The Spice Girls comeback hasn't exactly been a top-notch success yet – there's been a failed single, an underperforming Best Of album and a Tesco advert so distressing that it's given us recurring nightmares about Posh Spice's rubbery mouth.
But all of that can be consigned to the past, because the real money-making leg of the Spice Girls comeback kicked off last night – it was the first concert of the Spice Girls' reunion world tour in Vancouver. 16,000 screaming Spice Girls fans packed into General Motors Place to see Scary Spice, Baby Spice, Sporty Spice, Posh Spice and Alarmingly Muscular Spice go through all their biggest hits, plus that new song that nobody bought. And according to early reviews, the Spice Girls comeback show is a hit, even though at one point it apparently featured The Sporty Spice Tribute To Lenny Kravitz In Association With The Sort Of Harrowing Bondage Gear That Will Make You Spend The Rest Of Your Life Shivering And Alone.
Pop reunions are a tricky thing to pull off, because the people who liked you first time round tend to have families and jobs and less time to cover every inch of their bedroom walls with posters of you in a wet open shirt with your nipple hanging out. That's why for every pop reunion success (Take That) there are a dozen hopeless failures (All Saints, East 17, Boyzone hopefully).
But the Spice Girls reunion could never fail. Sure, people haven't bought their comeback single in the volume that anyone wanted, their Victoria's Secret promotion looks a bit desperate, nobody in their right mind would buy any of the sofas that the Spice Girls designed for a million quid each, we can't understand a bloody word that Victoria Beckham is saying in the Spice Girls Tesco advert and we get the nagging feeling that they all actually hate each other, but that doesn't mean it will fail.
And that's been reflected in ticket sales for the Spice Girls' comeback world tour – most dates of which are all sold out, even though they all probably went to eBay touts who saw how badly Headlines (Friendship Never Ends) did in the charts and cursed themselves for not investing in Nintendo Wiis instead.
The Spice Girls comeback tour is going to crawl around the world over the next three months, giving fans everywhere the chance to learn that Girl Power means singing decade-old songs to a bunch of overcharged nostalgia freaks while dressed in clothes that are slightly too young for you, and it all started last night in Vancouver. But how did it go?
Well, you'll be pleased to know that the Spice Girls have dropped the odd Dad's Army fixation that characterised their recent Victoria's Secret Fashion Show performance in favour of corsets and miniskirts and the inevitable Union Jack dresses, and the Globe And Mail seemed to enjoy it all – even the bit where Mel C dressed up as a gimp and sang Are You Gonna Go My Way – with the sole exception of anything Victoria Beckham did:
Victoria “Posh Spice” Beckham… looked uncomfortable in her tightly-corseted outfits and carefully-coiffed hair (which she spent a fair amount of time clearing from her face). Her dance moves were stiff and at at least one point she started to sing a line before it was time (not that you could hear her; her voice is not very strong).
But regardless of any mistakes that the Spice Girls made, they still managed to get 16,000 people to pay an average of about £85 to go and see them, and repeated for each or the 40 or so tour dates the group has announced so far that all adds up to an enormous amount of money for the girls.
Plus, British fans shouldn't worry too much about Victoria Beckham's apparent shoddy performing – it was first-night nerves, surely, and by the time the Spice Girls hit London later in the month she'll be able to churn out performances as numbly robotic as everyone expects her to.
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suri says
Poor Posh…Does she feel she can sing with a tight corset and people will buy into that? Poor love…
Adam Gade says
What’s with you guys always touting Nintendo Wiis? I thought they were only for, like, 8 year old girls and people with a stiffy for Mario games. You don’t fall into either of those categories do you, hecklerspray?