Yet More Horrible News

(written January 20, 2001)

Just to let you know, I think the Spice Girls officially suck now! After reading the following article about how the girls want to continue on as solo artists and not as a group, really worked my last nerve. I don't know how any Spice Girls fan who waited 3 years for a new group album, which is f--ked up now, does not feel disgusted. Rodney Jerkins, Jimmy Jam, and Terry Lewis probably even feel more disgusted now after putting their effort into the group album so much. I wished they saved their more well-thought out ideas for real groups who deserve it.

I am officially closing down this site, leaving only this main page up for others to see how terrible the group has sucken to its lowest point ever. I will still sell videos (till business slows down); might as well make money off the group who wasted 3 years of mine for a new Spice Girls album and my (now pointless) effort into making this site for 3 months hoping to help the group gain some publicity.

I am also selling some of my old Spice Girls Dolls.

I wish bad luck to the Spice Girls solo albums. And to Melanie C, 'your solo career is a hobby not the group, realize that PLEASE!"

Enjoy Reading this article from The Sun:

From Dominic Mohan's 'bizarre' column in The Sun: R.I.P.

Forever [ Picture - http://www.thesun.co.uk/storypics/13310021 ]

IT is my painful duty to announce that the Spice Girls' latest album is officially dead and buried. Forever slipped away peacefully after just two months - too weak to survive One of its creators, Emma Bunton, formally announced the death to me on Monday night. She revealed that she and the other three girls have shelved plans to release a follow-up single to Holler from the album after it became a flop. The news was the final nail in Forever's coffin. Baby Spice confessed that the album's short life had come to a natural end. The group signalled the end by deciding not to do any more promotion. Paying tribute to Forever, Emma told me: "I was surprised by the reaction to the album but I don't consider it to be a failure - it sold two million copies world wide. There won't be another single and the record seems to have come to a natural end. "I want to concentrate on solo projects and there is no time to release a single now. "All our individual projects are scheduled and we wouldn't have time for any promotion. "We won't be touring as a band this year either." Defending the change of style on Forever, Emma said: "We had to change our sound - if we'd carried on with what we were doing we would have been slaughtered. "Pop goes in cycles and I think Westlife will find sooner than they think that they will have to move on too. People will always compare but we are moving on." The girls' previous two albums spawned four singles but Forever included just Holler and an old No1, Goodbye, from two years earlier. Born on November 6, Forever came into the world amid a blaze of publicity - a Virgin birth delivered at London's trendy Red Cube club. But the poor creature was always overshadowed by the arrival of Coast To Coast, fathered by Westlife - it stole Forever's thunder and became the country's No1. Forever's creators soon seemed to give up on their own production. The girls ask to be left alone at this difficult time. Amen to that.

You all may be wondering as to why I have not updated my page in a while in which you will find out now why. Through the past few months we all probably been listening to the Spice Girls' third album Forever. The problem with that is that the Spice Girls don't seem to even care that we are listening to it. One reason is because they are not putting any effort into promoting it and just want to continue on doing their own solo careers, which is just frustrating. A few things that prove the Spice Girls aren't too interested in the group is 1) they are not planning to tour in 2001, 2) they are not planning to appear in their next video Tell Me, and 3) they already have plans to release solo albums both this and next year. And for some odd reason they want to lose the "spice nicknames" they were given when they first started out.

This whole crap about no tour in 2001 is giving me the feeling that there really is no group "Spice Girls" as a whole anymore, they only call themselves the Spice Girls when they are together every 4-5 months and they have to. Also the fact that they aren't putting any effort (such as promotion) for Forever yet there is time for solo promotion is another hint that there is no group as a whole.  To me the group is just getting ridiculous. I mean I wouldn't really be surprised if they do split...hell, they are not doing anything group-wise right now and don't plan to in 2001.

To me it's as if the future of the group is thrown up in the air and wherever it lands, it will land good or bad. And the future of the girls as "solo artists" is settled. They know they want to continue doing it, they don't plan to quit while they are ahead, and seem to have more fun doing it than doing the group. I already am losing interest in them because of this. Since the idea of Victoria (which I think is a joke) and Emma putting out solo albums this year and next, along with Mel B continuing to put out singles from her solo album, proves the fact that to them their solo career comes WAY before the group ever will again. I mean all they talk about in Insider Spice is how their "solo" material is coming along and rarely talk about what is going on with the group or tell us about anything in the group's future.

All I am trying to prove is that the group is fading very slowly; with Victoria's ridiculous solo album and Emma's solo album coming out along with Mel B continually releasing material from her solo album, we know for sure that we won't hear about the "group" that much this year or next anymore just like in 2000. You can probably tell now that I am not very interested in the girls' solo material. I don't care about solo material, only group material.

So till the group, formerly known as the Spice Girls, get their act together and come together as a group for more than 5 months, I will not be updating this site. I just hope that the four girls come together and show interest in the group that we all fell in love with in 1996-1997. To me with Geri's absence, a big part of the Spice Girls has been lost. I know I have said that I would care for the group until the day they split, but in reality the girls have split up individually into their own solo careers and have lost the spice they had when they were once only known as the group "Spice Girls".

I will still be selling videos for those who are still interested for the next coming months. But don't plan too much on news, new pics, multimedia, etc.

-Matt(webmaster of TMSINE)

P.S. If you want to know more as to why the group is continually declining, you can read this powerful article written by a guy named Octophone at a Dotmusic forum, who according to a report may or may not have some inside information. This information may or may not be true but can possibly give us an idea as to what we can('t) expect from the group in the future. Enjoy:

The reason for the exact date is subject to a degree of conjecture, but is likely to be due to the fact that it fell on a rare occasion where the 5 members were all together.

That needs explanation, after all they were on tour! Once the group left the UK and headed back into Europe, they were spending very little time together. Mel B was in the first flush of her sadly doomed relationship with Jimmy Gulzar and spent all her spare time with him, Emma Bunton was flying home regularly to see her mother and Jade Jones and Victoria was doing the same to be with her then fiance David Beckham. Geri was seeing Christian Storm and Melanie C was successfully keeping her brief relationship with Jake Davies a secret.

There was a reason for this conventration on personal happiness. The Spice Girls unit was giving each girl none at all. Forced into tax exile by Simon Fuller, the group were tired and homesick by the time thier tour began. Leaving the UK after the tour dates were complete was a major emotional strain on all of them, esp Emma and Victoria, both deeply in love with partners who could not follow them (reportedly a source of some jealousy between them and MB and Geri, but that's probably conjecture). In addition, the pressure of taking on management duties for themselves proved massively stressful on the group, straining personal relations to breaking point (NB - in my opinion it is this decision that killed the band once and for all, but that's for another time). Throughout the UK tour, reports of heated rows were legion. But these rows were over business; they didn't hate each other, they just disagreed over T-shirts and promotional deals, the kind of things groups rarely have to worry about. By the time they had divided the manegerial jobs, Halliwell had been firmly sidelined. She was given the task of dealing with the group's promotional deals, a big job under Fuller's regime. Their first decision as a unit was to slash these commitments to a minimum, leaving Halliwell all but jobless. (For the record, Melanie B became tour manager, Emma was in charge of personnel and scheduling, Melanie C liased with the record company <an appointment that would prove fatal, but that's another story> and Victoria was in charge of merchandising ie the quality of the t-shirts, tour programme, calander etc...)

Halliwell was used to being a strong voice within the group and this sidelining was too much for her. What happened next is unclear, but a reliable source (at Virgin) claimed that Geri called a group meeting and laid down a series of ultimatums to the group, declaring that if they were not met, she would leave. This was last ditch stuff, she would either wrestle control or quit altogether. The group called her bluff. Faced with staying in a fatally weakened position or taking her chances alone, she left, to the genuine shock of the others. All of them were so wrapped up in their love lives (incl. Halliwell) that they hadn't really noticed how each other were feeling; at least one report suggests that in May '98, the group were meeting for the first time in the day less than 30 minutes before they went on stage.

Talk of screaming rows and missed Breast Cancer interviews appears to be a smokescreen for a total breakdown in the personal relations amongs the group. Over the next fortnight, the remaining members would spend time together and renew their emotional commitment to the Spice Girls. Had Geri stayed and they had gone into the US in the miserable state in which they had left the UK, we would have lost them for good in America.

Apologies for the length, but that seems to be the truth of the matter. Halliwell felt undervalued and unappreciated. As everyone else in the group felt the same level of tiredness and disillusionment as her, they found it difficult to care and Geri's cry for help went unheeded, as it would have done for any other member. Sad, but true.
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The thing about not wanting to crush the fans dreams was probably an expression more of how her dreams had been crushed by the disinterest and business differences that riddled the band at that time; her dream of the big finale at Wembley was gone, something about which she remains bitter. I guess no-one likes the idea of the group, who made so much of their gang mentality, dissolving into squabling.

Did she and Mel B argue? Probably, but I think it likely that everyone argued during this period, it's just that those 2 were the loudest! It was Halliwell's decision to make a complete break, changing her management (well, she had to!), contact no.s and addresses without notifying the other girls, yet, curiously, playing up her estrangement from the others for sympathy when she launched her solo career. Geri Halliwell is clearly a very complex individual and probably quite difficult to be around; you never know who she's going to be each day.

Tom C - they were all exhausted. Geri just cracked first. One contemporary press report suggested that Geri was actually the peacemaker in the group during the UK tour, could that be why she had enough first?

Right Jenn, to you. The decision not to appoint a mamager and MC appointment as official spokesperson to the record company have their results in much the same place. The absense of good experienced management has meant that the group have made a number of public errors which have diminshed their strength. A good manager would have advised Victoria to underplay the record w/Truesteppers and focus on the potential credibility boost, rather than hauling herself around the country trying to turn a very uncommercial record into a pop hit. A good manager wouldn't have allowed Melanie B to launch her debut album a mere 7 days before the group's comeback single (and would have canned the appaling "Word Up" single and its equally dire video). And a good manager would have ensured the album didn't take so long. Allowed to make their own schedules, they have drifted in and out of group activity as and when they could be bothered. And the endless procrastination paid its dividend in the way we all feared. They came back and many people simply didn't care any more.

Now, with MC the person with whom Virgin were used to dealing, she was able to construct a massive schedule for herself with their full backing, without consulting the others. So when the group called on her to record in March 2000, she had already made other arrangements which she declined to break. A central figure outside of the group would have co-ordinated all the solo and group work correctly rather than the ad hoc MC-biased version we have seen. Always the most serious about her solo work, she effectively (accidentally?) abused the good relationship she had developed with Virgin to give her solo career priority. I'm not suggesting she did this consciously, in order to steal a march on the others, quite the opposite. It's just that it came so naturally to her to make the arrangements and so naturally to Virgin to take her word as being representative of the whole group, as it was what they were used to. The net result is that they've all started doing the same thing, so there are now 4 solo schedules made independantly. Oddly enough, they've found there was no time left for Spice. What have they done about it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.