The Spice Girls are an English all-female pop group, which formed in London in 1994. The Spice Girls signed to Virgin Records and released their debut single, "Wannabe", in 1996. the group established as an "international phenomenon", selling in excess of 53 million records world wide. The group embraced merchandise and became a regular feature of the British press. Each member of the group was given an alias by Top of the Pops Magazine in 1996, aliases which were adopted by the group and media alike.

Group history Beginning In early 1994, father-and-son management team Chris and Bob Herbert set about creating an all female group that could compete with the onslaught of boy bands that dominated the pop music (http://www.ticketnest.com/Pop-Rock.php) scene in the early to mid 1990s.

Wannabe On July 8, 1996 the Spice Girls released their debut single "Wannabe" in the United Kingdom. In the weeks leading up to the release, the video for "Wannabe", had dominated the music channels. In July 1996 the group conducted their first interview with Paul Gorman, the contributing editor of music industry paper Music Week, at Virgin Records' London headquarters. His piece recognized that the Spice Girls were about to institute a change in the charts away from Britpop and towards out-and-out pop. The song entered the charts at number 3 before moving up to number 1 the following week and staying there for seven weeks.

Forever In November 2000 The Spice Girls released their last album, Forever. Sporting a new edgier R&B sound, the album received a lukewarm response and achieved only a fraction of the success of its two best-selling predecessors. In the US it peaked at number thirty-nine on the Billboard 200 albums chart. In the UK the album was released the same week as Westlife?s Coast To Coast album and the chart battle was widely reported by the media. The lead single from "Forever", the double A-side "Holler" / "Let Love Lead The Way" became the group's ninth number one single in the UK. However the song failed to break onto the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart stateside, instead peaking at number seven on the Bubbling Under chart. "Holler" did peak at number thirty-one on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play in 2001.

Cultural impact The British music scene The pop music found a voice again. The image of the Spice Girls was deliberately aimed at young girls, an audience of formidable size and potential; reinforcing the range of appeal within the target demographic were the bandmates' five distinctive personalities, which encouraged fans to identify with one member or another. This marketing was helped in no small way by the aliases assigned to each member of the group. Shortly after Wannabes release, the group appeared in "Top Of The Pops" magazine where each member was given a nickname based upon their image These nicknames quickly caught the imagination of tabloid editors and they stuck with the girls throughout their careers.

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