The last big thing
How the record companies are trying to create the next Spice Girls and are thereby creating problems for themselves
THE moment when a previously docile crowd begins to boo, as Nicolae Ceaucescu discovered, is filled with danger. So it was for the Spice Girls in Barcelona in November, when Britain's biggest pop phenomenon was booed off stage. Suddenly, the newspapers were full of self-fulfilling stories predicting the band's demise. The Spice Girls' new album is not expected to sell anything like the 17m that their last one achieved; the omens for their film, which premiered in front of Prince Charles on December 15th, are not good; and they face the horrible prospect of being beaten to the all-important Christmas number one slot by the Teletubbies. (These, for readers outside Britain, are dolls with comparable voices but worse figures than the Spice Girls.)
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “The last big thing”
From the December 20th 1997 edition
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