Portal Melanie C || www.melaniec.com.br ||

Simon Fuller and the girls united forces and got a release deal with Windswept Pacific. Soon they finally singed a deal with Virgin Records. At that time Virgin was considered a refuge to unconventional artists and when the Spice Girls signed with them the company was just looking for new formulas. The Spice Girls were at the right place at the right time.

Even before their first single was released Vincent Monsey from the TV channel The Box – competing with MTV in England – found the girls and decided to make their first video into breaking news. Monsey showed the video in his network causing a hysterical reaction from the soon to be fans of the group. The event got completely out of proportion because the viewers didn’t know the Spice Girls. In no time the phones from The Box got congested. The audience wanted to know who those five girls were and begged for a rerun of the video that got to be shown 70 times a week. The event was interpreted as a phenomenon by the media and the public.

On July 8th 1996 Wannabe was finally released in the United Kingdom getting quickly to the first place.

Girl Power – the group slogan bringing a feminist proposal – started to spread worldwide.

Their second single, Say You’ll Be There, was released in the UK on October 14th and sold more than 350 thousand copies only on its first week and put the girls in the Guinnes Book.

They were compared to the Beatles (being called Fab Five) and conquered even England’s Royalty.

The papers started to put them in the first pages with very spice articles: Geri’s naked photoshoot before fame was published and also a rumour that Melanie C used cocaine during college.

The Times magazine asserted that they had enough potential to rival even with very established bands at the time such as Oasis. The editor of Top Of The Pops Magazine checked each girl’s profile and published the nicknames Ginger, Scary, Posh, Baby and Sporty beside their pictures. That joke ended up being professionally adopted by the Spice Girls.

The album Spice was released in the UK on November 4th end ended up selling 23 million copies worldwide.

2 Become 1 was their third single and even though it was released 2 weeks before the end of 1996 (December 16th) it was the 10th best seller in the UK that year once it sold 730,000 copies in only 2 weeks!

On November 7th the Spice Girls turned on the Christmas lights at Oxford Street, a huge event.

They won awards at Smash Hits and The Sun Readers Poll.

The girls even gave an interview talking about the British parliament. When that interview was published the press cut all bits where Melanie C had spoken because she is Labor and the main goal of the interview was to show that the Spice Girls were Conservatives. The politic view that prevailed was Geri’s who called Margaret Thatcher “the first Spice Girl”. After that Melanie C used her interview for The Face magazine to clear her Labor opinions up.

On January 14th the Spice Girls began their breakthrough in the United States. Wannabe was released and it was the best debut of a British act in the country, at number 11. Four weeks later it hit the number one spot and stayed there for another four weeks. After that they broke their own record with the debut of Say You’ll Be There at number 5, released in the United States on May 6th. Weeks later it got to number 3.

When Melanie got home with tattoos and piercings and a gold tooth Joan ended up liking the idea and decided to have the “strength” and “woman” Japanese symbols tattooed, on the same place as her daughter.

In the early days the press used to laugh at Melanie’s shy and quiet behavior even though always complimenting her as the most talented in the group. But after the Brit Awards 97, Sporty Spice showed she also knew the ingredients to cause a good controversy: on stage she teased Liam Gallagher from Oasis, that had said the Spice Girls wouldn’t win any awards that night. After the Spice Girls got their second award, Melanie shouted at him on the mic: "Liam, come and have a go if you think you're hard enough!"

Unlike the other singles, Mama/ Who Do You Think You Are was only released in the United Kingdom and especially on March 3rd, the Comic Relief day. The girls participated on Red Nose Day on March 14th and donated the profits from the single sales to the campaign to help poor people in Africa and UK.

The girls start to put their brand on several products. Dolls, stationary and party goodies with the name Spice on them were launched. After establishing themselves as highly profitable image in the US as well, the brand reached its most expressive sales. Other articles for consumption inspired by the girls hit the stores: chewing gum,

chocolates, cameras, deodorants, lollypops and even chips. There were more than 400 products carrying the name Spice. They also made a deal with Pepsi to make an ad using the song Move Over and release a promotional single with the yet unheard Step To Me, on July 28th.

The papers found out that Melanie C had a 15-year-old half-sister called Emma. She was her father’s Alan daughter who never told her. In 1997 Alan was married to Carol with whom he had two sons: Declan and Liam.

The Spice Girls began to record a movie and their second album.

The band won awards at Brit Awards, Capital FM Awards, World Music Awards, MTV Europe Music Awards, Ivor Novello Awards, MTV Video Music Awards, Smash Hits Awards and Billboard Music Awards.

On September 27th the Spice Girls sang Don't Go Breaking My Heart with Elton John at the An Audience With Elton John special.

On September 12th and 13th the Spice Girls did their first concerts, sponsored by Pepsi, in Istanbul at the Abdi Ipekci Stadiu.

The first single from the second album was released, also on October 13th: Spice Up Your Life.

After Spice Up Your Life didn’t live up to the expectations in sales they sacked Simon Fuller. They stated that the manager didn’t respect their rhythm, making them work like robots.

On November 3rd the long waited second album, Spice World, is released selling 18 million copies around the world.

In November, the girls visted South Africa for the Nations Trust Concert and got together with Prince Charles and Nelson Mandela.

Mel was a fan of Take That (the band Robbie Williams was a member of) ever since before she was famous and tells that she started dating Robbie Williams at the MTV Europe Music Awards, on November 6th. They had a coulpe of dates and apparently the relationship ended because Robbie started dating Denise van Outen. Months later he was already dating Mel’s friend, Nicole Appleton.

Released on December 15th Too Much had the same success as Spice Up Your Life although that wasn’t reflected on the sales. Too Much was the girl’s sixth number one in the United Kingdom.

The girls recorded the An Audience With The Spice Girls special.

The movie Spice World, directed by Bob Spiers and starring the Spice Girls, was released in the United Kingdom in December and just like the singles and albums it started to break records.