed in like this trailer. Elyse: I am someone who gets really stressed out in crowds, they make me really uncomfortable. The idea of being in that situation and then someone being like, cool, now write a song is just mind bending. Sinead: Write a song after you've spent all day acting as your alter-ego in a Hollywood movie. Elyse: Oh god, these women are superheroes. Sinead: They are but from the production side of things by all accounts, the final tracks on Spiceworld were the result of pretty considerable post-production work and not from that much contribution from the girls themselves. And this really leaves this album and the band pretty wide open to the criticism that music was neither theirs nor their priority. And that's like a pretty common theme but it's hard not to say it about this because they were scheduled to do so many other things. It was a business decision to create a Spice World Album at the same time as the Spice World Film and they didn't need to do that. They could have done one thing at a time but everything in Simon Fuller's machine is like go go go and they also too, the five of them did want to be Go go go but as you said earlier Elyse, like burnout is definitely around the corner for the five of them. After the album was recorded, Virgin decided that they needed a B-side and there wasn't one available. And that's where Space Invaders came from. Andy Watkins and Paul Wilson of Absolute were being pressured to make a B-side, so they put like a bunch of mics in front of the girls and had them sit down and told them just to talk about whatever they wanted to. And by all accounts everyone in the music label hated the song and I personally don't love the song itself either. But clearly we liked the song enough to use it as our name. Elyse: We love the song title. Megan: The title! Steph: The title is great. The content…. Elyse: Steph, I think you just wrote the perfect tagline for Space Invaders. The title is great, the content, meh! [laughter] Ashley: Or not, you know. [laughter] Sinead: Yeah, apparently whoever at Virgin was in charge of collecting this B-side called the song hideous. [laughter] That was in David Sinclair's biography, and I don't necessarily disagree Megan: They're so busy, we're just gonna get them in a room and record whatever they say. Like how far is that from what we talked about at the beginning where like they want control of their music and they want to all to have input and they did it like collectively as a group and it's been such a short time and yet it seems so far from their their process that they've loved so much in the beginning. Elyse: Yeah, like is this the sell-out point? Sinead: I think you could make a fair claim of that for sure. I think their level of meteoric fame and the short period of time in which they went from being five random girls to the biggest group in the world is like 14 months. And… less actually, it's actually less than that honestly. And I think this is where we're starting to see the cracks. Cheryl: One really great example of this is actually the music video for “Spice Up Your Life”. So in early September 1997, the group traveled to NYC to film the music video for “Spice Up Your Life”. Steph, you did a review session, I'm wondering if you could share with us what this video looks like. Steph: So it's a lot like CGI, almost certainly in front of some form of green screening, but in like a weird post-apocalyptic realm. It reminded me of the Matrix in a weird way. Because everything's very dark and gray and depressing. And the Spice Girls are like going around to spice up their life. They're also in a weird spaceship thing. It's weird. Cheryl: I also would go with like, maybe Blade Runner is like a visual reference. Steph: Okay, yeah, I can see that too. I had just recently seen the Matrix so that's why I thought of it. Elyse: I'm just looking at it now. This is very Blade Runner. Hella high production value compared to their earlier videos like it's clearly had a lot of budget put into it. Megan: You guys are comparing it to blockbuster movies that I'm sure millions were spent on, so if it’s giving you those vibes it must have a good budget. Steph: I do remember there also being weird ads in it, like the Starbucks logo is somewhere in the music video, but it's like with spice. Spice Girls or Spice World. Elyse: Oh, Josie and the Pussycats vibes. Steph: Oh yeah. Cheryl: They weren't actually consulted on the darker world domination aesthetics at the video ended up being the band actually wanted a carnival theme for the video. But they were so exhausted by the demands on their time. They didn't put up a fight about it. Elyse: That's so unlike them, Megan: You can tell they're just worn out they don't have the fight left in them. Elyse: Mmhmm. Cheryl: Mel B was later quoted in her first autobiography saying it wasn't right. “I don't think any of us liked it much. Even though we enjoyed making it, I still can't understand what's going on in it half the time”. It's upsetting. Sinead: It is. So while they were in New York City, they also attended the 1997 MTV VMAs and the tone of the VMAs that year was markedly dampened because Princess Diana had been killed in a car accident like three days before.The Spice Girls had been nominated for two awards and they were set to perform “Say You’ll Be There” as well. “Wannabe” won for Best Video of the year actually. And they appeared on the stage wearing black armbands which were a tribute to Diana, Melanie C said “we'd like to dedicate this award to Princess Diana, who is a great loss for our country” and Geri followed up with “and also I think what we are really about is what Lady Diana had, real girl power”, which I don't I don't know if I agree with that. Megan: Although Geri saying you have girl power, as we've learned, is not necessarily a compliment to who you are as a human being. Elyse: Okay, here's how I feel about it. I feel like it's reductionist and not necessarily a compliment. But if a Spice Girl said to me, after I died, that that girl had real good real power, there'd be a part of me, that'd be like, “awwww, I did it” [laughter] Sinead: So I actually have a picture of them at the awards that I'm just going to send right now. And the main reason I wanted to share this picture is, you can see their armbands, if you look at their faces, they're absolutely exhausted. Elyse: Whoa Sinead: And they all had their own makeup artists for the show, like Cheryl had looked up before it because there'd been some little comment about that. They're just like, this is what it looks like when you have two full time jobs for four months. Elyse: Yeah, their eyes look dead. Megan: They have bloodshot eyes, and the first thing I noticed was like they're all wearing a lot of eyeliner, which I'm thinking is to draw your attention away from like bags under the eyes. Elyse: Yeah, I bet your right. Sinead: Only Victoria doesn't look exhausted and she still looks tired. Elyse: Yeah, she does. Steph: Yeah. Cheryl: So their insane summer schedule leads into an insane fall schedule. The girls headed into intensive rehearsals for their first major concert, a two night event in Istanbul, which was sponsored by Pepsi. Their management rented a nine bedroom mansion on several acres with lots of security for fans and media in the south of France that they all moved into, which is a huge contrast from what they were dealing with in Maidenhead. They spent the entirety of their days singing, rehearsing with a full band, dancing with their choreographers and working out for approximately six weeks In contrast to the really friendly nature of their time of flatmates in Maidenhead, life in the rented Spice mansion as a famous girl group was very different. Victoria said “it was not a happy time, none of us were happy. But instead of talking about it, like we would have done the old days we just kept to a rooms” Megan: That's so sad like, you know, they were going through it alone, even though there were five of them probably going through similar if not the same thing, like they were alone in it. Steph: It’s almost like, they were too tired to even talk about it. Elyse: I feel too, like there'd be a certain sort of shame about not being happy at that time. Because like you've been given this huge mansion and you’re global pop stars, like you've had everything that you've ever wanted, you're famous, you're living your dream. And I imagine that there would be a lot of fear of being the first one to be like, I actually am not stoked about this. You don't want to burst other people's bubbles. You don't want to bring down the vibe, you don't want people to think you're not engaged or invested. Like I can see how that would almost drive a wedge between them. Cheryl: Geri in particular had a very difficult time with this regiment, particularly with rehearsals. She doesn't have the dance background as the other four, and she does have to work much harder. She apparently refers to this time as Spice Kampf in her biography. Elyse: She does Cheryl: Because it's just how terrible it was on her in the group. Sinead: So after this six weeks of rehearsals, they're off to Istanbul, they have to do dress rehearsals. The Istanbul shows were really heavily choreographed. And they also featured five complete outfit changes in like an hour and a half to like it wasn't a super long show. They had a gigantic video screen behind them. And there was like pyrotechnics, and it was just this huge thing. Critically, the shows were received fairly well. Carolyn Sullivan, who wrote about it for The Guardian said “to dispense with the big question first, they really did sing and being a democracy, each girl got an equal shot at singing lead, a meritocracy would have been a better idea, with only the two Mel’s allowed to belt them out while the others chipped in on the choruses” [laughter] Steph: Oh my god. Savage. Sinead: But to her credit, Sullivan went on to say that “in terms of pure spectacle, you'd be hard pressed to find anything better. They're not the Beatles, or even the Supremes. But they have more than passed the test.” And because it's kind of crazy, right? Like they have been a band for over a year with albums and everything out and they've never had a public concert. Like, that's kind of ridiculous. So it was like a long time of people being like, can they even perform like, could they even do a tour? And that's kind of what Istanbul was about. They were fulfilling their obligations to Pepsi, but they were also proving that they could support like a full on tour, which would end up happening obviously in the future. Megan: That is insane, though. Like usually now you put an album out, you go on a big tour, like, was that not the case back then? Or like how did they avoid that? Cheryl: Touring just doesn't fit the Spice model. Like you can't make the same headlines when you're on tour than when you're doing a press circuit. When you're on a tour, you show up... /episode/index/show/spiceinvaders/id/21076919

E6: Spice Capitalism 10/25/2021

E6: Spice Capitalism Transcript 10/25/2021

E6: Spice Capitalism Transcript [cold open] Sinead: It was hilarious to be writing this episode about Spice capitalism with Cheryl, while buying branded Spice merch, again. [laughing] Steph: Oh my god, I should have been wearing my t-shirt for this one. Dammit. Spice Invaders Theme Song: [over trumpet music] It’s got theme song vibes. Like danceable, funky. [Laughter]. So 90s. Girl power. Spice Invaders. Sinead: Today we're gonna talk about the subject that probably started this podcast. We're going to talk about Spice Girl capitalism and all the wares. So we've been talking about 1997 for a while now because it was really the year that solidified their international fame and we wanted to start off today talking about one of the biggest reasons why, which was advertisements and merchandise. So what merch do you guys remember? Like what did you want the most that you never got? What was your most prized possession? Let's lay it all out on the table. Steph: Oh, I always wanted the dolls but I never got one. It's one of my greatest regrets in life[laughter] Sinead: They’re on ebay. Steph: And it should be my mothers. Elyse: Oh god I wanted everything that had Spice Girls on it. I believe I have mentioned my slammer Pog with Sporty Spice before which was definitely a prized possession, but I also had a flashback today in preparation for this episode about all of the Spice Girls back to school stationery stuff. So I had a plastic Spice Girls ruler that had like all of their pictures in a row down the full 12 inches and I loved it Megan: I saw you turning around there Elyse, I thought you were going to grab the ruler. [laughter] Elyse: Oh no, it’s just- [laughter] Elyse: It’s just tea. I’m sorry. Megan: Does anyone have any Spice Girls merch still to this day? Steph: Like cleaned anything terribly well and might be a bit of a hoarder stuff you know this is a podcast. We're not gonna put that part in probably.It's fine. You should know about it by now. But I asked her and she didn't really come up with anything so I think I would have to physically go to my parents house and have a root around through. I just haven't had time. Megan: My school had a club, like a trading cards club that was at recess. It was mostly boys and some girls but these girls came in one day with Spice Girls and I think there were Backstreet Boys trading cards too, I'm not sure, and the teacher told them they weren't allowed. It was like sports cards only banned them from the club for their pop merchandise trading cards. Sinead: Oh my god. Cheryl: A surprisingly large number of schools actually had to ban the merch, because it was just causing, you know, childhood ugliness on steroids. Steph: Yeah, I remember Pogs got banned from our school Sinead: Yeah, pogs got banned from my school. Elyse: God that would have been a double whammy tragedy in my world. [laughter] There’s no way to bring in this slammer. Cheryl: My sister and I, I had a ginger and my sister had a baby. I remember actually having a ton of gum and I think they had chupa chups. And I remember I think they also had like, a pop rock version or something like that anyway, but like, I remember being able to go to the corner store and buy just like a ton of candy. And it was like, you know, like, your mom would give you $1 and you got to like go buy candy at a ballgame but like they would have the Spice Girls chewing gum and you could buy that. Elyse: Oh my god Cheryl I completely forgot about the gum. I loved that stuff, and I don’t remember the gum at all. But I remember like getting the wrapper and seeing which Spice Girl you got. Sinead: So I think like when we talk about all this stuff, the thing that's really striking and the reason why we started this podcast is for people our age, our memories of the Spice Girls are so tied to products and like things you could buy and consume.For me, and I know I'm not alone here , it made me wonder like do we like the Spice Girls because of their music? Or did we like them because we could buy so many things of them, like the chicken and egg thing you know, like what was it that actually made us interested in them. According to Marketing Week, they became the most merchandise group in music history. Elyse: Wow Sinead: So yeah, so we are going to get into it. Cheryl: Yeah, we're actually going to start with some of the brand deals. Brands were super keen to work with the Spice Girls. Pre-teen, teen girls and even young women were a group that didn't have a lot of marketing targeted to them. And they were you know, kind of viewed as underserved in the marketing world at the time whether they have an allowance or they're influencing their parents decisions, they're increasingly at this time becoming consumers in their own right. We all sort of had stories as we were talking about, taking like money we had saved to buy Spice Girls stuff and so that's a lot of what these guys are trying to go for. This is also a group that you're trying to set them up to make consumer decisions for life. There are decisions, you know, decisions you make about brands in high school, but stick with you for a long time. And so like they're attractive because they're building brand habits and the girls and Fuller are super open about this. They talk about children and teens being their primary demographic for their music, and it's something again with brands hopped on to. Marc Greengrass account director for the advertising agency Gepetto said “they have also appeared at a time when there is a distinct lack of female heroines for the age group and they use a terrific message of total empowerment” Megan: So for the girls, was it about more merchandise getting their name out there to get music sold? Was it all about the money, was it about that they just wanted fame? Sinead: Simon Fuller, their manager, he actually kind of addressed this. He was really eager to stem criticism that they were selling out too fast and to all these like corporate deals. And so he said “The sponsorship deals were far more about exposure than the money. A lot of money was made, but my thinking was if we can get Pepsi to spend $40 million basically running what was a commercial for my group, then Hallelujah! If wanted to launch a new image for one of their body sprays by spending £20 million ... That was the way I did it. And it happened so fast. I thought of it not as a deal in terms of making a million quid. It was about using their money to make my group famous, and then they'd make lots of money anyway.” Cheryl: In particular, there's a couple of products that they sign on to, where actually the product is already the top selling in a particular market. Chupa Chups in Spain is a particularly great example of that. They were already the top selling lollipop, it was just putting the girls on there put them in front of millions of people in Spain. Pepsi in Turkey and a lot of Southeast Asia was a really good one and Target when they moved into the US. The girls actually dip their toes into the endorsement game with the launch of a British television network, Channel five. This earns them an estimated £500,000 and attracts 2.5 million viewers to the channel for its first program which is actually the music video for the channel's exclusive single which we're gonna watch. Elyse: Wait so what does that mean, that they like launched a channel like were they hosting or endorsing or like what does that mean? Cheryl: Their music video was the first program to be placed on that channel, when it hit the airwaves, the next thing you saw when you turned to channel five was the Spice Girls video, and that placement of that video as the first ever program on that channel was used in a bunch of other ads. Elyse: Oh okay, so they didn't really have anything to do with the network other than they were the flagship content. Cheryl: Yeah, Sinead: Like a brand ambassador type thing Elyse: Yeah, okay. Yeah, Sinead: Like look how cool and relevant we are, the Spice Girls are opening our channel for us. Elyse: Okay. [Power of Five commercial plays ] . Megan: That’s gonna stick in my head. Cheryl: And while this ad, as we can tell is slightly cringy now with its very bold 90s colors, this actually exemplifies the way the Spice Girls would actually operate a lot of their deals and how they would continue to in the future. It's closely aligned with the girls own brand as the Spice Girls. The lyrics are explicitly about self expression and using the girls’ random personalities as a method to showcase that. The creation of exclusive content becomes a big one and lastly the idea of girl power as a commodity is repeated in the lyrics of that. Sinead: It's fascinating because like we definitely in a 2021 context know of feminism as a marketable term and commodity and like thing to target a certain demographic of women and it does make me cynical seeing them yell girl power for the launch of a TV commercial. And it's just interesting like I wonder if people were doing that before this? Elyse: Like do you have the lyrics there? Can we maybe say what some of those lyrics were? Steph: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Elyse: That's all I caught too. Sinead: I just pasted them to the group chat. Elyse: I can see why you said that Sinead, the commoditization of girl power in this form is so disheartening because yeah, like lyrics are “welcome to a brand new station, tune and now for a new generation, guaranteed to be the new sensation, who said? the Spice Girls, take it from us. It's girl power.Take it from us it’s the power of five, it's the power of five. But like “take it from us it's girl power” has nothing to do with anything going on. Like I don't think this is like that “O” station that it's all like women's programming. Sinead: No, absolutely not. It's like the most glib term, like they know the term is playing well, so they want to put it in the song. But it has nothing to do with anything. It's just them, like Cheryl just said, they closely aligned these brand partnerships to promote their buzzword essentially. There's a lot of value in that. I mean, it does give them advertising that is sort of true to what they're saying. But you're right, that it's not really saying anything at all. [laughter] 10:42 Sinead: The power of five is also applied to each of them having a personality which showcases an element or a variation on a product. So it's like giving five products for the price of one. For example, this is a quote by 19 Entertainment President Robert Dodds he said "You had Sporty and Baby and the rest, so it seemed very natural that you could go into Asda or Sainsbury's and pick up five different flavours of crisps that corresponded to what the girls were like. When we did Cadbury's, they produced a different moulded chocolate bar - one for each of the girls.” and so it's like just so many opportunities for a brand to pivot to this specific type of girl or young person who liked whichever Spice Girl. Another example was the Spice cam by Polaroid, something I always wanted but never had, that was actually Polaroids first camera to be named after a group or person and they actually filmed six commercials. Five of them were individual commercials for each girl and then there was one ensemble commercial, so some companies were investing a lot of money and trying to capitalize on them individually and as a group. Megan: I think as the buyer too, like so you buy the product associated with your favorite Spice Girl but also maybe you'd buy one of each five you know, maybe not like chips or a Polaroid camera but some of the other stuff, right, so you're buying five times as much just to get like the whole set. Steph: And then some of this stuff you would have like the group thing too so then you'd buy the group version too. They're still doing it….they have the new records out on the Spice Girls website and you can get one each color for all the girls. Elyse: Immediately when you said that I was like, oh my god, I have to look at these. I didn't realize you got a different color for each girl, like with my first instinct like, let me get my credit card. Sinead: My first instinct when I saw the post about the new merch was to buy the “Wannabe” vintage t-shirt, obviously, because I have no fucking self control. And it was hilarious to be writing this episode about Spice capitalism with Cheryl while buying branded spice merch again. [laughter] Steph: Oh my god. I should have been wearing my T shirt for this one. Cheryl: So I think one of the biggest deals is Pepsi. Pepsi had been running with the idea of generation Pepsi since about the 1960s. The intention behind this has always been to connect with youth, originally it was actually to tie Pepsi to the counterculture in the 1960s. In some ways this lesson continues today with varying degrees of success - think like the Kendall Jenner flop commercials, that was painful, but again tied into the idea of youth. So part of the Spice Girls campaign, they had actually leaned into a pretty anti-Gen X vibe. And it's an attempt to attract younger consumers and early millennials. So naturally the Spice Girls were a good fit for the next step. Pepsi also never explicitly stated that they wanted the politics of girl power, but they clearly did. Girl power is something that's very attractive to Generation Next, especially if you were trying to position them as opposite Gen X and the previous generation. Sinead: Yeah, so building on what Cheryl was saying, the Pepsi campaign included multiple 30 second TV ads in 75 countries, which featured an exclusive Spice Girls single which was a riff on some of Pepsi's previous marketing copy. Other placements included weekly advancement on the Pepsi charts show, an extensive PR campaign in teen magazines and lots of localized opportunities to win more Spice Girl swag because of course. It's generally agreed that Pepsi spent a million dollars promoting the Spice Girls brand on their can. The deputy managing director of Virgin, a guy named Ray Cooper said “"It's millions and millions of pounds worth of film and television advertising that we couldn't even contemplate. But Pepsi can build that into their game plan” And it was a global campaign for the band: they needed to maintain their presence in Southeast Asia. They were keen to grow their presence in South America. Their savvy media lawyer Gerard Tyrrell had made it known that the girls were really interested in using brand partnerships to expand into new markets, which Cheryl had mentioned before with some of those brands and some of those countries. So yeah, do you guys want to see the most iconic Pepsi picture? Elyse: Obviously yes. Sinead: It is very, very intense and shameless. Elyse:Oh yeah, that is, that is a lot of Pepsi. Steph:The Pepsi logos are like right on Mel B's breasts. Elyse: It’s all I can look at. Sinead: The first thing that popped into my mind is that in 2021 no celebrity or brand influencer would be this gauche about, like the intensity of it. Cheryl: I don't know, I think this is actually a precursor to stuff like... has anyone seen like the Panera Bread swimsuits? And like the... Taco Bell's had a bunch of stuff like that too, where it's like you have to wear like you have to like to buy it, you can buy a product that's branded with their stuff on it? Sinead: I definitely agree with that for consumers. I just don't know that a celebrity would wear all of that. Now, maybe I'm wrong. Elyse: Do you know what I think is so interesting about it? I feel like because you're right, Sinead, it's so much more direct and explicit than celebrity endorsements now, like, because today, celebrity endorsements have so much to do with glamour and lifestyle. And typically what you'd see now with social media is you'd see how Pepsi fits into their glamorous lifestyle and it would probably be at least loosely tied with wellness culture, not Pepsi obviously, but I feel like whenever you see like five super hot fit ladies now they're probably more likely to be endorsing something that like fits in the goopy world. And so I just think it is more of an explicit like, we're wearing the logo so you should like this, it's like very there's no like second order thinking, it's just like one to one. We like it so you should. Cheryl: You can see how far reaching the influence is but you can also see how they're also kind of muddying through it because they're the first group to be this bold in partnering with brands.And they're the first group to partner with this many brands to the point where and I apologize I can't find actual statistics but there were actually studies and like people couldn't remember everything the Spice Girls represented as a brand. It wasn't just that they were impossible to escape, it was, it was impossible to escape and they weren't remembering the brands anyway, which is the point of a deal like this. So yeah, it's funny to watch them sort of struggle through it, like flub it with things like Pepsi logos on hot pants. 17:03 Cheryl: I'm gonna just step back into generation next and talk about actually how in thinking about the music as well. But how integrated Pepsi was with the Spice Girl brand and how they actually did this for multiple brands. It wasn't just about you know, the ad and the buying of the product, they also actually ran campaigns where to receive a double A-side that included “Generation Next” and an exclusive single that would not be released anywhere else called “Step It To Me” - Pepsi drinkers would actually send in 20 pink ring pull-tabs, so like the opener bit, from the promotional Pepsi cans to Pepsi to receive that single. You’d actually end up paying like 15 or 16 pounds when it was all said and done for a double sided single. Drinkers would also be entered to win tickets to the group's only public concert in 1997 in Istanbul. This is actually a really great example of both the brand integration but also like a Fuller event, where like people are coming from all over for one event, so you get not just the event itself, but all the publicity of everyone moving to the event. And the reason Istanbul was actually selected was because Pepsi was the best selling soft drink there at the time and the deal was is that they could not have that concert anywhere where Coke outsold Pepsi.Fuller and the Girls also put the group's logo likeness on everything they can. Like literally everything: watches, clothing, stationery, lunchboxes, stickers, backpacks, purses, birthday party hats and plates, ties, hair brushes, sunglasses, you name it, you could probably put a Spice Girl logo on it, you could find someone who was willing to make that deal. One element that made all this merchandise possible was Asda, a supermarket chain that paid the girls 1 million pounds to create and sell exclusive products in their Spice Zone, for Christmas 1997. You could go in there and you could get exclusive Spice Girls merchandise along with all of the other licensed deals that they had. Elyse: It was like an aisle that was branded as Spice zone? Or was it an interactive thing. Cheryl: They had like a section of the store that would be branded as Spice zone that you could go in and pick up all different types of... /episode/index/show/spiceinvaders/id/20919071

E5: Nice Spice... or the Daughters From Hell?! 10/18/2021

E5: Nice Spice... or the Daughters From Hell?! Transcript 10/18/2021

E5: Nice Spice... or the Daughters From Hell?! Transcript Steph: I mean, Bend It Like Beckham, come on. Sinead: Yes, that movie is what defined his career. [laughter] Spice Invaders Theme Song: [over trumpet music] It’s got theme song vibes. Like danceable, funky. [Laughter]. So 90s. Girl power. Spice Invaders. Sinead: Just to recap: last time we spent a lot of time talking about the Spice Girls in the media and some of their stumbles and some of their successes. So by this point, the spring 1997 to some degree, the girls or as an entity are like already master media manipulators. As we discussed, there was one media interview that even with the cost of flying the girls for these TV commercials they were doing, they could reach millions of people in these bustling markets. This is sort of the beginning of we're starting to see the saturation of the Spice Girls just absolutely everywhere. And the sort of flipside is they start to have these run-ins with the paparazzi and their personal lives. So, in January 1997, the girls had a very unpleasant encounter with the paparazzi. Emma was celebrating her birthday at a club in London, and while using the bathroom she was accosted by paparazzi and had photos taken of her in the bathroom. Yes, okay. Apparently they claim to be quote big fans of her and Mel C but then so like, at the time the girls didn't think a lot of it until the photo showed up in the Daily Star which is a tabloid which claimed they had exclusive access to her 21st birthday party when in actual fact they hadn't even been invited. Elyse: That's terrible Megan: In the bathroom to like that's just... Steph: Just an invasion of personal space for anybody like, it's the toilet Megan: Let her go pee or poo or whatever she had to do [laughter] Elyse: Let her change that diva cup Sinead: I think this may have predated diva cups [laughter] Elyse: It’s a principled stance Sinead: Yeah, so basically this event mixed with the pressures of the ongoing spice mania and just like how saturated they were. This prompted Simon Fuller to hire a lawyer to deal with the press by the name of Gerrard Tyrell. Cheryl: Tyrell is a commercial libel expert so he understands this idea that like the media needs the girls because they sell papers. They want to talk to the girls that's why they're like being, you know, horrid and stalking them and Tyrell builds relationships with paper management not actually journalists. He's particularly interested also in the intellectual property of the band. He quickly becomes the enemy of photographers because he would write agreements with paper management and with the photographers themselves to say you know, the girls own all the photos of themselves and that other than the agreed upon publication date, the images could not be used again. One of the things that he does at later events is he actually wanders around finding counterfeit Spice Girls t-shirts and actually sues them like “hey, this is counterfeit, and I'm their lawyer” Elyse: What do you think he would have had to say about the Spice Mice at Northern Getaway? [laughter] Sinead: He would’ve been aghast. Cheryl: Oh my god, Steph: Shutting down Northern Getaway. Megan: Maybe that's what happened to Northern Getaway. Do we know? Cheryl: I don’t think so. Ashley: Or like, that's just why we can't find those shirts anymore. Cheryl: Oh, my God Elyse: What a tragedy. [Chimes] Cheryl: Generally, his policy was pretty simple; if your publication created a pattern of reporting facts, the girls would “be there” for you to talk to them and he would even feed you stories. This is a media management style that is still in use today, and it garnered the band nearly two years of continual press while he worked with them. This strategy really speaks to the depths of their team’s attempts to control and guide the narrative around the band.. And one of the things that Sinead and I did was we found some of the juicy tabloid stories that were coming out from ex boyfriends and friends. A lot of them were coming forward to the press trying to both share their stories, but also a lot of them were like, “Hey, we can make some money off of this”, too. One of the stories that comes out in April of 1997 is from one of Emma's really early ex boyfriends, he went to the Daily Mirror and shared details about how she lost her virginity to him as a teenager and claimed she was obsessed with sex. The quote that Daily Mirror shared was “she liked it anytime, anyplace, anywhere. Her place, my place. The pub car, park, bushes, playgrounds, it was great fun.” Elyse: What a whore. [laughter] That's... that's horrendous. Sinead: I'm putting a picture in now, this accompanied the original Emma boyfriend story. Elyse: This must have been.... it must have been so devastating at her age because I feel like at like 30, you know, it would be sure maybe embarrassing or whatever. You don't want your folks to read that but it's not the end of the world. But she was so young and probably still just figuring out her own sexuality and to have that stuff like, true or not, just splashed across pages. I can't imagine Steph: She still lived at home with her mom. Elyse: Mortifying, I just looked at the picture and it just sounds like such a great night. Sinead: I mean, that's the thing is she's just being a normal person who likes fucking. Elyse: So it's a photo of Emma and she's looking very cutesy in like a little sort of baby doll dress. The title says my Martini, which I don't know if that's related to the photo or not, it doesn't seem to make a lot of contextual sense, but it's just a good old photo of cute little Baby's face. And then a pull quote from an article that says “she looked so cute down in pints of snake bite, then she dragged me into the bushes”, which is like what a great day. I don't know what snake bite is, but there was Steph: Sounds like it’s a beer judging by pints. Elyse: Great point. Great pint.. Steph: I mean, add a slice of pizza and you're doing great. Sinead: Yeah, basically. I mean, it's really such a huge violation of her privacy to like, bring up how she lost her virginity. And he also really, creepily was like, well, we started dating when she was 15. But I waited until she was 16. Before they had sex, which I was just like, gross. And like also, he was paid for the story, so he's just a fucking asshole. But yeah, and Elyse: So creepy. Sinead: It's super creepy. Like it's the creepiest vibes, that episode, and unfortunately for Emma, she had a second boyfriend who went to the tabloids also. So the Sun reported that this second boyfriend was actually going from outlet to outlet asking for 30,000 pounds to share his story. And so the Sun turned it down. But then the story did later appear in the Mirror. The second guy had been around when the band was starting up. So he talked a lot about how Geri and Mel B were really raunchy, and like they teased him about having sex with Emma and they asked him about his penis size. He also claimed to be Emma's first love, which, okay, and she dumped him as the band started to get successful. And he was like, really bitter about it. [laughter] Elyse: Something you just said made me wonder, like, I wonder how much of this sort of, quote unquote scandal here, which obviously isn't a scandal at all, but how much of it is because it's just the shaming of women who enjoy sex, or how much of it is because she's betraying her brand? Like, whether consciously or unconsciously, like she's branded as like the good one, the wholesome one. And I wonder how much of it is just failure to be on brand. And if it would have been as big of a deal if they were talking about Mel B or Geri. Cheryl: It's also funny you say that because I was about to get into... we found some examples of like, Victoria's exes is going to the press as well. And whenever they're talked about, they're all specifically talked about by like, how they have shitty jobs, or like shitty jobs in comparison to like her being Posh spice, like, Mark Wood, the first boyfriend who goes to the press, who was actually Victoria's fiance, she wanted to like walk that in before her career took off, he's described as like he installed security systems. And so the sun runs this piece, and he claims I love Toria, but she only loved herself and her career, Elyse: But that makes me think that it is about being pissed off that they're betraying the identity that we've assigned to them because like for Baby Spice, her whole thing is that she's wholesome and young. For Posh, her whole thing is that she's elitist and in both of those situations, it's because you know, Baby Spice is not behaving wholesomely and Victoria is not behaving like an elitist. She's dating, you know, people working in trades Steph: Just an average Joe. Elyse: Totally Yeah, Sinead: yeah, with Victoria, her next boyfriend, Stuart Bilton, who also went to the press, he was described as, quote, a hunk on the dole, which means a man on welfare. Steph: Yeah. Megan: Yeah, a hunk on welfare. [laughter] Sinead: And he talked about her childhood history of being bullied. It's funny because Victoria's are about how unglamorous these men are and she even herself claimed later on she said “it was so un-rock and roll” in comparison to the stories of the other girls, that all that got talked about Victoria was that she liked money and she dated poor men and she had got bullied as a child like whereas Emma's were like these like sexy like interesting quote unquote interesting like rock and roll kind of stories. Although still awful, like in all their cases, they were just being betrayed so much, and it was so clear that they really needed like more significant like media representation because there were probably just so many people who grew up with them and were like, oh, maybe I could make a buck off of my story about them. Megan: This is making me think,what guys I have dated, if I became famous… Steph: What they would say? Megan: Well, not what they would say but like, I'm just wondering what type of person sells like, you know, even if it ended poorly, obviously you cared about this person at some point, like.. Are there that many people in everyone's past that are terrible and would sell their personal life for money? Steph: Now with social media that changes the game. Like, say you got famous tomorrow, we all have Instagrams and whatever. So we're kind of already in control of what immediately would be snatched up. So you're gonna say something, I don't know, some random salacious story if there's nothing to prove. It's like pics, or it didn't happen. They could say some story and you could just be like, no. [laughter] Sinead: I think you're exactly right. Yeah, I think you're exactly right. And this reminds me actually of something Cheryl has said on previous a previous episode, I believe, which was the Spice Girls were before the internet, but their whole lives are on the internet. And like that is such a weird timeframe where like you know, Cheryl, and I can spend so many hours digging on the internet for stuff about them. But when they were doing all of this stuff as 20-21 year olds, the internet was like something for nerds. Like it was a side note. It was not what a 21 year old was spending all their time doing. And I mean, their early careers, so much of that is about hustling and being in bars and being around and having physical meetings like forcing themselves into meeting people, you know, it was way before the technology of 2021. Cheryl: Which brings us to maybe the most salacious tabloid story of the entire Spice Girls career on February 3, Geri Halliwell's early glamour shots, which is British speak for classy nudes, were published by the Daily Mirror. The photos were taken six years before on the island of Majorca by Spanish photographer Sebastian Emmanuelle. He gets super gross and says “she was so sexy. I just thought, oh my god, I have photographed many girls, but they are all so skinny. Geri had a fantastic figure with huge breasts. I am used to naked girls, but she was so special.” Sinead: Which she's very thin…. 1997 was so fucked. I'm going to share in the chat this original spread that started all the headlines, and you will see a very thin woman. Elyse: I just think the idea of calling her special because of how good she looks naked is so disgusting. And like Silence of the Lambs. It's just so creepy. And off putting. I just opened it up, She looks great. Sinead: The thing that catches me is her face. She's just looks so young. Steph: She looks so young. Elyse: The thing that catches me is the quote below with the photo of the photographer, saying “I've never seen a body like it. I was fighting to control myself” that - [gagging sounds] Elyse: That is not the most professional thing I've heard. Sinead: It's disgusting. Megan: Rapey Sinead: Yes, it's rapey. Elyse: It is and I can say to you, so she addresses her glamour photos pretty early on in her book. So it's been a little while since I read it. So I'll get the specific drawing so I'll keep it general. But when Geri was doing glamour photos, it started off in a very gradual way I think as it probably does with many people. And she was never sort of seeking the opportunity I don't believe to do like full nude spreads. It just kind of happened with different photographers pushing her comfort limits. And there was one shoot and I'm not sure if it was this one perhaps, you guys know, but there was one shoot where she regretted the level of nudity that she went to and she really didn't want the photos to be released and she addressed it with the photographer after the shoot. She was very uncomfortable during a lot of the shoots and I can't say whether or not this was one of them, as much as she was promised a great future in it. She was not into it. [Chimes] Sinead: Within the band, this particular scandal actually went down really badly. There was a lot of tension. So I guess at some point before the girls had become more famous, Geri had told them that she had done some of these photo shoots. But apparently according to other members of the band, she glossed over the extent like the amount of pictures she took and also how graphic they were. The Spice Girls had a huge fan base of children whose parents likely did not take kindly to this and they were really concerned like both management and the other girls were really concerned that these photos would have a huge impact on their success. Mel B was really upset with her for not being more upfront in the past about it. But in her second autobiography which she wrote in her late 30s she writes that she really understood why Geri had taken the photos, like the whole situation of why that could have happened and that wasn't really her fault and it definitely wasn't the media's right to just slut shame her for working or existing in an industry that's like already so exploitative, which we all know is just a fact. Megan: Obviously I don't know the details but not that I'm against Geri or the other Spice Girls because I think everything you just said there Sinead is totally on point. Taking it out on her like you said, it's not her fault, but like I totally get the concern given their like young fans and like probably a lot of them wanting to grow up and be like pop stars like the Spice Girls and like, oh, maybe this is how you get there. Do you know what I mean? So I totally get the concern but like pointing fingers at Geri, that's a little unfair. Sinead: So apparently it's because they felt that she had misrepresented how many pictures there were, because they did go through media training and stuff like that, like Cheryl and I have talked about before. And this was something that had come up, like, will there be anything you know, that could come up about you or whatever. And she really downplayed it, which I think I don't really blame her for doing that at all. Like, I think that's a very understandable impulse. And I doubt she knew at the time how famous they were going to be, or how sought after prior stuff of them would be. If you're just a normal person, you don't think anyone's ever going to be digging around for photos of you later. Apparently, they said if they had known it wouldn't have been like, so shocking when it did come out. But I think it kind of speaks to Elyse's point about maybe Geri was ashamed of it, she was uncomfortable about it, she didn't want to go back to it. And I think that's a really understandable human thing for a 21 year old girl to be managing and thinking about, which is always something we should keep in mind: they are very, very young. Elyse: Totally. I think like, even though it was technically consensual, you know, she was paid for it. She clearly knew, you know, there was camera, just take her clothes off, you have to imagine that like, knowing she wasn't loving it in the moment, probably had some regrets about it later, I think that carries like its own type of trauma, because trauma is like such a spectrum that I feel like she...yeah, like she probably wasn't acting totally rationally about it. [Chimes] Megan: So what was the response to the photos? Sinead: I think it just made them more popular. Like everything, like every single Spice Girls story, that you think it's gonna have some sort of catastrophic impact. Instead, it just makes them more famous. Cheryl: Yeah. And there's an entire industry making money off of saying that shit about them. You know, I think going back to like, why they needed a media strategist who was on their team, it literally just came down to like, I understand you're here to make money. But if you were going to spread lies, then we're not going to work with you. Sinead: It's an interesting thing, too, because it was also making the girls very rich. And that is sort of the double edged sword: they were capitalizing off the fact that they looked the way they did, and they presented the way they did, and it made them incredibly wealthy. The other flip side of the coin of the media strategist was because they wanted to maximize their exposure while minimizing their pain, but of course, if you're going to maximize your exposure, because you're selling so much stuff that we will get into later that is going to have a blowback, the overexposure of you constantly being consumed as a product, because you're making yourself a product to be consumed. I'm not saying they deserve any of it. I wish that we could have discussions in the media that are way evolved beyond this, but it is interesting because they really wanted the fame and the boomerang effect of it, I think was very hard for them to deal with. [Chimes] Cheryl: Jumping off of that comment about the girls being a product, I think we need to take a minute and talk about one of the most beloved products that comes out of this time period, Posh and Becks.. So during this time, the girls are in the tabloids all over the place. Simon Fuller, he's telling Victoria “you need someone famous. What you need is a footballer” he's quoted as saying in her biography. Victoria's like “I'm not interested in this idea. I don't do sports, footballers are boorish, I think the young men are obnoxious”. In March 1997, Mel C and Victoria are invited to a Manchester United game and they go to the... /episode/index/show/spiceinvaders/id/20842910

E4: Thatcher Spice Transcript 10/11/2021

E4: Thatcher Spice Transcript [Cold Open] Cheryl: It speaks to something that I find really tragic about when Spice Girls became famous. Everything they did still ended up on the internet, but they weren't aware that the internet was going to haunt them forever. Spice Invaders Theme Song: [over trumpet music] It’s got theme song vibes. Like danceable, funky. [Laughter]. So 90s. Girl power. Spice Invaders. Steph: This week, what are we talking about? Cheryl: Well, we're covering December 1996 to February 1997. But because history is messy, we're only covering select events during that time, and they all feature weird British stuff. Sinead: Yeah, so as the girls continued their ascent, at the end of ‘96 and into ‘97. The machinations of their team are really coming together. Fuller and the Spice Girls media strategy is essentially that they want to talk to everyone: weird conservative magazines, lefty newspapers, tabloids, the works. According to Matt Fitzgerald, who was their press officer at Virgin, he said “if a story in a market leading tabloid such as the Sun can reach 30 million people, well, there were 30 million reasons why we wanted the girls to feature there” Elyse: Did you say the person's name was Muff Fitzgerald? [laughter] Sinead: That is correct. Elyse: No further questions. [laughter] Sinead: So, yeah. Further to this strategy in December of 96. The girls did an interview for Spectator, which is an upmarket right wing political magazine in the UK. The journalist who conducted the interview, Simon Montefiore, had a bit of a reputation for getting celebrities to admit to unfashionable political opinions, and according to David Sinclair in his biography about the band “Wannabe”, “the result was a masterful piece of political and social satire. The overall effect of the article was not only to caricature the girls as a bunch of celebrity airheads, sounding off on subjects far beyond their area of competence, but also to lampoon the notion of the pretentious journalist over-interpreting his interviewees opinions.” So for this piece, a caricature was created of the girls in the political cartoon style. If you have your Spice Girl recording chat open.... This was the political cartoon they ran to accompany the article. Group: Oh my god. Elyse: This is offensive, like as a woman, and as a person with eyes. It's terrible. Steph: I don't even know where to begin. So all the girls are wearing little skimpy shorts and various platforms. And their boobs are just - just ginormous. Elyse: That was the word that was going through my mind too. Steph: Just truly like, various shape water balloons put on a pencil drawing, it's a pencil drawing of the girls. And they all like, their legs are kind of drawn as though they have a nasty case of rickets too. Elyse: They do look rickety! They’re so weird. And I think another interesting thing is they really emphasize their mouths, which I mean, like, one, could be like a sex thing. But also, if they're getting criticized for being too loud and too outspoken, it would make a lot of sense. Cheryl: See what I also found really bizarre. But this image, especially if you do character work, like the Spice Girls are a gold mine, but the only way you can tell who the five of them are in this image is their hair. Elyse: That is so true. Megan: I just find it really upsetting. Elyse: Yeah, what do you find upsetting about it? Megan: It's just, it's dehumanizing. Sort of like, I don't know. Steph: It kind of….it's weird because it's taken away all of their characters that they built. And they're all just these like pencil drawn whatever's with different hair. It's just taken away their entire person. Megan: Sinead, did this ever hit mainstream media? Like do we have any responses? Anyone else to this? Cheryl: Oh yeah. So while this piece was technically meant to be a caricature, this is the piece where the girls make several shocking political pronouncements. They admitted reportedly with enthusiasm that they were eurosceptics, so the prototype for sort of the pro-Brexit voter and proud Thatcherites. Geri was quoted as saying, “We Spice Girls are true Thatherites. Thatcher was the first Spice Girl, the pioneer of our ideology, girl power.” [sigh] Cheryl: And I think we need to take a moment and talk about what a fucking stupid move this was. It's remarkable that it did not destroy their career. As we still know today conservatism is historically super uncool. It's a bit like someone today saying they're a diehard Trump fan or Trump supporter. Margaret Thatcher was so hated for a bajillion reasons but one that stands out is that she presided over the death of British manufacturing, a sector that employed millions of people, while actively trying to antagonize and destroy unions and other groups that were trying to protect it, using British police and troops to antagonize union actions and beat up workers. Mass unemployment followed, especially in northern manufacturing cities like Glasgow, Liverpool and Sheffield. And while this was going on, her party was also continually cutting social services which was compounding the dire conditions for working class families. Sinead: She also dabbled in racist rhetoric, famously stating that British people were afraid that their country was being “swamped by people of a different culture”, which is a deeply ironic sentiment coming from a leader of the British empire. Elyse: So in the wake of that Spectator article, apparently the girls were like, really, really furious with her. So like Geri felt that she was very much in her element declaring that Margaret Thatcher was the original Spice Girl because she rose from humble beginnings, like Thatcher did to Prime Minister, that she really sort of thought that it was emblematic of women rising against the odds, but she says the other girls were extremely angry at being labeled conservatives, “particularly Mel C, who was an out and out labour voter from working class Liverpool, Victoria leaned further to the right than me, Emma was apolitical, while Mel B came across as a complete anarchist.” So clearly, it was not a popular view within the group. It was pretty divisive. Megan: If they didn't all agree, why would you want to be on record saying it? Sinead: I think there was, I think they were caught off guard, I don't think that they were prepared for the interview that they were going to have. It was part of that strategy that we mentioned earlier, which was just that they were trying to be interviewed by everyone. And Victoria and Geri were quite eager to talk about politics, whereas the rest of them weren't really as much. So like, the Girls reaction was pretty mixed. They didn't allege that any of the quotes were inaccurate, but they said that they didn't like the way the journalists had framed them. He had tried to present their opinions as representative of the whole group, when in actual fact, the most damning quotes were supplied by Victoria and Geri alone. Emma contributed very little to the interview, and she later insisted that she had no intention of voting either way in the upcoming election, and Mel B, like Geri said, in her biography, described herself at the time as an anarchist, said the piece was, “twisted beyond belief”. And while the journalist who wrote this piece claimed that he had deliberately sidelined Mel B in the interview, because, “she didn't know anything about anything, so I had to tell her to shut up”Sooooo that some misogynoir, and so yeah. Mel B in that interview, absolutely did dissent, and she was just ignored, and they just went, I think they wanted to mess with the band as much as possible, because they looked down on them. I mean, that caricature is a perfect example of them, like not seeing them as human beings or valid. And yeah, they wanted to put them in their place and just be like, look at these dummies, and they knew that them saying they loved Thatcher, like it being represented like that would cause a much bigger scandal than if they had said, Well, two of them like Thatcher, and the rest of them don't. That's not a good headline. Elyse: I think it's so interesting, too, because in that interview, it's not like they just talked about Thatcher. They also asked, should Britain ever join a single European currency? What is the future of the monarchy? What do you think of the class system? And yeah, it's just like, Why on earth would you talk to them about that? And obviously, it was the intent of the piece, but really in depth questions. Megan: Do you think his goal was to create like, a scandal just for more views? Or was he actually trying to like, bring down the Spice Girls by fixing them into a negative? Do you know what I mean? Like did he hate them that much? Or was it all just for clicks? Elyse: Like it's an interesting question, because I saw the way that he positioned to the article, at least to their publicist was that he wanted to take a tongue in cheek look at British politics and international affairs through the eyes of five young women who he reasoned, knew nothing about it, which on the one hand, you're like, okay, that could be interesting. It's basically getting a lay person except the lay person has a lot of celebrity clout. But that official pitch is obviously, I think, really different from his actual intent. That's the spin. Cheryl: I also think that like, at this point in time, having the Spice Girls in your magazine period sells issues. Having your December issue, which is a fairly big time for advertisers, you want your December issue to sell. His goal here is to sell papers, if he already has a reputation for getting unsavory political opinions, then like so be it if that's what happens. Sinead: And I also definitely think there was like, they were above them kind of attitude from him from the paper from much of the coverage following the first meta-piece talking about this piece in The Times of London as a response called the girls, “queens of the bare midriff and pierced nostril”. And that the “pouting group undermined any credibility they had talking about Thatcher”. Elyse: Wow, that is so dismissive and diminutive. Cheryl: It's also frustrating because like, it's serious enough to cover as news. But it's not serious enough for us to say, like, take these young women seriously. You know, so we get this thing where we're like, we get to laugh at them being dumb, but like, they're also like serious and therefore it's like newsworthy, and it's really damning, I think, for both ways is that like, they’re either smart enough to take seriously or not. You're failing both ways. Steph: I feel like 25 years later, the same shit is still happening to female artists. Megan: Oh, that quote is pretty much just like they're a body without a brain in it. Cheryl: This article actually sends them into like stratospheric levels of public consciousness. They go from this band, but like teen girls have posters up in their rooms. And you know, it's really popular with the under 25, set to proper movers and shakers who are being discussed by, you know, major news columnists and elected officials. One Labour MP Michael Connor de fer Falkirk East was quoted as saying “perhaps the Spice Girls are the last vestige of at self interest and self gratification”. And it also causes a lot of MPs to chase them down. Sinead: It's interesting, like, what happened actually, that really pushed this issue further was during the Brit Awards, which is just a couple of months after this article comes out, Melanie C ended up seated next to a high profile member of the Labour Party, this guy named Peter Haines. Mel got into conversation with him and insisted they were labour voters, which prompted Hanes to invite the band for a tour of British Parliament. And so this was announced to the media following the Brit Awards, and the girl said they wanted to encourage their younger fans to get involved in politics. Hanes when asked directly by the Daily Mail for comment said “The girls didn't want to be seen as Thatcherites or as conservatives”. Elyse: I do wonder if what they said had any impact on sort of the political zeitgeist at the time, like if there were any votes changed, if there were any, you know, young women that heard that the Spice Girls loved Thatcher and reexamined. Like I have a hard time believing that that would be the case, but I'd be curious to know if it had any actual impact outside of their careers. Sinead: Well, it's kind of hard to say because Tony Blair, and the Labour Party ended up winning in a landslide very shortly after those comments were made, but I don't think that was reflective of their influence one way or the other. It was reflective of how much Thatcher was just hated and also that the conservatives had been in power in the UK for a long time when they lost that election. I think their core fans, when that article came out, were too young to even vote would be my supposition. But what happened is then all of a sudden, their parents and grandparents and just older adults, all of a sudden were as aware of them and this comes at a time where they're shooting to fame, like this is two months after the Spice album is released, like they're doing so well on the charts. They're everywhere like commercially, and then now they're also in the political papers, it just solidified they're like the beginning of their reign. [Music] Sinead: At the end of February 1997, the girls were back in the spotlight in the UK again, this time at the Brit Awards. Similar to the Grammys, these awards are given through a vote by industry peers and it's like a super glamorous event, so obviously they brought their tabloid A-game. Before the show the Brit pop / teen pop rivalry which we have talked about before added fuel to the fire with notably violent Liam Gallagher of Oasis. He told the press he wouldn't attend the BRIT Awards if the Spice Girls were in attendance because he'd smack them and if you don't know about Oasis... Liam and his brother Noel are infamous for their feuds and antics particularly with each other but also with other people and they definitely like to get violent sometimes so...not an illegitimate threat…. given the source. Ashley: I just think it's so funny because this is the band that did Champagne Supernova and like, Wonderwall. Chill stoner hanging out with your friends like after the bar or whatever music and it's like no, they're like threatening to assault the Spice Girls. Okay guys.[laughter] Sinead: Because they don't like pop like, there's actually no reason for like, not like I said they're both infamous for getting into feuds with other musicians. But in this particular case, I mean with many cases with them, there's literally no reason they just don't like that they're successfully making pop music Steph: Which is funny because like Wonderwall is just as popular as Spice Girls music in that regard, we all like Wonderwall. Megan: Yeah, like he's on some musical high ground with Bach and Mozart. Steph: Yeah exactly...it’s the same shit Sinead: Honestly, the Gallagher's absolutely think they’re on the same level of Bach and Mozart just to be clear, they absolutely believe that. Um, so yeah, when the girls took home their second award of the night for Best British Single for Wannabe, which is a huge award, Mel C told him in front of the entire British public: “Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough.” That was her acceptance speech. And I think we have a video of it that Ashley has queued up. [Audio plays of the Spice Girls’s acceptance speech at the BRIT Awards] Victoria: Wow. Once again, we wasn't expecting one award, let alone two, but once again a big big thank you to everybody out there, thanks very much. Emma: I’m absolutely gobsmacked, but now we know that pop is back! Mel B: Right, well I want to say a big thank you to Matt and Biff out there, and everybody that's been involved with the Spice Girls and you know, you never know what's gonna happen. Emma and Mel B: And Absolute! Mel B: Peace. Geri: I think I'd like to thank all the independent small radio stations out there, cuz they’re the ones that played our records, so thank you very much. Without you and the fans, we’re nothing. Mel C: I just want to say, Liam, come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough! Mel B: Yeahhh!! [laughter] Ashley: I love her little cheeky expression for that too. Sinead: I love Geri having the most pragmatic thank you, which is that she's like “I have been building this band and I know that those independent radio stations are what helped us get here.” Like it's so, she's absolutely right. Also at the BRIT Awards, they won Best British video for Say You’ll Be There. And unfortunately, Geri had a wardrobe malfunction. When she was accepting the award, she slipped on her sparkly red strapless gown, which exposed her breast to the host and to some of the audience. And obviously this became a feeding frenzy for tabloids. There were headlines like, quote: “Spice Girls when two big ones at pop super show.” And according to the Sinclair biography about the band, quote: “Every paper, whether tabloid or broadsheet, ran a picture of Geri or of the Spice Girls front page the next day.” When you zoom on this picture, it's not super clear, but we think that they may have ran it uncensored, like showing her actual breast, in the newspaper? Elyse: Oh, I think so. Yeah, I think you can definitely see her breast. Sinead: Which I thought was like illegal, but I guess not? Elyse: Not in the UK, UK is full nips all the time. Ashey: It's also odd, on the far left, the picture of her from behind. Steph: I think you see some butt cheek. Elyse: Yeah, you do. Megan: Yeah. Cheryl: Yeah. And this is the back of Geri’s iconic union jack dress. That dress actually got the most press of anything that evening. Geri had been originally meant to wear a plain black dress. Originally Gucci, which is at this time led by Tom Ford as a creative director. But she thought this dress was too boring. Her sister helped her sew a Union Jack tea towel onto it. Elyse: How is it a tea towel? I don't understand. It does not look like a tea towel. It is the largest tea towel in the world. How? Sinead: I also think this every single fucking time I see the tea towel comment. I know it's true. Like that's what it is. But I do not understand. Steph: I don't think a tea towel goes from boob to vag. Elyse: Yeah. Sinead: Is she really small? Elyse: That's what I'm wondering, she must be tiny! Chery: She’s short. Elyse: She is short. That's why she wears the huge shoes. Cheryl: Yeah, and also like it's not really a dress. It's described as a swim costume in one of the interviews she does. So calling it a dress is extremely generous. [Music] Cheryl: So this is what bothers me about this moment. Here's this moment where the Spice Girls are being taken seriously as a fashion and cultural influence with Gucci saying like, I want to dress The Spice Girl or like as a company saying ‘I want to dress the Spice Girls.’ And Geri turns around and she takes this dress that is high end etc. And she... /episode/index/show/spiceinvaders/id/20778899

E4: Thatcher Spice 10/11/2021

E3: Triumph! Victory! Girl Power! Nipples! 10/04/2021

E3: Triumph! Victory! Girl Power! Nipples! Transcript 10/04/2021

E3: Triumph! Victory! Girl Power! Nipples! Transcript [cold open] Elyse: Yeah, it was a lot of nips and I thought that was great. Spice Invaders Theme Song: [over trumpet music] It’s got theme song vibes. Like danceable, funky. [Laughter]. So 90s. Girl power. Spice Invaders. Sinead: Are we ready? Ashley: Yeah. Elyse: Yeah! Ashley: Does anyone want to tell everyone what the podcast is about? Sinead: Does anyone want to talk about the last episode? The end of last episode, what we covered? Megan: I remember we were talking about sort of like what came before like their recording, and Sinead talked a bit about like what it was like in the UK after Wannabe came out, and they came over to the States, and they started like making connections with people. We also talked a little bit about like Girl Power versus feminism. I think that's where we left the episode. Sinead: Yep, that is where we left it. They're going all around and starting to get a lot of publicity, and they still haven't actually released a single yet, so enter Wannabe. The girls were pretty adamant that Wannabe should be their first single. They really loved it as a song. However, Virgin and their manager Simon Fuller really wanted Say You’ll Be There, and they didn't really want to even entertain Wannabe. However, Geri and Mel B, of course, the two, like, leaders of the Spice Girls, were very much on Team Wannabe. They felt like it was a Girl Power manifesto, especially the line “If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends.” And it served as an introduction to their five personalities. Although it’s kinda funny because there actually wasn't a track for Victoria on the single because she had missed when they had written it. It's either because she was sick or she was at a wedding. Like we've seen some different accounts. There's no definitive answer to why she wasn't at the recording. But she ended up without a verse and she mostly sings backup on the track. So basically, all of them really wanted Wannabe, especially Mel B and Geri. And Virgin says that Say You'll Be There is way more radio friendly and a much cooler track. A big part of the problem with Wannabe is the original version they had recorded wasn't very radio friendly. The vocals are really low, and it sounds weird. And actually, if you recall the scene in the cafe in Spice World, they were playing that original Wannabe track over it, so that's like the music. It was sent to a different American producer by Virgin who produced it with, like an r&b slant that Geri called, quote, “bloody awful.” Cheryl: So Simon Fuller brings in a producer and mixer by the name of Spike Stent . He's working with U2 at the time. He's worked with Depeche Mode and Massive Attack. And he kinda thought Wannabe was weird. But he thought it was weird because it didn't sound like anything else around. So he gets it and within about six hours, he's able to give it a radio ready sound, bringing vocals to the forefront. But the six hours solved the impasse with Virgin. And it also lands him the job of remixing the rest of this album, and the second one. Elyse: I have an interesting fact too about why Virgin didn't want Wannabe to be the original track. They did think it was, like, a little bit weird, and they had trouble like not tinkering with it - they were obsessed with remixing it. But a big part of it too was that Simon felt strategically that first songs tend to disappear, they tend to get. like. lost a little bit. So it was all sort of a strategic decision that they're like it's a solid song, it has potential. And if you launch it first, people are only going to remember your second song. So it wasn't all hate. Some of it was just we want to save it until you guys have some name recognition. And the girls obviously didn't want to do that. Sinead: Which is pretty funny in hindsight because- Steph: Look where we are now. Sinead: 25 years later, it's probably their most recognizable song. Steph: And still a hot jam. Elyse: Definitely. Cheryl: So this sort of solves the problem of the radio edit of the single, but you know, the 90s were full of video programs like MTV, and Canada's Much Music and also the British version, which was The Box. The Box is going right up against MTV, and the CEO actually met the Spice Girls at their incident at the racetrack where they, you know, climbed up on top of a horse. And he says to them, like, “Hey, I want exclusive rights to whatever you release first,” because he wants to pull one over on MTV, which actually gets him an advanced screening of that. |However, filming the actual video, Fuller brings in Jhoanne Camitz who actually doesn't have a lot of experience in the music video space, but he's done commercials for Volkswagen and Nike. And he had this vision of a one-take shot where they arrive at an exotic building in the middle of a park in Spain, and it's slightly surreal and it's filled with these bohemian artists. And they would run all over just like they did in their glorious pre-label days. The catch is, about five days before they're set to shoot in Spain, they learn they don't have permission to shoot in that building. So they relocated to the St. Pancras Hotel in London. Sinead: Yeah, so, the Virgin team hates the video. They hated it. It was dark, it was gloomy, there were old people in the video. All: [Laughter] Sinead: There was like some argument that the public might find that threatening? Which I don't really understand. Elyse: Wait, the idea of having old people? Sinead: Yes. Steph: Old people are threatening? Like they're gonna, “I’ll hit you with my cane.” Elyse: Or where the Spice Girls like threatening the old people? Sinead: I think it was more they were acting, quote unquote “aggressively” in the Wannabe video. Like very into themselves and like dancing around. And it was like too in their face, and they were worried that it would just turn the public off essentially. Like the vibe of the video and turn the public off. Steph: That's fair. Baby does steal a homeless person's hat. Sinead: That also happened. Um, it was also so cold in the video that you can see Mel B's nipples. And this actually ended up getting the video banned in several countries. Megan: Nipples? Sinead: Her nipples Ashley: There was more nipples, I think, right? Like it wasn't even just her nipples, but- Elyse: Yeah, it was a lot of nips, and I thought that was great. Megan: Everyone has nipples though. Sinead: Yeah, well apparently that's very controversial for 1996. Steph: Nipples are still controversial, so it hasn't really progressed that far. Megan: I personally embrace nipples. Elyse: Yes. Sinead: Um, so anyway, there were other like small things. In the video, Geri bumps into a chair, which doesn't help because you know, we all know she's not the dancer of the group. Elyse: She bumped into everything because she insisted on wearing these gigantic shoes and she couldn't walk in them, so when you watch the video, she's just like, tottering around. She's walking like a crab and she like can't stay upright. It's hilarious. Megan: That's like every girl at like their first middle school dance or whenever they first wear heels, you know? Trying to walk around the dance floor. Steph: Just like if you go to your first bar. Or second bar, whatever. Sinead: Um, or as a 32 year old who just doesn't really wear high heels because I'm tall enough. All: [Laughter] Megan: Okay, I have a question for you guys. As someone who - is this 1997 that the music video came out? Sinead & Cheryl: ‘96. Megan: ‘96. I don't think we even owned a TV then - but I definitely didn't have Much Music. Was it that different than other music videos at the time? Like do you guys remember it being like, “Oh, this is, I've never seen this before.” Steph: I don't remember even watching the video, like I don't think I was allowed to watch it? Or- Ashley: Because of the nipples. Steph: Yeah, maybe because of the nipples. All: [Laughter] Elyse: Babies can't know about nipples. Steph: I don't think my parents would have been into watching it. So I don't remember seeing the video til much later, to be honest. Cheryl: They also don't get the same radio play- like the same airtime in Canada until much later, until they've already had several other like, equally impressive and totally like normal videos recorded, which I think is a part of it. Elyse: Yeah, I think it was really unpolished for American audiences too. Like apparently, they actually wanted the Spice Girls to reshoot a different version of the video for American and Canadian audiences because they thought the British one was too sort of like raw and it was messy like it was super messy. Cheryl: It’s messy. Elyse: And they thought that you know, like, audiences abroad wouldn't respond well to it and the girls really had to put their foot down and they said like, “No, this is us, this is what we wanted to do” and they refused to reshoot it, but they got a lot of pushback from their management team saying that it just it wouldn't fly. Sinead: Yeah, exactly. Um, Geri is quoted as saying “It's us, warts and all. We're not going to have some sort of slick Elton John-” Elyse: What an example! Sinead: [Laughter] “-music video production.” And she said “We had a laugh doing it. That's us, and if you don't get that you don't get us.” I don't know if in 1996 Elton John was some sort of really high bar for music video production, but- Elyse: All I can picture is the video that’s like - [singing] “I'm still standing” and it's like him on a beach and it's also super low production video- production quality. So I love that that was the example because he had the worst videos ever! Steph: Yeah, that's the only Elton John video I can think of too. Elyse: Yeah! Steph: And only because they put it sort of side by side in Rocket Man. Elyse: In Rocket Man, me too! Elyse and Steph: [Laughter] Steph: Oh god, we’re cool. Cheryl: So almost three months before the track is actually released as a single, the video gets an exclusive run on The Box, which is MTV’s big rival in Britain. It goes to number one for requests within about two hours, and it quickly averages about 70 plays a week. Steph: That's the nipples though. Cheryl: Yeah, that is nipples. Steph: [Laughter] Cheryl: Yeah. ‘Cause especially, like, only normally super successful artists get to go to number one that quickly. Elyse: It was the nipple availability. Cheryl: [Laughter] The track was released to the world on July 8, 1996, going to number three immediately on the British chart, and going to number one the next week, staying there for about seven weeks and selling 1.25 million copies in the UK. They're also the first British group to top the charts with their first single, and it's eventually dethroned by Say You’ll Be There 13 weeks later. Megan: Cool stat because like, British music is huge, like through the decades. I think that's quite impressive. Steph: Yeah, I mean, you think about The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Elton John. Megan: Elton John. Sinead: Of course, we can’t forget Elton John. Megan: He’s the bar. Sinead: Yeah, but basically, there had been no musical sensation on the level of The Beatles until the Spice Girls. And we'll get into that later. So on July 21, the single hits number one, so they appear via satellite from Japan where they were on a promotional tour at the time, they appear on Top of the Pops. And this is sort of a preview of how Simon Fuller operates. While they were actually on the promotional tour, coming in from an international locale makes the band appear like they already have a lot of international success. So he's sort of positioning them to be like “Oh, they're already like globe-trotting like all around the world like doing their music.” So the director of press at Virgin in ‘96 said, quote: “The sound of the song, the playground feel of it, it worked for them across the world without exception.” Sandall (Virgin VP) also noted that Girl Power really spoke directly to an empowered group of young-ish girls, and that the appeal was also social and political. Cheryl: So Ashley Newton, head of artists and repertoire at Virgin, who was very much on the Say You’ll Be There train, is forced to kind of eat his words, and admit that he's wrong. He explains “We in the record company were trying to overthink in certain situations. The girls were much more impulsive and much more knowledgeable about what a young kid wants from rock and pop stars. They were closer to it than us. They just understood it.” Ashley: Triumph. Cheryl: Victory. Steph: Girl Power Sinead: Selling lots of records. Megan: Nipples. All: [Laughter] Sinead: On the heels of Wannabe doing really well, the Virgin execs wanted to make sure their next hit was lined up, naturally. So in September of ‘96, the girls headed to the Mojave Desert to film the video for Say You’ll Be There. The song had been written with Elliott Kennedy, who is the producer you might recall from earlier who refused to stop working with them when Heart Management was being bitter. Say You'll Be There had always been the favored single by the record company and by Fuller, so they were willing to throw a lot of resources at it. The music video for Say You’ll Be There was directed by Vaughan Arnell, who is an English music video dude who was already fairly well established. At the time Arnell was more known for his commercial work, but shortly before Say You’ll Be There he’d done a couple of music videos for George Michael, so he obviously was pretty successful. His most famous video prior to Say You’ll Be There was actually Dead or Alive’s 1984 video for You Spin Me Right Round. Which I know that we all know that song- I know Steph’s face, I knew you would like that fact. Sinead: So yeah, You Spin Me Right Round video and Say You'll Be There are tangentially related because they have the same director. The shoot required the girls to be superheroes and they literally had to be superheroes. The video was filmed in 44 degrees Celsius heat, and they were wearing those like very tight leather outfits. The director called Victoria unbelievable, citing her professionalism while needing to stand on the back of a car in a leather cat suit. Cheryl: Also I just wanted to point out, a ridiculous tangent because it's early and we're gonna start planting these seeds. Apparently when this video was on in like the Manchester United locker room, one of David Beckham's like teammates asked him like “Which one do you fancy?” And he says, “The one in the leather catsuit.” Elyse: Aw. They love each other. Cheryl: I know. Elyse: They’re mawwied. Sinead: He also really likes nannies. All: [Laughter] Sinead: That came later. Elyse: Ok well, those two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Wait, they're still married though, right? All: Yeah. Sinead: All I hope is that Posh is getting some dick on the side. Elyse: I think we all hope that they're all getting a lot of dick from every direction. To the degree that they want it. [Laughter] Ashley: Good caveat. All: [Laughter] Sinead: So I can share a link to the video if we want to play it because it is quite like a stylized, filmy kind of video. I don't know if you guys remember. Elyse: So apparently this video is based on a science fiction movie called “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” Steph: Yeah. Elyse: That’s where they got the aesthetic. I have no further information. Sinead: It is based on that. Ashley: Here we go. I'm pressing play. Elyse: Oh, wow. That is a satellite. Steph: Little spaceship. I actually- so I thought that was weird. And it's like, it's just an American beer that doesn't exist anymore. Elyse: Really? Steph: The spaceship? Yeah. Megan: Guys I have never seen this before. Elyse: Wow, that is a leather cowboy with unbuttoned pants. Ashley: Let's talk about their names a little bit. Steph: Yeah. Emma was “Kung Fu Candy.” Mel C was “Katrina High Kick.” Geri was “Trixie Firecracker.” Megan: [Laughter] What does that even mean? Elyse: It means she's a tricksy little firecracker. Steph: Posh is... “Midnight Miss Suki?” And Mel B was “Blazin’ Bad Zula.” Elyse: Oooooh. Ashley: Okay. Elyse: Those are all very, I don't know, precarious names, that I don't know that I feel equipped to dive into. Megan: I'm getting the vibe that whoever came up with those names in the video lost out the job to name Bond villains and female characters. Elyse: How do we feel about Kung Fu Candy? Steph: Well, Baby's mom was a karate teacher, and Baby got to be- I should say Emma, Emma was like a green or blue belt, karate person. Sinead: The girls were all trained in basic kung fu moves for the choreography and some of that was taught to them by Emma. Ashley: Whoa. Elyse: Are we going to talk about Scary’s outfit as well? The sort of like, tribal vibe. Ashley: Yeah with the ring necklaces. Sinead: It’s actually really interesting because Mel B talks about early in her career, especially with filming the videos, she got a lot of pressure to straighten her hair and like get rid of her natural texture, which she was like “fuck off” basically. “I'm not doing that.” Elyse: Good for her, yeah. Sinead: But it is interesting that I feel like instead because she kept her natural hair there was definitely like a push to like dress her more in that like sort of tribal aesthetic than the other girls where you never see them wearing anything like that. Elyse: Yeah Sinead: But yeah good for her for sure because she did say there was a lot of pressure to alter her natural hair and she did not want to. Elyse: Yeah, I've always been so curious to know like how much of her look she had any influence over versus how much it was just like dictated to her because obviously it so profoundly changes how we look at that like aesthetic. Because if it was like her white producers being like “This is the Scary vibe and if you want to have your natural hair, then we're going to go all the way with it.” That is such a different conversation than her just being like “I really love this animal print. I think this look is amazing and like this is what I want to wear.” And I don't know, does anybody know like what the story is behind that? Sinead: I think it is mostly what she wanted to wear because there was a lot of emphasis especially on the band in ‘96 about them really embracing their own personal style and that being part of it. That said, like they obviously made alter egos so I don't know how much she was picking those things to fit within it. But I think at this time they still didn't have a lot of styling compared to like a celebrity now. Like in the Wannabe video which is only filmed months before this video they were literally wearing like the thrift store clothes that... /episode/index/show/spiceinvaders/id/20689289

E2: They Wannabe Famous Transcript 09/27/2021

E2: They Wannabe Famous Transcript Ashley: Hi everyone, this is Ashley, a producer on the show. This is a chronological podcast. So if you haven't listened to the first episode, I highly recommend going back and doing so. We are still recording from different homes with different setups. We hope you can forgive a slight audio glitch here and there. Alright, let's go to the show. Cheryl: Last time I relied on my boobs to keep something in place and they just don't. Really annoying. Elyse: Well there’s our cold open. [Laughter] Spice Invaders Theme Song: [over trumpet music] It’s got theme song vibes. Like danceable, funky. [Laughter]. So 90s. Girl power. Spice Invaders. Cheryl: Do you want a recap of what we know so far? Steph: The only thing I'm remembering right now is the sex dolls in the river. Elyse + Cheryl: That’s a great place to start the recap. Elyse: Okay, so from what I remember, the Spice Girls had just been flown to the U.S. to sort of kick off the rise of their actual industry careers and look into signing a contract. And they were supposed to show up for a big signing party, and instead stacked a car full of inflatable sex dolls in their stead to sort of deke out all of the people there. They then later showed up and threw all of the sex dolls into a canal making quite the entrance. And they are about to work on releasing their hit single of “Wannabe” Cheryl: That covers a lot. And in this episode, we're going to get into the tension surrounding “Wannabe” as the first single, sort of the lay of the land that “Wannabe” is coming into, and some funny post-signing high jinks. So we signed the deal in July 1995. And in October of 1995, the virgin team invited the girls to an industry event at Kempton Park, it's supposed to be a day at the races. There's a showcase of other Virgin artists and networking. This is meant to be sort of a fancy classy event. Which, of course, brings the girls to do exactly what they're not supposed to. So what I'm about to send you is a photo from the day of their most scandalous action. Elyse: What [Laughter] Okay, wait, is that a real statue Sinead: Right now we're looking at a statue of a big horse. We have Melanie B and ginger on top and Emma Victoria is in the middle and Mel C’s got her arm around Victoria. And some old white men are looking on in horror. Megan: Can I just say that posh is getting close to the posh hairstyle in this one... like all the early photos she had long, longer hair anyway. Elyse: Really good point kind of Megan: The rest of them kinda look like they look when we know them, you know. Elyse: What is this statue? Cheryl: So this is a memorial for a racehorse. So like it's scandalous, not just because A) you're not supposed to jump on the statues but also this is apparently like a big deal racehorse that you're supposed to, you know, revere a little bit and the girls are just like ‘we're gonna jump on this’. The dude you see in the background, who's about to come to chase them off, according to Geri is security of Kempton Park, who's about to take them off the statue. The journalists who are there really enjoyed this. This is sort of like the first sprinkling of press they get for being an outrageous girl group. And also, their other big stunt for the day is they actually do an acapella version of “Wannabe” in the girls bathroom because they love the acoustics of the space so much. Elyse: That's cute. Elyse: I don't think this guy that's rushing towards them is upset. Like if you zoom in on his face, he looks just tickled with what he has to deal with today. Megan: Racehorses... like someone riding them like that's not that weird, right? Sinead: I mean, we have to remember we're dealing with English people here and they've broken a cardinal sin just showing an emotion in public and breaking a rule. [Laughter] Cheryl: I also feel like it's got to be really great for your day to be like ‘oh geez, I have to remove five attractive young women from a place who I'm sure if I'm like reasonably nice to will calm down eventually once they're done with their photos.’This is their one big event and then the other part of sort-of the honeymoon pre-stardom phase is going to America again. They and Simon Fuller head over to start getting some networking done stateside and start getting a foothold in that massive market. They're signed with an American agent William Morris Agency. this trip is a major first for the girls and that they get to stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel. They get to get in a little bit of shopping, a little bit of seeing the stars. Starting to experience that like Star lifestyle for the first time after you know slumming it in that Maidenhead house. One of the other highlights from the trip is they're actually told to take a holiday. they're about to go back into the recording studio to finish off the album. They're about to start having to do a lot of press to get both the single and the eventual album off the ground. And they've already got a promotional tour to Japan scheduled after this trip as well. And I'll drop the photo and they just look really cute and charming. Elyse: Oh my god. Sorry, but Mel B is so hot. Steph: Beach babes. Elyse: They're all so hot. Megan: Wearing the classic 90s bikinis. Sinead: The thing that catches my eye is how gigantic the front of Mel's bikini particularly is all of them but like how big do you think labia are that you need to have a bag? [Laughter] Elyse: Oh, wait, oh, we should describe what we're looking at. So we're looking at a photo of the Spice Girls. We have Mel B in front and then Emma then Geri, then Victoria and then Mel C at the back. And they're all in different colored little bikinis. And yes, Mel B's front is genuinely giant. It looks kind of like the stripper thongs from the Full Monty. Sinead: The thing about this picture, especially because they've all been swimming and they're not really wearing makeup and they're not really styled at all is that they all look so young. And particularly Mel C looks like she's 15. Like...which probably not that far off from her age. But she really does look like the youngest person there. Megan: Now she looks 30 and she's not so maybe... Steph: She's reverse aging or something. Elyse: She looks ... This is the picture I sent earlier today. She just looks better with every year. She's one of those people that as she ages gets more and more beautiful. And I don't understand the science. Megan: So this is a story I heard on a podcast that was interviewing Mel C years later, she said they didn't have a lot of money. And this was sort of their first vacation with money. They went to Maui I think, it was, they stayed at this really fancy five star resort. And it was like, you know, other rich and famous people. And she said it was so luxurious and the beach was incredible. And all this. But like something happened with their last night at the hotel, it was actually a day before their flight was leaving the airport. So they, I think they went to the airport and found out it was like a day early. And then they're stuck there. And they had to find a cheap motel to stay at. And like they didn't have money with them. So they just stayed at this really cheap place. And there's a photo of them all looking, like, really salty and upset and it became sort of like these whiny pop stars, you know, sort of in the media like complaining about being in Maui or unhappy in Maui, or it wasn't really the whole story. Sinead: So yeah, when we look at this trip to the US, it was a pretty major part of Simon Fuller’s strategy for the band, his intention was to plant the earliest use of doing a film. And they actually on this trip they met with DreamWorks, they met with Disney and they met with Fox. Which is crazy because they don't even have a single out yet. And they're meeting with film studios. Um, he was pretty single minded in his approach to spread the brand of the Spice Girls into as many different markets and sectors as possible. So whether this meant creating interest for a film, or the myriad of brand sponsorships that the band would eventually have. It was later reflected in the music industry that their brand-first approach was pretty unique for the times. And it obviously hugely influenced the future of the industry. In the past a band had built their brand by becoming famous first for their music, then getting fans,then getting brand sponsorship deals, that kind of stuff. For the Spice Girls, they became famous as a consequence of their brand. And that's sort of like going at the same time between the music coming out and the mass commercialization of the brand was very unique at the time. For the Spice Girls, they wanted to be really famous. They were really fame hungry. They picked Simon Fuller for a reason. And this is him starting to deliver from the moment basically that they sign him as their manager. He is trying to put them everywhere that they can be. Elyse: They were also really driving the movie thing because apparently they had made it really clear to Simon Fuller from the time that they agreed to work with him that they wanted to do a movie because all of the girls had grown up with “A Hard Day's Night” with the Beatles. thinking like that is the epitome of fame. We want to do that. And it didn't have anything to do with their musical aspirations. It's just that they all dreamt of being Hollywood stars. So that's really cool that he made that a priority on their first trip to the states Megan: And I also wonder because that's not a normal thing before an albums out to want to make a movie of a band. I also wonder if it's just like their personalities and when people met them they're like oh we can market this in like more sectors Steph: They all had like theater school background so... like doing music and theater and a movie, it's not that much of a stretch, except for Geri I guess.[Laughter] Elyse: Geri takes a hit in this podcast. Sinead: This is not the Geri fanclub podcast. [Deep tone] Megan: So are they laying the groundwork for what became like Paris Hilton and the Kardashians who went with the first part of fame but never came out with like the musical part? Steph: Well, Paris Hilton has a pretty good music career, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Elyse: Sparkling track record. [Laughter] Sinead: I wouldn't say it's exactly the same because the girls themselves were quite private about their personal lives and they didn't enjoy necessarily their personal life being part of the media firestorm, they definitely paved the way for something heavily commercialized as being very normalized. And like you were entering your understanding of the band through commercial means not because you heard a song on the radio that you loved, maybe you saw a piece of merch first, or you saw an advertisement but it wasn't focused on the music. I think that leads later on into influencer culture for sure. Cheryl: I also before I get to be plotline, I think this speaks to sort of two things. One I'm not sure how much of the goal was to be singers and how much of the goal was fame because there's a quote of Victoria’s that gets thrown around a lot that is ‘We want to be as famous as Persil Automatic” which is like a laundry detergent in the UK so like they want to be as famous as like Tide. Everyone knows what Tide is. You know what I mean? Even if you don't do laundry you know what Tide is. Like picture, like, even if you don't listen to teen pop, you want to know who the Spice Girls are? Or you know who the Spice Girls are was like their goal. So I definitely think a film's a part of that and that's definitely why they chose to work with Fuller because Fuller has all these connections to make them that famous like the roadmap. I'm not sure if the roadmap was to be a girl group or the roadmap was to be famous. [Deep Tones] Megan: Do you guys remember hearing about the Spice Girls before “Wannabe”? Ashley: Sinead? Did you living in the UK? Because I feel like it might have started a little earlier in the UK with their press. Sinead: So I was in Canada by that time but it was going home for Christmas that Spice was already out in the UK but it wasn't out in the US slash Canada yet. It was like the Spice Girl Christmas hauls that year. There was already such an overexposure even though their first album was barely even out yet. I think it had been out for a few months by that time. Elyse: Do you remember any of the Christmas gifts that were part of that Spice Girls year haul? Sinead; It was mostly like the erasers and like, um, you know just like stationary stuff like, a lot of it had the gold ring on it. Do you guys remember an album cover with a gold ring that said spice? Steph: Yah, That's their first album cover. Sinead: Yeah, so there was a lot of stuff with that on it. Steph: If you tell me that one of them is a Tolkien fan. I'm gonna die. Elyse: Wait, I have information about the gold ring. Sinead: Cheryl does too. Cheryl: Oh no, I’ll let Elyse tell it because she's already started to go for it. We literally come back from the UK. We start, the girls, start recording and putting the finishing touches on their album. One of the finishing touches that needs to happen is they need to return to Sheffield and head to Elliot Kennedy’s studio again. And near Elliott Kennedy’s studio is a local jeweler. Which brings us to... Elyse: Me! My story. Um, okay. So once they're out there, it's so the thing is they return essentially around the time of their one year anniversary of recording “Wannabe” for the first time. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's what the one year anniversary is. And so Geri really wanted to do something special for the girls to sort of commemorate it. So she went to the jeweler around the corner and she took five gold rings there. Actually, I think she went to an engravement place. And then they were like you can't do it here., but you can go to the shoe place around the corner and you can get them engraved there. So she then actually went to a shoe place and had them engraved which is just the cutest little thing. So each of the girls received a gold ring that said Spice on one side. And then on the other side, it says one of five, which is just the sweetest little way to say I mean both limited edition, so they're worth $1 trillion in the future. But also just to commemorate their group vibe so I thought that was a really sweet gift. Megan: I think that's actually a really sweet gesture commemorating all their hard work up to this point and like what was to come and what they all seem to like to know what's to come. Elyse: That seems to be the thing about Geri. She seems to be very loving and very warm and very thoughtful and just genuinely like a sweetheart in that sense. Politically, she is a complete disaster, and I wish she never made public appearances on political matters. But in terms of being a part of someone's life, she genuinely does seem to be a very thoughtful and supportive person. Ashley: There we go some Geri love. [laughter] Steph: I wonder if they still have them? Elyse: I think they must be because I did a cursory search on the internet to see if I could even find photos of them, and there aren't any that I could find at least. so I think they must all keep them pretty, pretty close. Sinead: Or they melted them into something else? Elyse: Or it is in the fires of Mordor. And that's why none of us are being bothered by Dark Lords. That's the other possibility. Steph: Interesting plot twist. [Deep Tones] Cheryl: Despite the fact that we're talking about what's going to become a world dominating force, there's actually a lot of tension and anxiety with the record company about what to do with the group. The first hint of this is actually Robert Sandal, who's the director of press Virgin, explains, “because they were a group of girls who weren't conspicuously glamorous, it was difficult to know who they were supposed to appeal to. There had never been a group of girls who were addressing themselves specifically to a female audience before this gave a lot of the plans a hazy aspect”Before this moment, the girl group sells to a male record buyer, the girl group is one unit, like you think of them as a unit, but they support a lead singer. Like usually, when they sing, you've got one of them out in front, and two to four of them are in a supporting role. And they all dress the same. If you're thinking of like the peak of the girl group, in a lot of ways you're thinking of like the 50s and 60s with the beehives and the matching gowns. And we keep experimenting with that model until the 80s with Bananarama, which is cited as a big inspiration for Heart Management. But they're the same model, they've got one lead singer, they just have big 80s hair instead of big 50s hair. And the girls rail pretty consistently against that mould, both in the recording studios, and also they rail against it kind of accidentally, I'm going to share a quote that Mel C says later for love magazine about sort of how the look came to be; “When we got together, you know, we were trying to find our way. And we went through phases of old dressing the same, it didn't work for somebody in the band. And then when we used to rock up to rehearsals, you know, Geri would have some crazy outfit from a secondhand store, and I'd be in tracky, and Emma would be in a baby doll dress. And we were just like, one day, I don't even know how we came to this decision. But we were just like, why don't we just wear what we want as individuals” Megan: Girl Power, right there. Ashley: I do love though how I mean, it is really important that they did that. But I love how impactful and revolutionary It is like, oh, let's dress as individuals. Steph: So simple. Like how about we just dress how we want to dress? Presumably the clothes they already had in the closet at that point. [Laughter] Elyse: I think part of it was a strategic decision too, because in Geri’s bio, my favorite place to go, they talk about how they decided to wear different outfits to highlight their personalities specifically to play down the perception that they were a manufactured group, which of course they were. And you know, there's nothing wrong with being a manufactured group, lots of bands are but they really wanted to dissuade people from thinking of them as something that's been baked up by an agency and it's just a genuine sort of group of girlfriends. Steph: By this point.. Yes, they started manufactured, but by this point, they are their own entity. like they've come this far on their own. Like they're not the Heart management, whatever they wanted them to be, Touch. Sinead: They are kind of like... a lot of money was put into developing their talent together and teaching them how to work together. We weren't sure when we wanted to put this in…. But like they fully lied about their origins for like years until they finally got called out by the Daily Mail. They were like, ‘Oh, we all knew each other before. And like, Oh, this was actually like a plan.’ Elyse: What?! Cheryl: Yeah, the press they do leading up to ‘Wannabe’ until about February 1997 ish. That date might be wrong. But the... /episode/index/show/spiceinvaders/id/20613215

E2: They Wannabe Famous 09/27/2021

E1: R U Streetwise? 09/20/2021

E1: R U Streetwise? Transcript 09/20/2021

E1: R U Streetwise? Transcript Ashley: Hi there. This is Ashley, a producer on the show. If you're not sure what you've walked into, I highly recommend listening to our trailer episode. I also wanted to give you a heads up that we are six women recording from different homes and different setups during a pandemic. And despite our best efforts, there are some audio glitches here and there. I hope you love the Spice Girls as much as we do, and that it doesn't bother you. Alright, let's start the show. Elyse: Is the key to having this podcast take off that once we record it, we just show up at people's houses and play it really loud and then jump on their furniture. Spice Invaders Theme Song: [over trumpet music] It’s got theme song vibes. Like danceable, funky. [Laughter]. So 90s. Girl power. Spice Invaders. Ashley: This is Space Invaders, an obsessive breakdown of the history of the Spice Girls and what they meant to the people who grew up with them. We are six of those kids. And while we're not experts, we have done a ton of research on the Spice Girls and we can't wait to share it with you. I'm Ashley. Cheryl: I'm Cheryl. Elyse: I’m Elyse. Meg: I'm Meg. Sinead: I'm Sinead. Steph: And I'm Steph. Elyse: Let's get started, what are we talking about? Sinead: So we're gonna jump right in and start where the band was formed. So the year is 1994 and a music management company posted an ad looking for streetwise, outgoing, ambitious and dedicated young women for an all girl pop act. And I have sent a picture of that ad, the same one that all of the girls would have seen. It's very, very 90s aesthetic. It's a black and white ad. Obviously it was printed. It was put I believe on posters that were pinned up places and it was also run in a bunch of sort of like industry and like acting and dancing kind of magazines where you would have classifieds. The side of it says “wanted”, and it's kind of like curled like a scroll, like a cowboy, Western kind of aesthetic. And then then has the “are you 18 to 23 with the ability to sing and dance? Are you streetwise, outgoing, ambitious, and dedicated?” It says Heart Management is a widely successful music industry management consortium, which I don't know that that was necessarily true, but it had an impact obviously on all of the young women who decided to apply. It is a very strange aesthetic considering they were trying to recruit for a girly pop band and they went with cowboy Western theme. The ad was posted by Heart Management who were in the business of developing musical talent. Cheryl: So heart management is a father son team. Bob Herbert and his son Chris Herbert. Chris is about 23 and this will become his, like, first major claim to fame. Bob Herbert was pretty big in the 60s and 70s. Nothing like a breakout act. But, like, solid enough that like he can open his, Rolodex hit up a couple great songwriters, you can hit up a couple great acts. The big acts that Bob Herbert has managed are not really big acts at all. They've worked on a couple of acts together by the name of Optimistic, Worlds Apart. Bob was also instrumental in creating a band called “Bros,” which kind of follows a similar trajectory of what we're going to see to the Spice Girls, and that he trains them, and - no spoilers. And then our third character in the Heart Management team, who is a character, and I'm going to say that like willingly, is either Shick, or Chick Murphy, or Sheik Murphy. Steph: It could have been Chic. My grandpa’s nickname was Chic and it was c h i c. Elyse: Did your grandpa manage the Spice Girls at any point in his life? Steph: If he did he did not tell me and I would be very angry about that, that’s hot ticket information to keep from your granddaughter. Meg: What a reveal that would be Steph if he had, oh my gosh. Cheryl: So blows my mind about Mr. Murphy is he ponies up like the financial backing for this project. Like this entire, like, building a girl group project. No one can quite tell me where his money comes from. Like it's very weird. He managed a group called The Three Degrees - if you're familiar with the like (singing) “when will I see you again” from like the 70s, that like easy listening hit. He was involved in their career in like the super early days, but like, they're a one hit wonder and that's not enough money to like pony up a girl band. Sinead: Okay, so Heart were the ones who were sort of initiating this. They were trying to create a new pop group that they could potentially get a record deal for. They were looking for younger women, like girls essentially. And Mel B, Mel C, Victoria and Geri all auditioned in the initial auditions. And they were picked out of the initial auditions. Meg: Mel C actually went to the first audition, and she missed the second audition, the callback, even though they wanted her to come back. Her mom actually called in because she had tonsillitis and couldn't speak and couldn't come in and sing for the second audition. And they had actually gone with a girl named Leanne Morgan. However, Leanne Morgan was 23 and they told her she was too old and they replaced her with Mel C, who came back later on after they decided that Leanne was too old. And they brought her back because they liked her voice so much on the first audition. Elyse: Stop it. That is horrifying. I just have a fun fact about Geri because she actually didn’t audition in the original round of auditions. She missed it because she was visiting her uncle in Spain and she got a really bad sunburn and was too embarrassed to go in. So she called them like two months later. And the only reason she called them - so, she had put the posting, like the newspaper clipping, up on her bathroom mirror. She was going through a really bad period of depression. It was right after her dad had passed away. And she’d struggled with clinical depression her entire life, so it was really dark time. And the only reason she looked at the slip again is because she watched Groundhog Day. And it inspired her to live each day to the fullest, which, I mean, I didn't think Bill Murray could leave a legacy greater than he already has. But I think getting Geri Halliwell to join the Spice Girls is definitely it. So she just called them two months late and was like, “hey, any chance are still looking?” And they said, yeah, no worries, you can be in the final 12. So she skipped all of the original auditions and says to this day, she's like, I never would have made it through if I hadn't just gone for that call. : Sorry, something else super creepy that's age specific. So when Geri called in for her audition, they asked how old she was. And she said “I'm as old or as young as you want me to be. I can be a 12 year old with big boobs if you like.” Ashley: And they were like, that's ambitious and streetwise, it fits the ad perfectly. Come on in. Elyse: Perfect! Steph: Ticks all the boxes. Jesus. I was gonna say Geriatric Spice when Leanne quit, and then the moment really passed. Sinead: Well, you know three years in your 20s may as well be three decades. [Transition Sound] Sinead: The fifth Spice Girl was not yet Emma Bunton. It was actually another woman by the name ofMichelle Stephenson, who ended up practicing and training with them for a little while. I have a quote here from Chris Herbert who said, quote, “Mel B put her head round the door and she was immediately right for the project. It was obvious why we went for her. She was confident and she's got a real presence. She was the obvious star. Melanie B's mom actually was the one who saw the ad for her in a local paper and showed it to her. She didn't need any convincing because she was already dancing professionally in Blackpool. Mel C. She's got a very good range, very strong vocals and quite diva-ish. Victoria was a very good looking girl. She represented a more sophisticated look whereas the others were a lot more pop. She probably stuck out a little bit until you put them all in the melting pot and the whole thing started jelling.” Cheryl: I also love her being not cool. She sings Mein Herr at her audition. Mein Herr from Cabaret. Ashley: Oh, okay. Wow. Steph: She's posh. She's a classy gal. Sinead: She definitely - she has the highest socioeconomic status, I think of all of the girls going into it, like her background. Ashley: I read somewhere online that her parents were rich and she used to like get mad at her dad for dropping her off at school. She’d get bullied because she'd be dropped off in like a Bentley or something? I don't know, some fancy car. Cheryl: I think she has a Rolls Royce. Ashley: Yes. Cheryl: Yeah. Meg: Oh my gosh, they were rich. Ashley: Yeah, and she was bullied for it, so she was like “Dad, stop it!” Elyse: Kinda crazy though, apparently Geri and Victoria had met each other before, because they were both coming up in the acting scene. And they had met at an audition they both did for something called Tank Girl, which was apparently a very queer cinema production. Although she described in way less kind language because she’s a little bit of a piece of shit. But anyways they both auditioned for this, and they had to go on stage and say a little thing like about “hi, here’s my name, here’s what I like.” And Geri Halliwell pulled something out of her ass that was like, “I’m Geri and I’m a Sagittarius and here’s what I like.” And then the next girl in line just lifted her shirt up and flashed the producers. And then across her nipples leans Victoria Beckham and makes eye contact with Geri and she’s like “how the fuck are we supposed to compete with this?” And that was their little meet cute and they saw each other at the Spice Girls auditions and locked eyes and were buddies since. Sinead: So the group - again, at this time it’s Mel B, Mel C, Victoria, Geri, and Michelle Stephenson - are initially named Touch. And they move into a home in Maidenhead where they begin intensive singing and dancing lessons. All these professionals were hired by Heart Management to teach them how to sing, how to dance, and how to perform. Now, the majority of these women already are professionally trained dancers. I know there’s one redheaded exception. Elyse: I was just wondering if you guys wanted to hear some fun housemate things, some fun housemate tidbits that I have. Sinead: Yes, absolutely. Meg: Do we ever. Elyse: Awesome. So this house that they were in, it was not a glammed-out girlband house. It was a little semi-detached house on a hill near a railway with a back garden full of garbage and tons of mounds of soil in a really elderly neighborhood. So it was not a super glamorous house and it was just packed to the brim with these girls. And so the room layout for the girls was Mel B and Mel C shared a room, and then Victoria and Michelle - so, proto-Baby - and then Geri had a room to herself. And they had four major house rules. The first was speak up or shut up. And that meant they had to be really direct with each other and there was no gossiping, just talk directly to each other. Don’t let boyfriends get in the way, so the first kind of inklings of Girl Power. Make decisions together. And that all expenses are shared. Which was a really practical tack-on from Victoria, who apparently was the one that was very grounded. Steph: Slash, I’m not paying for everything just because I already have a lot of money. Elyse: Good point. Sinead: So around this time, like Elyse mentioned they’re really bonding in the house. Everything is going somewhat well. Heart Management still hasn’t asked any of the group to sign contracts. The majority of the team behind Heart comes from a time when it was rare for artists to up and leave. And it also leaves Heart with the opportunity to cut the project if they don’t think it’s gonna work out. So the girls are aware that they’re in this sort of limbo where they’re living in this house, they’re sort of having their expenses paid, they’re being trained, but there’s no clear future path. And it’s around this time that Michelle Stephenson leaves the group. According to Victoria and Mel, and I’m sure you guys might have other perspectives, she just wasn’t a good fit. I believe she also insists that she wasn’t fired, she left. Everyone else kind of describes her as just not having the same drive that the other four of them did. And this is when Emma Bunton is brought in to replace her. Steph: Well and Baby, I guess we’re gonna get a little more into it, but Emma only joined after because her music teacher became the vocal coach of the girls in the spice house. And when Michelle Stephenson dropped out, her vocal teacher was like “hey, I know a girl” and got Emma to audition. So technically Emma did audition, but at the recommendation of someone who was already directly in the house. And then all the girls met her and everyone I guess got along really well. Cheryl: Just to sort of quickly like, both sides this, Michelle insists that she left the group willingly, that her mother was ill, and that it was just not a fit for her. You know, maintains no hard feelings. Except in every other story coming out says otherwise. I don’t think it’s a fault thing, I think it’s entirely possible for “I have other shit going on in my life” to look like “I don’t care.” But there’s also stories where it’s like, “she got the nickname of being the sun worshiper because instead of spending her lunch hour learning a new routine, she was out suntanning.” Meg: Yeah that’s the kind of vibe I got. Everything I read talks about how the five of them, like the final five or whatever you want to call them, how they were all so driven. Like this is what they had all wanted, sort of like growing up what they aspired to, a lot of them trained as dancers or singers you know? And that’s what they were all sort of imagining. And they knew they had to be single-minded, and if they believed and put in the work they truly thought it would come together. And all five of them were of the same mindset. And you know, I think they attribute a lot of what they accomplished in those first couple of years to that shared mindset. Do you guys know a date when Emma Bunton joined them? Like when did Michelle leave, Emma joined, how long had that been in the house together? Sinead: I don’t think we could find firm dates, but I don’t think that Michelle was there for more than six weeks. Based on the photographs, based on the videos, and Emma is there, so it does seem very short. It’s very hard to find very clear information about Michelle Stephenson. I was shocked because I’ve been a Spice Girls fan since they were made, and I had never heard her name. I didn’t know that there was a girl before Emma. I had no idea. They clearly distanced themselves from that aspect of them being very produced. Elyse: Yeah, just on the note of Michelle leaving, it’s so unfortunate. Because apparently right before she left - she was actually asked to leave by Heart - essentially, the girls in the house were getting really frustrated with her because she wasn’t being driven enough. They noticed that when they were rehearsing, she was kind of goofing off, just kind of taking it easy. And in the spirit of their speak up or shut up rule, they talked to her about it. And they were very blunt. They said listen, we don't think you're putting in the same work as us and you’re bringing us down. And apparently she totally stepped it up and got really serious about rehearsals and really got her head in the game. But it was already too late. And shortly after they had that conversation management kind of gave her the axe. Sinead: Oh, that is rough. And then she got to watch the Spice Girls get incredibly famous. All: [Laughter] Elyse: That’s so painful to think about. Steph: Oh God, poor woman. Sinead: So if we want to continue on, I just shared a clip of them talking about living in the house together, which we could all watch at the same time. They are so young, and it's so funny talking, like they're talking about like doing chores, and like how they manage a household together as little babies. Elyse: That's so cute. Sinead: But it's really fascinating, because the Spice Girls definitely are a corporate entity, but living in this house made them into a band. And that is the really interesting thing. Like when I approached this project, it was very much like, Oh, we were like, forced to like the Spice Girls. Like it was very premeditated on the part of the record companies, which is absolutely true, but they're way more of a cohesive unit who were creative together than I ever would have given them credit for. And all the stuff in Maidenhead I think is why, because they had to live together for a long time. Elyse: They’re so little. Ashley: They really are. They look like teenagers. Steph: They are. Sinead: Yeah, they basically are. Ashley: And Geri is the oldest, right? Elyse: Yeah. Ashley: How old was she at this time? Elyse: I think she was right at the upper limit though. I think she was 22 or 23. Or a 12 year old with big boobs. It's tough to tell. Depends on the moon she was in. [Transition Sound] Sinead: Yeah, so basically they're living in Maidenhead, they're really bonding, Emma has joined. Apparently the chemistry with Emma and the rest of the girls was pretty instantaneous. Everyone was super excited that she was there. And they were becoming frustrated because they didn't have recording contracts. And they didn't feel like they were making any headway in the industry. At this time, Mel B remembered fondly that she and Geri would go out to clubs, and Geri would introduce them as “oh, we're Touch. We're this band.” And Geri would like have a boombox with her and just start playing their rough recordings. And this would just be at random clubs. And so Mel is very much like, she remembers Geri as being the most tenacious in terms of like, “what are we doing, we need to be doing something.” Around this time, Heart management tries to appease the girls by giving them an industry showcase. This is in December of 1994 at Nomis studios in Shepherds Bush. Heart pulls together some industry types to see them, and they’re a hit. The showcase shifts the balance of power really dramatically because people like them and are impressed by what they're doing. This starts to give them some agency and some power because people start to become interested. Like “who are these girls? There's a lot of raw talent here.” They start to feel like maybe we could do this somewhere else if Heart is gonna keep ignoring us, which is how they really felt. Meg: What is an industry showcase? Who was that for, like other producers and stuff? Cheryl: Basically, Heart opens up the rolodex and says “these are the people who, if we say we have a cool act, will wanna come.” So it introduces them to songwriters, it introduces them to a lot of other record producers. Sinead: The showcase is really when they see “oh, we’re being received well, and oh maybe there will be an interest in us.” So it’s around this time that they meet Richard "Biff" Stannard. And he with his writing partner Matt Rowe were kind of a big deal in the producing/songwriting world. Based on that showcase, Biff agreed to work with... /episode/index/show/spiceinvaders/id/20526287

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