FEATURE:
Spice Up Your Life
PHOTO CREDIT: Universal Music Group
Thoughts on a Proposed Spice Girls Comedy-Drama
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THERE have been a lot of…
rumours around Spice Girls. Their debut album turns thirty this month. Whispers that there might be a stage reunion or something special. In terms of getting them on stage, you would hope that they could find a way to do that. Spiceworld turns thirty next year. I did wonder if they are keeping their powder dry and are going to headline Glastonbury. That would be an amazing thing to see and great timing. However, it is probably quite unlikely. I feel there is an appetite among original fans of the group and new followers to see them perform. Can Victoria Beckham, Emma Bunton, Melanie Brown, Melanie Chisholm and Geri Halliwell-Horner. They are all in different stages of their career. To be fair, Melanie Chisholm is the only prolific member of the group. Melanie Brown and Geri Halliwell-Horner have not released albums since 2005. Victoria Beckham since 2001. Emma Bunton did put an album out in 2019, My Happy Place, though that followed a long gap after 2006’s Life in Mono. Sweat is Melanie Chisholm’s sixth studio album. She is the most active of the Spice Girls, so it might take a lot of rehearsals until all five clicked and were back to their best. Even if a Glastonbury headline slot would be amazing, you feel the members might never negotiate a stage performance. Also, where will it lead? They probably don’t want to record new material, so it would be this nostalgia thing. Though Oasis are doing it, yet you wonder when it will stop or what the end goal is. Will they tour every year or is there another album coming? For Spice Girls, things are a bit different. I feel like relationships within the group are a bit more strained or complicated than Oasis now. A comedy-drama, rather than a biopic, might not be the most obvious next step when it comes to their music and legacy. However, as NME write, we may see one come to the screen. Albeit it one with a little bit of a twist of the normal:
“Big Boys creator Jack Rooke has revealed that he is developing a “fun comedy drama” about the Spice Girls, with a script already having been written.
The BAFTA-winning writer discussed the potential project while appearing on BBC Sounds podcast Sidetracked With Annie And Nick this week.
Asked about the prospect of telling the Spice Girls’ story, Rooke confirmed that he had been working on something that he sees as going beyond the traditional music biopic format.
He described it as a “fun comedy drama”, adding that a script had been written by himself and a “lovely little group of gals and gays”.
Rooke stressed that the project has not yet been confirmed for production, but said discussions are ongoing and that he hopes the Spice Girls themselves will approve of what they have developed.
Rooke said the group represented the first time he remembered seeing working-class women openly pursuing huge ambitions within British pop culture, while acknowledging that critics have long pointed to the enormous commercial machine that surrounded the band”.
Spice Girls’ cinematic history is brief and not too spectacular. I am imagining casting and what that will look like. People mocking the actors who were cast to play the Beatles in four films that are coming out in 2028. Photos of them filming drawing criticism because of the lack of conviction. Wigs being used and everything being a little odd! Though we cannot say how Sam Mendes’s films will look and what form they will take. I do wonder about a Spice Girls comedy-drama and what form it takes. It sounds like it could be interesting, though nothing has been confirmed so far. It is very much in the early stages. Though it does spotlight Spice Girls again. Right now, we are thirty years on from their debut, Spice. Looking to next year and the thirtieth anniversary of Spiceworld. A big moment when we remember how they took over the world, there are always these rumours that they are going to do something. The group shooting it down. You do feel like something needs to happen. 1996 was obviously a massive year for them. I feel, by next year, there is going to be even more call for Spice Girls to get back onto the stage. I am not sure how they feel about that prospect and if it would be a one-off concert or a tour. No doubt there will be a Spiceworld reissue in 2027 to mark thirty years. The biopic, if it happens, will keep their name and music at the forefront. People might say that Spice Girls were of their time and are not relevant now. Not only are there are a lot of new artists inspired by them. They have this amazing legacy. The Conversation explored it for a feature published earlier this year:
“The band’s debut album, Spice, is the best-selling album by a girl group in history. Their global reach helped solidify the late 1990s and early 2000s as a peak era of British pop culture exports. Throughout their career the band had nine UK number one singles as a group, and eight solo number ones. No other girl group comes close to that total.
But the band’s significance cannot be measured by sales alone. The Spice Girls helped normalise the idea that female acts could dominate the global market on their own terms, without conforming to male-defined industry expectations. For example, they sacked a male manager in the maelstrom of their success and managed themselves while enjoying several more number one singles, platinum album sales and sold-out tours.
The Spice Girls also exerted an unusual degree of control over their music; notably cowriting all of their songs and challenging the industry norms that often sidelined female artists in decision-making processes. In doing so, they anticipated later debates about authorship, authenticity and agency in pop – decades ahead of modern conversations about music ownership and power such as Taylor Swift’s journey to owning her own master recordings.
The legacy of the Spice Girls is not without tension, however. “Girl power” has been both celebrated in that it made feminism accessible to young people and critiqued as a commodified slogan that reduced complex political ideas to marketable soundbites. At their last reunion tour in 2019 Geri repackaged “girl power” into “people power”.
Beyond the music, the Spice Girls have become an omnipresent element of British pop culture in recent years with Royal Mail stamps, Royal Mint official British currency and a collaboration with the English female rugby team. This shows that the Spice Girls’ iconic imagery is well and truly canonified in the British pop culture vernacular much like The Rolling Stones, Oasis and The Beatles.
Three decades on, the Spice Girls continue to be revisited in ways that alternate between celebration, nostalgia and critique, reflecting ongoing debates about gender, commerce and pop culture in the 1990s”.
Whilst the legacy may be a little complex or there might be too many divisions and issues for them to perform together again, we cannot deny how important Spice Girls are. A comedy-drama, even if it is not a biopic, is a risky thing. So many fail or strike the wrong balance. The tone not being right. Are there goign to be actors playing the Spice Girls, or is it a production that uses their music? Though Jack Rooke’s proposed idea does sound like it could be a success. Thirty years after their debut album was released, and Spice Girls have lost none of their potency. They redefined the girl group and took control of their image and career. Something that no doubt empowered so many women that followed. Their messaging of female friendship, autonomy, far from being a gimmick, was something that they believed in. The importance of sending those messages to their young fans. Their impact and importance resonates…
THREE decades later.