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NOTE: Although this is a site about the Spice Girls, and not a very serious matter, it is only intended to contain correct facts and information. Much of which is already well known by many people through the media.

Friday March 4 1994 in the UK, after reading an ad in the british entertainment paper the Stage, 300 girls turned up for an audition, held by the father and son management team Bob and Chris Herbert, of what was going to be the new singing girlgroup "Touch". Melanie Janine Brown, Melanie Jayne Chisholm, Victoria Caroline Adams, and Michelle Stephenson got accepted. Geraldine Estelle Halliwell who missed the first audition, got a second chance.

Michelle who were considered the most talented singer and dancer of the girls, left the group after two months of rehearsals. The reason was said to be that she was going back to drama school and her mother was sick. But Ian Lee, who worked closely with the girls in their early days at the Trinity Studios in Surrey, has said in a Spice Girls documentary that: "She wasn't a Spice Girl, she didn't have the right attitude, she was the wrong character."

The girls singing coach Pepi Lemer then introduced her personal student Emma Lee Bunton, whom she remembered from teaching at a local school in Barnet, to try out in the group to replace Michelle, and they decided to let her join. The girls all moved into a house in Maidenhead, near London.

If you can't dance!

Why these girls were chosen for the group, became more and more unclear. Working with the girls, Ian Lee noticed that: "They weren't much but average. Some of them were better singers than others, some of them could dance better, but they weren't what you would call exceptional in terms of their performing ability." Their singing coach noticed that: "Pitching for Geri was very hard", "Mel C and Mel B had slight tuning problems", and "Victoria was a very tiny little voice, and it all always used to go right back inside her".

Not the real Touch!

September-October 94, after the knowledge of their existence had reached the already existing group named "Touch", the new group was forced to a change of name. Tim Hawes, who was a song-writer based at Trinity Studios, had written a song he thought would suit the girls, called "Sugar and Spice", and suggested that they would call themselves "Spice". They did, but have later claimed it was Geri's idea.

March 1995 the girls had one of their regular arguments amongst the group, and for no obvious reason they decided to leave their management-team Bob and Chris Herbert, and hired Simon Fuller as their new manager. In a Spice Girls documentary Mel B has said: "Even before we'd decided to sign to our manager we had created about 35 songs, we'd already found the Spice package and spice movement. We got alot of control and we didn't want anybody else to make judgement on it or try to spoil it."

September 1995, the girls signed with Virgin Records, and the summer next year, 1996, the Spice Girls released their first single "Wannabe".

Spice Girls, products!

The Spice Girls are often referred to as the biggest girlgroup in the world, or ever. But counting in musical achievements and time rather than sales, the Spice Girls are comparably small.

The Spice Girls have never been known as exceptionally good singers, songwriters, dancers, or instrument players. But that didn't stop them to become successful in the music business. They strongly marketed an image of themselves, in the forms of lollipops, perfumes, cameras, motorcycles, soft drink cans, dolls, video games, chocolates, crisps and what not. Appearing on all these items all around the world, made them appear to be a big act. It left the Spice Girls with alot of money and attention, and left parents of Spice Girls fans broke.

While most singers rely on themselves and the regular ways for singers to market themselves, that's something the Spice Girls have proven unable to. In an interview on the Spice Girls weekend on MTV, Victoria said: "It's easy to turn around and say oh god, you know we shouldn't have done it, you know it's tacky, or whatever. But at the time it was great for us, and it helped make us what we are now." And surely we can all agree it was their image, which they marketed so well, that made them what they were.

But what are the Spice Girls now, the backlash of an overexposed image? The Spice Girls can now relax, they can afford to put over the responsibility of their career on their connections. Or as Ian Lee, who worked alot with the Spice Girls in their early days, said in a Spice Girls documentary: "They can now sit back and enjoy life, and they can do what they want to do, not necessarily what they need to do, and that's a nice position to be in."

Girl Power!

Contrary to what the Spice Girls constantly claim, "Girl Power!" is not an expression invented by the Spice Girls. In the beginning of the 90's the expression was used by female singers so called "Riot grrrls", were Courtney Love are counted among others. 1995, also before the Spice Girls, the American writer Hillary Camp released a book titled "Girl Power", where she had collected personal notes with thoughts from teenage girls in the USA.

The Spice Girls tend to use the expression referring to anything that fits the conversation at the moment.

Say you've been there!

In December 1996, the news could be read in newspapers all over the world, about how the soldier and composer Idit Schectman from Israel, suspected the Spice Girls of having plagiarized one of her songs, "Come To Me", which she wrote two years before the Spice Girls released "Say You'll Be There". She contacted lawyers, and considered suing the Spice Girls. A spokesman for the Spice Girls made the careless comment to newspapers "This always happens when you have a hit".

Mel C is a big fan of Madonna, Geri copies Madonna!

The Spice Girls are huge fans of Madonna. Mel C has gotten herself a t-shirt with a picture of Madonna, but Geri has even had an exact copy made, of one of Madonna's old two piece outfits, which Geri wore on a one public performance with the Spice Girls. Madonna actually expressed her approval of the Spice Girls for a while in the beginning, she said she recognized herself in them. But soon Madonna changed her mind and is one of many performers who have turned their back on the Spice Girls.