How the Spice Girls Got Their Name
The ’90s was a major period for pop music. We got the legendary Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and so many other icons. The U.K. in particular was also having a stellar time in the music industry. Take That broke up in 1996 paving the way for the phenomena, the Spice Girls.
The five-person girl band consisted of Victoria Beckham, nicknamed Posh Spice, Melanie Brown, known as Scary Spice, Emma Bunton, called Baby Spice, Melanie Chisholm, nicknamed Sporty Spice, and Geri Halliwell, who was known as Ginger Spice.
However, the band itself and the girls did not earn their names in the way you would have expected.
The Spice Girls used to be called Touch
Like the girl group, Destiny’s Child, the Spice Girls had a different version before it became the group we now know and love. The Spice Girls were originally called Touch.
According to The Guardian, Mel C. called the group, “pretty bland” in its original iteration and it wasn’t until the girls began leaning into their individual personalities that they really flourished and found success. Mel C. explained,
When we first started [with the name Touch], we were pretty bland. We felt like we had to fit into a mold. And then we realized that we were quite different personalities, different to each other and to all the female groups in the past. We also realized there was a lot of strength in that.
Halliwell aka Ginger Spice came up with the Spice name after the ladies switched management. In fact, they also kicked out a girl named, Mel Coloma because her voice reportedly overpowered the other girls, bringing in Beckham and Bunton.
The Spice Girls changed everything for a new generation of girls
The Spice Girls skyrocketed to fame with their hit debut single, “Wannabe” and their debut album Spice, which sold three million copies in the U.K. and 23 million copies worldwide.
Most importantly, the Spice Girls changed everything for a generation of young girls. At one point the Spice Girls were the best-selling girl group of all time. According to BBC, feminists have said the group showed, “a whole generation of girls because they were strong women who wore whatever they wanted and said whatever they wanted, to whoever they wanted.”
Others have argued that the Spice Girls simply used feminism as a marketing tool. Either way, girls in the ’90s had a different type of pop star to look up to.
This is how The Spice Girls got their name
After Halliwell came up with the name Spice Girls, the girls names came along from an unexpected source. Apparently, a music journalist who had interviewed the girls could not remember their names so she made them up. Apparently, the names stuck.
“It was a lazy journalist who couldn’t remember our names!” Mel B revealed on The Rachael Ray Show “She said, ‘That one’s sporty, that one’s posh, and that one’s definitely scary because she’s really loud.’ The names just stuck, and we didn’t mind that!”
