It could have been the end of a world career before it had really begun: Mel C (52) says she almost got kicked out of the Spice Girls. The trigger was a dispute with Victoria Beckham (52) at the Brit Awards 1996, as the singer now revealed on the "Louis Theroux Podcast".
It was actually about a hairstyle. Mel C had let down her usual ponytail that evening and apparently violated an unspoken rule of the group: Each member was supposed to maintain their fixed look. Her bandmates were accordingly not very enthusiastic about Mel C's loose hair. The singer didn't react particularly diplomatically - and told Beckham to leave her alone with a curt "Get lost".
"I was afraid of losing everything"
She herself had initially not attached much importance to the outburst. The next morning, however, Mel C clearly felt the consequences. "They were disgusted by my behavior", the musician recalled her bandmates' reaction. Then panic set in: "I was afraid of losing everything", said Mel C. She had possibly destroyed her childhood dreams herself, which had suddenly been within reach. At that point, the Spice Girls hadn't released a single song yet - it was only several months later that the debut single "Wannabe" catapulted the group to the top of the world.
Band manager Simon Fuller had made it unmistakably clear to her after the Brit Awards that she would be out if there was another incident of this kind, the 52-year-old continued. "It completely threw me off track. First, because I wasn't even aware that I had done something so terrible. And second, because my behavior could have led to me losing everything I had ever wanted."
Between constant quarrels and cult status
The anecdote fits a familiar picture: Hardly any band is still so strongly associated with stories about friction, complicated relationships and difficult phases as the Spice Girls. After their breakup in 2000, they repeatedly reunited in changing constellations, but they rarely stood on stage together in full. Victoria Beckham has kept a clear distance in recent years and was not part of the reunion tour in 2019, for example.
At the same time, the musicians repeatedly emphasize that their relationship with each other is good today. For Beckham's 52nd birthday in mid-April, Mel C and the other band members Mel B, Geri Halliwell and Emma Bunton congratulated the designer on Instagram with loving words and throwback photos from their days together.
