Pop groups have long made format, paradigm, and uninspired repetition the industry standard. What's different with the Girls is their studied and calculated manner of rending music of substance to make it more marketable in Madison Avenue terms. Like microwave popcorn or Diet Coke, you spend, consume, and are momentarily distracted by Spice Girl sound, but can forget it just as fast since it leaves no trace behind. Your musical appetite is fooled, not sated, by a substance with neither nutrition nor calories. Even in the cultural realm, ephemeral is being embraced as gloriously unencumbering.
People are tired, and want a rest.
As that tide recedes, the Spice Girls offer a sound and message so vacuous they serve as the ideal background music for the closing of self-inflicted piercing wounds. If Grunge was fashion with an attitude, Spice is just what's left when fashion dies, and the attitude becomes too much work. Whither pop culture. Their job calls for occupying that space between body builder, top model, dancer, and blowup doll for frenzied adolescent fans. Music becomes the Trojan Horse in which they enter a gigantic market, then pillage it for all it's worth with a pre-recorded tune on their lips.