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Five young British women known as the Spice Girls have
taken the world by storm with their infectious pop music
and brash attitude, dubbed "girl power" by the
group members -- a combination of sexiness, confidence,
strength and individuality.
Illustrating
the Spice Girls' global success, their smash hit single
"Wannabe" reigned at No.1 on the British pop
charts for seven weeks, and topped the charts in 22 other
countries -- selling a million units in England, and
almost three million units worldwide.
The debut
album, Spice, featured 10 songs -- all of them
written by the group members -- highlighting the talents
of: Mel B. (a.k.a. Melanie Brown), a hip-hop lover from
the northern English city of Leeds; Mel C. (Melanie
Chisholm), soccer fanatic and all-around athlete from
Liverpool; London native Victoria Adams, the group's
resident fashion and style guru; Geri (Geri Halliwell),
from Watford, near London; and blond-haired Londoner Emma
Bunton, who at 18 years of age is the group's youngest
member.
Working
with studio mavens Richard Stannard, Matt Rowe and the
production duo Absolute (a.k.a. Paul Wilson and Andy
Watkins, whose previous credits include Al Green, Mica
Paris, and Lisa Stansfield), Spice Girls have created an
album whose feistiness is exceeded only by its sense of
undiluted fun.
"The
idea of girl power is really important to us," notes
Emma. "We call the shots," adds Geri, but
"pop music is about fantasy, escaping from the real
world. We do things in a tongue-in-cheek way."
Their
second album, Spiceworld, was released in 1997 and
served as the soundtrack to their first feature film of
the same name. After the release of Spiceworld,
member Geri Halliwell left the group to embark on a solo
career, and released her debut album, Schizophonic,
in mid-1999.
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