The Spice Girls were a British pop girl group

Girl group

A girl group is a popular music act featuring several young female singers who generally harmonise together.Girl groups emerged in the late 1950s as groups of young singers teamed up with behind-the-scenes songwriters and music producers to create hit singles, often featuring glossy production...

 formed in 1994. The group consisted of Victoria Beckham

Victoria Beckham

Victoria Caroline Beckham is an English singer-songwriter, dancer, model, actress, fashion designer and businesswoman. In the late 1990s, Beckham rose to fame with the all-female pop group Spice Girls and was dubbed Posh Spice by the July 1996 issue of the British pop music magazine Top of the Pops...

 (née Adams), Melanie Brown

Melanie Brown

Melanie Janine "Scary Spice" Brown , often better known as Mel B, is an English pop singer-songwriter, actress, author and television presenter...

, Emma Bunton

Emma Bunton

Emma Lee Bunton is an English pop singer/songwriter and TV and radio presenter. She was a member of the 1990s girl group, the Spice Girls, in which she was known as Baby Spice as she was the youngest member. In 2010, she joined the judging panel on ITV's Dancing on Ice...

, Melanie Chisholm

Melanie Chisholm

Melanie Jayne Chisholm is an English singer-songwriter, actress and businesswoman professionally known simply as Melanie C . She is best known as one of the five members of the girl group Spice Girls, in which she was nicknamed "Sporty Spice"...

 and Geri Halliwell

Geri Halliwell

Geraldine Estelle "Geri" Halliwell is an English pop singer-songwriter, author and actress. After coming to international prominence in the late 1990s as Ginger Spice, a member of the girl group the Spice Girls, Halliwell launched her solo career in 1998 and released her album Schizophonic...

. They were signed to Virgin Records

Virgin Records

Virgin Records is a British record label founded by English entrepreneur Richard Branson, Simon Draper, and Nik Powell in 1972. The company grew to be a worldwide music phenomenon, with platinum performers such as Roy Orbison, Devo, Genesis, Keith Richards, Janet Jackson, Culture Club, Lenny...

 and released their debut single, "Wannabe

Wannabe (song)

"Wannabe" is the debut song by British pop group Spice Girls. Written by the group members with Matt Rowe and Richard Stannard during the group's first professional songwriting session, it was produced by Rowe and Stannard for the group's debut album Spice, released in November 1996...

" in 1996, which hit number-one in more than 30 countries and helped establish the group as a "global phenomenon". Credited for being the pioneers that paved the way for the commercial breakthrough of teen pop

Teen pop

Teen pop is a subgenre of pop music that is created, marketed and oriented towards teenagers. Teen pop copies genres and styles such as pop, dance, R&B, hip hop, country and rock....

 in the late 1990s, their debut album, Spice

Spice (album)

Spice is the debut album by British pop group Spice Girls. Released on November 4, 1996 by Virgin Records, the album was recorded at Olympic Studios in Barnes, London between 1995 and 1996, by producers Matt Rowe, Richard Stannard, Eliot Kennedy and the production duo Absolute...

, sold more than 23 million copies worldwide, becoming the best-selling album by a female group in music history.