Icon #70 The Spice Girls

The most iconic girl group.

Oh God.  It's been a while since I had to write about something I really despise (I dodged it last week rather brilliantly, thank fuck for the Monkees).  Today though the options were limited, basically either this lot or another lot from the 80s, who's iconic status was more than questionable.  

So here in all their, ahem, glory, are The Spice Girls.  A gloriously well packaged load of rubbish that briefly, during the 1990s, pervaded everything.  Everywhere.  How I hated every cringe worthy minute of it.

The whole Girl Power thing left me cold, because, with Geri's substantial (at the time) bosom thrust everywhere, it hardly advocated feminism in its purest form.  

The music?  Awful.  It was for little girls and it sold by the shed load, but theirs was always a star that was going to burn bright and brief as their own personalities came to the fore and the media started to show more and more of an interest in these flung together women's private lives.  Only Melanie Chisholm seemed to have any genuine musical talent of her own, one song from one of her albums was actually quite good and didn't she do something with Bryan Adams?  *shrugs*

They'd all been assigned nicknames, which was terribly convenient for the press pack as Scary, Posh, Baby, Sporty and Ginger started to realise that the monster that had been created around them was more than any of them were really capable of handling and the whole thing came tumbling down.  Geri had a hissy fit and walked, taking her breasts with her and the others floundered on for a bit before calling it a day.

Did they inspire anyone?  I guess it's possible.  

They, along with Take That, felt so constructed, so fake, that it could never last.  The boy band equivalent had a bit of staying power, a bit of talent and have ridden back up the celebrity hill and lived to tell the tale but The Spice Girls never had any tunes that would stand the test of time.  Honestly, I remember one.   And I feel a bit ashamed about that.

Zig-A-Zig ARHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! 

Tonight's post is dedicated to (from Twitter) @DavieLegend, @EmmaBunce, @lardychap, @007cleggy, @nicky_t, @Captainfishy78, @clarkycat, @Jeemie1970, @Giusep03, @KyeLani, @jeninher30s, (and from facebook) Fizz Gigg, Annie, AT, Katy, Toby, Laura and Jackie.

NB I would have loved to have written about The Supremes but as far as I'm aware they were, sadly, not a manufactured group.