Spice Girls reunion rumours get £10m reboot
Talk of a big-money comeback is rife, but is it just marketing? Of course it is
In the mid-1990s, debate raged over whether the Spice Girls' 'girl power' credo was genuinely feminist or a capitalist scam to sell plastic to pre-teens. Photograph: Nils Jorgensen/REX/Shutterstock
Fri 2 Feb 2018 10.26 EST
Last modified on Fri 2 Feb 2018 17.00 EST
In the six years since the Spice Girls last performed together at the London Olympics closing ceremony, rumours of their re-formation have seldom ceased. There's practically a format for it by now: Geri Horner (née Halliwell) floats the notion. The tabloid press runs with it. Melanie Brown and Emma Bunton make encouraging sounds. Victoria Beckham and Melanie Chisholm pour cold water on the idea. But now the Sun has printed an apparently credible report that the bestselling girl band ever had each accepted £10m to reunite – albeit not for an album or a tour.
The rumours gained credence on Friday afternoon as pictures emerged of Horner, Chisholm and Brown arriving at Horner's Hertfordshire home – even if their representatives refused to comment. (Bunton and Beckham were said to be due to arrive later.)
The Sun alleged that the five-piece were considering a greatest hits compilation, television in China, their own TV talent show, and nebulous "endorsement deals". The news met with a muted reaction, partially because the band had previously reunited for a 2007 world tour, which was accompanied by a greatest hits release – surely enough to cover the best of their three-album catalogue. Beckham in particular has repeatedly stated her opposition to a reunion, making her alleged participation somewhat doubtful: in 2017, she told ITV's This Morning, "at some point you've got to know when it's time to say, 'That was great.' Girl power will always be out there and is something that we all still believe."
There is an enormous market for nostalgia: Guns N' Roses' Not in This Lifetime tour is the third highest grossing of all tours in the 2010s, followed by Roger Waters' The Wall in fourth, with live revivals of U2's Joshua Tree and Bruce Springsteen's The River placing eighth and ninth. But without the creative impetus of concerts or new music, it's hard to parse the Spice Girls' motivations to reunite – beyond the payday.
The Sun suggests that Beckham is seeking capital for her critically successful fashion business, which made a loss of £8.4m in 2017. (Her participation was allegedly contingent on a guarantee that she wouldn't have to sing.) None of the other members is at the peak of her fame: Brown and Horner have judged a variety of international TV talent shows, Bunton is a presenter on Heart London radio, and Chisholm is the only member with a viable solo career. (Her last album, 2016's Version of Me, peaked at No 25.)
The Sun suggests that Beckham is seeking capital for her critically successful fashion business. Photograph: Europa Press/Getty Images
In a sense, it's fitting that the band should reunite as a marketing and visibility exercise rather than a musical concern. As the critic Eve Barlow wrote in the Guardian following the announcement of their ill-fated Viva Forever musical, their records were the least important part of their legacy: "When the Spice Girls themselves are out of sight, they are out of mind. The music needs them present to have any meaning."
Their image became indelible thanks to manager Simon Fuller – whose XIX Entertainment is allegedly behind this reunion – plastering it around the world in a fever-pitched branding campaign. Their teetering platform shoes, gaudy catsuits and mugging grins appeared on lollipops, crisp packets, body spray and dozens of other products: in How the Spice Girls Reinvented Pop, Chris Sinclair reported that by June 1997, the band had allegedly applied for more than 100 trademarks.
In the mid-1990s, debate raged over whether the Spice Girls' "girl power" credo was genuinely feminist or a capitalist scam to sell plastic to pre-teens. Both were true: for a generation of seven-year-olds, their brash message of independence was a soft but key introduction to feminism. This is borne out by a generation of millennial pop acts, including Adele, British upstart Charli XCX and Denmark's MØ, proudly citing the band's defiant attitude as an influence. The Spice Girls' apparent reunion for a quick buck does chime with the modern culture of individualist entrepreneurship masterminded by Kim Kardashian, but when the intersection of feminism and capitalism is more scrutinised than ever, the deal is also a sour affirmation of the band's detractors.
The idea of them presenting a talent show also contradicts the band's own formation. Long dismissed as manufactured puppets, the Spice Girls quickly fired and outwitted the managers who initially formed them – Horner stole their master recordings under cover of night – and danced on record executives' desks to find themselves a deal. They hired manager Simon Fuller in 1995, and fired him in 1997 after he'd made them their fortune. There is a particular irony about a band who always claimed they were "unmanageable" allegedly signing up to front a talent show – pop's docile production line writ large.