WashingtonPost.com's review of the Spice Girls from 2/21/08
WARNING:This was not a favorable review (but the show was AWESOME!)
Taking the Spice Girls Reunion With a Large Grain of Salt
By J. Freedom du Lac
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 23, 2008; Page C01
It didn't take long for the newly reunited Spice Girls to get themselves back on a pedestal. All they had to do was ask their set designer for a boost.
The Girls made a big, self-exalting entrance at their Verizon Center concert Thursday night, rising from beneath the floor on elevator platforms, which lifted them several feet above the stage. With Emma Bunton, Melanie Brown, Melanie Chisholm, Geri Halliwell and Victoria Beckham (that's Baby, Scary, Sporty, Ginger and Posh to you) preening in their spangly Roberto Cavalli outfits and basking from on high in the approbation of the sold-out crowd, it was as though it were 1997 again in Spiceworld and the Spice Girls were still a global cultural phenomenon rather than a reunion-tour curiosity.
Spiceworld: nice place to visit, wouldn't necessarily want to live there.
For one thing, it's not a planet that embraces high art. "If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends/Make it last forever, friendship never ends," went the night's key chorus, from the group's breakthrough 1996 hit, "Wannabe," which was saved for the dizzying encore.
But they do know from entertainment in Spiceworld. Ooooh, girl, do they ever.
As pure pop spectacle, the Verizon Center show was exceptional, a wild sugar rush of staging, showmanship, glitter and wardrobe changes.
The Spice Girls aren't the most gifted vocalists. (They're not even the Pussycat Dolls.) But they performed with panache, oozing attitude and their curious brand of charm all over their eye-popping multi-level stage, which had plenty of moving parts -- including candy-cane stripper poles that were used during the treacly "2 Become 1."
Repeat: nice place to visit, etc.
For 100 minutes, the Girls powered through their old catalogue, covering all of their hits (the frothy "Stop," the jazzed-up "Too Much") and some of their misses (including the Isla Bonita import "Viva Forever" and the hyper-sexualized hip-hop of 2000's "Holler," which should have been a hit).
Singing into bejeweled microphones, the Girls added a new love song to the set, too: Reunion single "Headlines (Friendship Never Ends)," which didn't exactly make headlines in the United States, peaking at No. 90 on the Billboard Hot 100.
"When you're feeling sad and low/We will take you where you gotta go," the five 30-something Girls "sang" on their elevated platforms as the band ripped into the Latin groove of show opener "Spice Up Your Life."
"Smiling, dancing, everything is free/All you need is positivity."
So much for truth in advertising. Beckham's sneery Posh persona doesn't actually allow for her to smile onstage -- and the Spice Girls don't really "dance" during their concerts. (Having mastered the art of inertia, they left the hard, physical work to an acrobatic troupe of male dancers.)
But it's the "everything is free" part that really doesn't track: The "Return of the Spice Girls" tour is as much about earning power as it is about reviving the group's old "girl power" mantra. Tickets here were priced from $72.50 to $122.50 and were snapped up by a mix of mostly young female fans and, well, female fans who were much younger 10 years ago, when the group Really Mattered. Sales at the merch booths appeared to be exceptionally brisk, too. (Cost of a complete set of Spice Girls T-shirts, one for every member of the group: $200.)
Of course, the Spice Girls always seemed to be a triumph of marketing and market research more than anything, having been created in the mid-'90s by a father-son team that noticed a huge niche in the pop-music market. They filled it, to the cha-chingy tune of 55 million albums sold, by constructing a group made up of five young British girls with five distinct stage personas and then arming the quintet with a message of female empowerment and a catalogue of prefabricated, PG-rated pop.
The group exploded internationally in 1996 and early 1997, but Halliwell quit in 1998, as the Girls' popularity was already starting to wane. The four others went their separate ways after releasing 2000's hopefully titled "Forever."
They're back now, but probably not forever: The tour winds down next week in Canada, with no future dates planned. It's unclear whether it's an issue of the Girls not getting along or the public having limited interest in buying what they're reselling. Whatever the case, they played nice enough to one another during the show while playing particularly well to the adoring crowd, vamping, waving and winking like runway models trying to win over important fashion editors.
Beckham especially. Posh generated the most heat by doing the least, her spotlight solo consisting of an attitudinous walk up and down the portion of the stage that extended into the middle of the arena floor as a Madonna remix played.
Work it! Own it! Don't even bother pretending to sing it!
Other members of the group actually sang during their own solo turns, the most memorable of which was Brown's rollicking, raunchy take on the Lenny Kravitz hit "Are You Gonna Go My Way," which concluded with the singer's face aimed at the crotch of an astonished male audience member. Scary indeed.
Chisholm sounded the best during her solo song, "I Turn to You." And, um, Halliwell had the skinniest legs. Bunton smiled a lot.
At the end of the concert, as confetti showered the crowd, a message flashed on the giant video screen. "Mission Accomplished," it said. And with that, the Spice Girls dismounted from their pedestals, disappearing beneath the stage, possibly for good.
(Source)