# Girl Power! Live in Istanbul

Girl Power! Live in Istanbul was a two-night concert by English girl group the Spice Girls. The concerts, which were organized by Pepsi as part of the group's sponsorship deal, were performed at the Abdi İpekçi Arena in Istanbul, Turkey on 12 and 13 October 1997.

## Broadcast

In the UK, highlights from the concert were broadcast on ITV on 25 December 1997 under the title Spice Up Your Christmas!. The Christmas Day broadcast included a special greeting by the group.
In the US, an airing of the full concert was first made available as a pay-per-view event on 17 January 1998 at 9 p.m. (E.T.) via Showtime Event Television. The broadcast was titled Spice Girls In Concert: Wild! The pay-per-view event was deemed to be "hugely successful", and the concert subsequently premiered on Showtime's main channel on April 5, 1998.
The concert was again aired in the US on Fox Family Channel (formerly USA Network) on Sunday, 16 August 1998 at 6:00 pm. This broadcast coincided with the Spice Girls' first North American tour which was ongoing from 16 June 1998 through the end of August 1998. The televised concert event was titled Spice Girls: Wild! in Concert and, besides the musical performances, featured the same interviews and behind-the-scenes footage included on the home video. The broadcast was roughly two hours in length, including commercials, and managed to receive 1.8 million viewers when it aired, despite being up-against a four-hour Spice Girls MTV special and a different pay-per-view Spice Girls documentary airing that same weekend. All songs from the setlist, except for "Naked", were aired during the broadcast. The concert would go on to be aired several more times on the Fox Family Channel throughout 1998, up-until nearly a year later, in July 1999.

## Set list

Act 1
* Intro / "If U Can't Dance"
* "Who Do You Think You Are" (with elements of "Diva" by Club 69 and "Cover Girl" by RuPaul)
* "Something Kinda Funny"
* "Saturday Night Divas"
* "Say You'll Be There"
* "Step to Me"
Act 2
* "Naked" (with excerpts from the film Batman Forever (1995))
Act 3
* "2 Become 1"
* "Stop"
* "Too Much"
Act 4
* "Spice Up Your Life"
* "Love Thing"
* "Mama"
Act 5
* "Move Over"
* "Wannabe"

## Video & DVD release

Following its global live broadcasts on various channels, a VHS version of the show was released. Interestingly, the video features only 9/15 of the original setlist's songs, as production opted to omit "Something Kinda Funny" (song no. 2), "Saturday Night Divas" (no. 3), "Stop" (no. 9), "Too Much" (no. 10), "Love Thing" (no. 12) and "Mama" (no. 13) from the final edit. However, the entire show was broadcast on television (minus "Naked", which does appear on the video). The video includes extended interviews with the girls and behind-the-scenes footage, filmed in and around Istanbul, as well as pre-show and rehearsal footage. Before the show begins, footage shows the girls excitedly arriving to the venue, in-costume, and taking to the stage. Additionally, while the concert itself was sung and broadcast completely live, studio vocals were dubbed-in to portions of certain songs for the final home video edit.
A DVD of the concert was made available on 10 December 2007 to coincide with the release of the girls' compilation album Greatest Hits (2007) as well as their Return of the Spice Girls (2007-08) reunion tour. The DVD features a documentary called "Girl Talk" and a countdown to the concert, as well as the edited, nine-track setlist, as was previously available on VHS.

## Audio release

In 1998 the Mégaphone company released a CD with the complete concert of 15 songs in audio format with the voices dubbed from the video edition entitled Spice Songs.

## Personnel
### Vocals

* Melanie Brown
* Emma Bunton
* Geri Halliwell
* Victoria Beckham
* Melanie C

### Band

* Simon Ellis – Musical Director / Keyboards
* Andy Gangadeen – Drums
* Paul Gendler – Guitars
* Fergus Gerrand – Percussion
* Steve Lewinson – Bass
* Michael Martin – Keyboards

## Certifications

| Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
| France (SNEP) | Diamond | 100,000$^*$ |
| United Kingdom (BPI) | 5× Platinum | 250,000$^^$ |
| United States (RIAA) | Platinum | 100,000$^^$ |
| $^*$ Sales figures based on certification alone. $^^$ Shipments figures based on certification alone. |||