CSPC: Spice Girls Popularity Analysis
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Exactly 20 years ago, the music industry was going through one of the most hyped eras that it had ever had. The Girl Power phenomenon was everywhere thanks to their unstoppable flagship, the iconic Spice Girls. Wannabe was concluding its run at #1 in the US, and the album Spice was on its way to climbing the top of the album chart as well. In the UK, both the album and the single Mama / Who Do You Think You Are? were dominating, the latter being their fourth #1 hit in their native country. Less than a year prior they were unknown. This was the Spice Girls – an utterly massive, dominant, group from the very first day.
As usual – we already met the case with the Beatles or ABBA – when a music act destroys the charts like no one else myths quickly start surrounding it them. Some are true, others aren’t. Their countless #1s were all over the place, as were their record breaking sales in each field – album, singles and videos. The legend tells that the Spice album sold over 30 million units while Spiceworld moved 22 million, while the group as a whole set a mark of 85 million physical records sold. As you can guess, this includes a fair share of exaggeration. With the Spice Girls, the case is quite easy in reality – all their official album sales are known and you will be finding them right here. As they did well in various formats, we need to check the complete picture to accurately rate their success.
As usual, I’ll be using the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept in order to relevantly gauge their results. The concept will not only bring you sales information for all the Spice Girls’ albums, physical singles, download singles, and music videos and streaming, but it will also accurately weight all this information to conclude their true popularity. If you are not yet familiar with the CSPC idea, the next page explains it with a short video. I fully recommend you check it out before getting into the sales figures. Of course, if you are a regular visitor feel free to get straight into the figures. Let’s go!