Conference Agenda

Thirty years after their debut in 1996, the Spice Girls remain the best-selling girl group of all time. They are regarded as emblematic of both Britain and the 1990s, evidenced by their inclusion in the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics and Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations in 2022. While today the group’s enduring cultural significance feels inevitable, the Spice Girls’ longevity broke temporal expectations for “pure pop” acts in the 1990s which the music press characterized as fun in the moment but ultimately forgettable. This inversion reflects a broader temporal phenomenon in 1990s Britain: in popular music as in broader culture, the presumably ephemeral became historically meaningful.

This paper contends with discursive tensions surrounding the longevity and cultural value of the Spice Girls, putting the group in conversation with broader conceptions of temporality in 1990s Britain. Through analysis of music press coverage (primarily in New Musical Express, Melody Maker, and Smash Hits) from 1996-1998, I illustrate how the Spice Girls were framed as authentic and able to last despite their status as a “pure pop” group, comparing their framing to that of Britpop bands including Oasis. Parallel discourses between these groups blurred conventional lines between rock and mainstream pop, ultimately disrupting the temporal expectations of both. I draw this phenomenon into discussion with what historians have dubbed Britain’s “holiday from history”: a sense of ahistoricism and frivolity resulting from the decade's relative stability and prosperity (Geiringer and McCarthy 2024). This sense of impermanence is in conflict with the decade’s enduring neoliberal political and cultural shifts (Stubbs 2016), just as the ongoing cultural presence of the Spice Girls contradicts the presumed ephemerality of pop acts. I argue that, by embodying these tensions between ephemerality and history, the Spice Girls serve as a proxy for conversations regarding temporality in 1990s Britain—and, moreover, that analyzing pop’s temporal framings can nuance our understandings of broader neoliberal temporality. This work not only expands consideration of the Spice Girls beyond the group’s relationship to feminism and consumerism, but also sheds light on the interrelationships between popular music and temporal phenomena in broader culture.