The Spice Girls burst onto the music scene with the release of its infectious debut Wannabe 30 years ago on June 26, carving a place in pop history championing Girl Power, and leaving its mark on fashion and global culture.
The British group of five young women formed in 1994, and the irrepressibly catchy Wannabe was released on June 26, 1996, initially in Asia. It shot swiftly up the charts to number one in Britain, the United States and dozens of other countries.
"They weren't just a throwaway pop band," Dominic Mohan, a former editor of The Sun tabloid who covered the British music scene at the time, said.
"They were very spirited and they had quite strong messages as well, about feminism and about girl power and about being who you are".
And he said of Wannabe: "It's one of those records, as soon as you hear it you realise that it's going to go down in history."
He has curated an exhibition at the Barbican Centre in London entitled 1996: 30 Years On running until mid-September, which features the Spice Girls and some of their iconic looks.
Band member Mel B loaned the leopard-skin catsuit she wore to belt out Wannabe at the 1997 Brit Awards, where the song won two prizes.
Unlike previous girl groups in matching outfits, each of the five Spice Girls had their own individual style.
Mel B, short for Melanie Brown, also known as Scary Spice, wore animal prints, Posh Spice Victoria Adams, now Beckham, had a bob and dark dresses and Baby Spice Emma Bunton preferred pastels and bunches.
Mel C, Melanie Chisholm or Sporty Spice, favoured sports gear and Geri Halliwell, or Ginger Spice due to her red hair, wore a short, short Union Jack dress and boots for the Brits performance.
Wannabe with its catchy refrain – "I'll tell you want I want, what I really, really want" and its insistence that "friendship never ends" – became an anthem for a generation of young women. It has been played almost 1.5 billion times on Spotify.
The anniversary has revived talk of a possible reunion, although the bandmates have not all performed together since the 2012 London Olympics.
"It's our 30th anniversary, I do think we should be doing something," Brown told the Press Association recently.
"We're all talking about it", but "nothing has been confirmed".
The women are said to have remained close, with four of them joining celebrations for Emma Bunton's 50th birthday earlier this year.
In a sign of its lasting legacy, current stars including Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa, Adele and Charli XCX have cited Spice Girls' music as an influence.
"There's a tendency, I think, for people to look back and think Spice Girls were really bubblegum pop," Joel Gray, a lecturer in media, art and communications at Sheffield Hallam University, said.
But he argued "they actually had much more of a punk feel".
The group was put together and managed by men: powerful industry figure Simon Fuller oversaw the release of Wannabe, although the women subsequently sacked him.
Unlike some boy bands of the era such as Take That, the group have rarely performed together since splitting in 1998 and going on to build successful careers, such as Victoria Beckham's fashion label.
All five members sang at the 2012 Olympics, and their most recent performance was in 2019, without Beckham.
Given the Wannabe anniversary, "I would have thought that they might re-form... for just maybe a one-off kind of gig or a few dates," said Mohan.
So far, the group have only announced a T-shirt and a vinyl issue of Wannabe.
"I don't think we're going to see a permanent full-time reunion, but I could absolutely see them doing something again as a group," said Gray.
"What I've learned with the Spice Girls is never say never." – AFP
