MANILA, Philippines?Real pop stars dictate not only which songs to listen to, but also what kind of clothes to wear or hairstyle to sport. They define everything that?s cool, and they can even make you dance with the music just playing in your head.

Amid boy bands and sappy balladeers in the ?90s, a phenomenon was born?the Spice Girls. They coined ?girl power? as a new feminist movement, made us think that platform sneakers were perfectly wearable, bumped off the little black dress with sporty bra tops and a sequined Union Jack minidress, and made us do the zig-a-zig-ah. Love ?em or hate ?em, they ruled.

The Spice Girls were Victoria ?Posh Spice? Beckham, Melanie ?Sporty Spice? Chisholm, Emma ?Baby Spice? Bunton, Geri ?Ginger Spice? Halliwell, and Melanie ?Scary Spice? Brown. (Trivia: It was the British ?Top of the Pops? magazine that coined their monikers; Ginger was supposed to be ?Sexy Spice?.)

Girl power, once again

More than a decade after they got together and years after they disbanded, here comes a fitting tribute??The Spice Girls Greatest Hits??a compilation of the group?s chart-toppers with a bonus music-video DVD that could very well serve as your ?90s pop soundtrack.

?Greatest Hits? opens up with the group?s first hit?the bouncy ?Wannabe,? which sounds surprisingly fresh even if the song is over a decade old. It?s followed by Spice Girls classics like ?Say You?ll Be There,? ?2 Become 1,? ?Mama,? ?Who Do You Think You Are,? ?Spice Up Your Life,? ?Too Much,? ?Stop,? ?Viva Forever,? ?Move Over,? ?Let Love Lead the Way,? ?Holler? and ?Goodbye.?

Two new songs rock the comeback album??Headlines (Friendship Never Ends)? and ?Voodoo.?

?Headlines? is a ballad with smooth rhythms and heavy backup vocals reminiscent of ?2 Become 1? and ?Viva Forever.? It is the official Children in Need charity single for 2007. The song and video got some bad press, but hey, it is a friendship song! It could play very well in graduations and farewell parties of sorts. Meanwhile, the upbeat, funky party song ?Voodoo? has that classic Spice Girls feel to it.

The tracks in ?Greatest Hits? are delivered in a linear fashion, and to review the album might be redundant since most of us know the songs by heart. But we owe these girls something for their unbelievable success, which could compare only to Beatlemania. (The word ?Spicemania? was coined then, but living in the ?Spice World? gained more popularity.)

?1-million cover

Oh, the cover of the ?Greatest Hits? isn?t computer-generated graphics. It?s actually a ?1-million Spice Girls logo made of precious stones, created by skilled jeweler David Morris.

Each color represents a Spice Girl. The S, amber, is for Victoria; ruby-pink P is for Emma; diamond I is Mel. C; the C made of sapphire stands for Geri; and rich-green emerald E is very apt for Mel B.

The Spice Girls reunited late last year for their much-anticipated ?The Return of the Spice Girls? World Tour. As expected, tickets were sold out in 38 seconds for the first London performance.

Tour stops also include cities in the United Kingdom, United States and Canada. They are supposed to perform in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, but no Asian dates have been released yet.

And no, as much as we?re willing to ditch having lunch and dinner for a month to get tickets to their show, they are not coming to the Philippines, according to their local distributor, EMI Phils. Rumors to the contrary circulating in blogs and online forums are just that?rumors. Boohoo.

Their first appearance as a reunited quintet was Nov. 15 last year, during the Victoria?s Secret Fashion Show. Performing ?Headlines? and ?Stop? required three sets of outfits, mostly designed by the remarkable Roberto Cavalli. The military-style wardrobe and ?40s-inspired outfits definitely fit these divas.

By the way, Geri?s Union Jack dress sold for ?36,000 in a cancer charity auction, which had its fair share of frenzied bidders. The Spice Girls stuff sold for a good cause amounted to ?146,511.

It?s a happy, spicy world, after all.

Source: www.thespicegirls.com

E-mail the author at iperez @inquirer.com.ph