| Product: |
Spice Girls Greatest Hits Tour 2008 |
| Date: |
21.01.08 (327 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Great concert, classic songs
Disadvantages: Tickets sold out quickly and were expensive
When the Spice Girls were last at the forefront of the music scene, I was an 11 year old girl and I loved them. I bought all of their CD's, I had posters of them on my wall and I think I even had a Spice Girls book at one point. But the older I grew, my interest waned slightly, especially after the departure of Geri.So when they recently announced a reunion and a subsequent come-back tour I set about getting some tickets for my partner and I. We actually got some through Ebay to see them at the o2 and I saw them in the flesh on the 8th of Jan 08, and what a show!
Now a little background. The Spice Girls came to our attention in July of 1996 when they burst onto the pop scene with their catchy debut single "Wannabe". We came to know those 5 ladies by 5 nicknames; Sporty, Scary, Posh, Baby and Ginger Spice. In real life, the ladies were called Mel C, Mel B, Victoria, Emma and Geri, and were 5 young women looking to have fun. Their popularity just seemed to soar, with their first 6 singles going straight to Number 1 in the UK, and a total of 9 of their songs went to Number One, an amazing record. Their first 2 albums, Spice and Spiceworld also hit the top of the album charts, with their later albums managing a respectable number 2 position. Sadly for them, their reunion single "Headlines" only managed number 11, but thid was unsurprising given the song was quite bland and not like previous Spice Girl singles.
So, back to the review. In 1998, Geri left the Spice Girls, leaving the public to wonder whether the girls would continue. They did and released a few further singles, before finally, but unofficially, spliting in 2001 to pursue their solo careers. Some have had moderate chart success (Emma, Geri and Mel C), others have attempted to crack America with varying success (Mel B) and the most famous girl married our most famous footballer, a certain Mr Beckham and is now a global icon...none other than Posh Spice. So a tour by this group of 5 women caused a massive stir and tickets for venues all over the globe sold out incredibly quickly.
The Greatest Hits album came out in November 2007, just before the girls kicked off their London stretch of their tour in December 07. The album peaked at Number 2, behind Leona Lewis' album. Tickets sold out in under a minute online, for more than £80 each so were very expensive and hard to get hold of! The tickets were sold and the concerts have been getting rave reviews from fans, leaving me quite excited about my trip to the 02. The evening dawned, and my partner and I headed into Central London to get to the 02, the old Millenium Dome, which was adorned with posters and billboards of the Girls in celebration of their shows here. By the way, just an aside, parking at the 02 is a complete rip-off, £20 for a few hours parking! Anyway, the 02 itself is easily accessible off the M25, the M11 and the A2/A20, and is well signposted, so it is nice and easy to find. The 02 itself was all lit up, nice and bright and looked fantastic and very eye-catching!
So we were sat in our seats awaiting the girls stage entrance, with no support act, and just pop music played into the arena. At 8.30 the arena was plunged into darkness, and the screens lit up with pictures of the girls. Then the band kicked in and the girls burst onto stage with their hit "Spice Up Your Life". They sounded really good, considering I wasn't expecting too much vocally from the girls, and they looked fantastic! Looking at them bouncing around on stage, you wouldn't believe that 4 of them are mums and have 7 children between them, they are an inspiration to all of us mums out there lol!
So the show went on, with the girls singing all of their big hits, some slightly changed from the original single, such as Too Much which was speeded up for the show, but it really worked! It was very odd to see the girls on stage singing Holler and Let Love Lead the Way as a four-piece without Geri...you could something was missing and it was better when she was with them. Surprise of the evening though was the massive screams Victoria Beckham received from the crowds everytime she sang! She couldn't help but smile, and you got a completely different impression of her from the VB you see in the magazines. They were all waving at the crowds, and clearly having a real ball on stage. It made you enjoy it more to see how much they were enjoying it too!
I must say I was thoroughly impressed with the girls vocally. I had never thought of the Spice Girls as a band who had fantastic voices (unlike another group such as Girls Aloud) but they really did a superb job that night. They blasted out their songs, their voices were really strong and they did some fab dancing too! The sets used on stage were great and really accentuated the song i.e. the male dancers came on to do some Spanish dancing with a real flamenco-cased song just before Viva Forever was played, really getting you in the mood for the song to come.
Best part of the night had to be when each girl took to the stage on her own and sang a hit from her solo career, with the exception of Mel B who sang an old hit that for the life of me I can't remember the title of! Mel C sang "I Turn To You" (and sounded phenomenal), Emma sang "Maybe", Geri sang "It's Raining Men" (and had the whole arena bopping around like mad) but Victoria didn't sing. She instead did this strange catwalk thing to an electro-sounding backing track, obviously she wasn't confident enough to sing. It was a pity she couldn't join in and sing a song too, but there you go.
I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of the 2 hour long musical extravaganza. I felt like an 11 year old again, dancing on my seat (literally as I couldn't see over everyone else lol) and singing along to all the hits we first heard over 10 years ago now. Favourite song performances include Who Do You Think You Are, Mama (which bought a tear to my eye as I missed my boy!) and the finale performance of Spice Up Your Life. They sounded fab, they looked amazing and they put on one heck of a show which is still set to amaze and entertain fans worldwide. Well done girls, you've done yourselves proud! It does make you wonder whether they are going to capitalise on the success and popularity of this tour by releasing a new album and future singles, but I hope they don't go overboard, and just give the fans what they want and not too much more.
Thanks for reading :)
Summary: Great comeback concert
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