Five young women stood on a stage in Istanbul, Turkey, in October 1997, performing songs the world had not yet heard. They were the Spice Girls, the British pop group that had already conquered the charts with their debut album Spice, and now they were testing new material from their second record before it even existed in shops. On November 1, 1997, that record, Spiceworld, was released on Virgin Records.
London studios and Pepsi singles
The timing was audacious. In the United States, critics had grumbled that the group was rushing out a second album just nine months after the American release of Spice. But the Spice Girls were not in the business of waiting. They had recorded Spiceworld at several London studios including Abbey Road and Olympic, working with producers Absolute, Matt Rowe, Richard Stannard, and themselves, and the result was a tight pop and dance-pop record. Before the album arrived, the group had already teased it with two promotional singles tied to Pepsi campaigns. 'Step to Me' and 'Move Over (Generation Next)' were given away free through special rings on cans, turning soft-drink packaging into a delivery system for new music.
The gamble paid off immediately. Spiceworld debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart with 190,000 copies sold in its first week, and within two weeks 1.4 million copies had been shipped. The album reached the top spot in 13 countries, and worldwide sales would eventually pass 14 million copies. For a group dismissed by some as a novelty, these were staggering numbers.
Chart run of the four singles
The singles told the story of a group at full power. 'Spice Up Your Life' had arrived on October 13, 1997, and became the group's fifth consecutive British chart-topper. Then came 'Too Much', released on December 15, 1997, which gave them a second Christmas number one. 'Stop' followed, reaching number two in the UK and breaking a run of six straight chart-topping singles. The fourth single was planned as a double A-side with 'Never Give Up on the Good Times' and 'Viva Forever', but only 'Viva Forever' appeared on July 10, 1998, and it returned them to number one. Critics largely welcomed the record. David Browne of Entertainment Weekly described it as a mix of sisterly advice and warnings, calling it partly heart, partly mind, and entirely cotton candy.
Behind the hits, the group was cracking. Spiceworld also served as the soundtrack to the 1997 film 'Spice World', which included almost all the album's songs except 'Move Over'. The group launched their first world tour, the Spiceworld Tour, which covered Europe and North America with 97 concerts from February to September 1998. The tour opened on February 24, 1998 in Dublin, Ireland, with all five members on stage.
Then, on May 31, 1998, during the tour, Geri Halliwell left the group. The departure of one of the most recognizable members turned Spiceworld into a farewell document of sorts: it became the last studio album with Halliwell until her return in 2007. The remaining four women finished the tour, but the group's original chemistry had been broken in public view.
Spiceworld remains one of the best-selling albums by a female group in the world. It is an album that arrived at the peak of Spice Girls mania, sold in astonishing quantities, and then became a memento of a group that could not hold itself together. The record's four singles, the tour, and the film all belong to a single, frantic window of time.
That window closed with Halliwell's exit, but Spiceworld had already done its work. It proved that the Spice Girls could repeat their success on their own terms, at their own speed, even as critics warned they were moving too fast. The album that began with a gamble on November 1, 1997 ended as the sound of a group at its commercial peak, just before the cracks became impossible to ignore.