Spice Girls/History

==1994-1996: Formation and early years==
In the mid-1990s, father-and-son management team Bob and Chris Herbert set about creating an all female group to compete with popular boy bands that dominated the pop music scene in the mid- to late-1990s: "The whole teen-band scene at the time was saturated by boy bands like Take That and East 17. That was all a bit of a yawn for me, and only appealed to female audiences... I felt if you could appeal to the boys as well, you'd be laughing." In February 1994, Heart Management - which comprised the Herberts together with financier Chic Murphy - placed an advertisement in "The Stage" trade magazine asking "WANTED: R.U. 18-23 with the ability to sing/dance? R.U. streetwise, outgoing, ambitious, and dedicated? Heart Management Ltd. are a widely succesful music industry management consortium currently forming a choreographed, singing/dancing, all-female pop act for a recording deal. Open audition. Danceworks, 16 Balderton Street. Firday 4 March. 11 am-5:30 pm. Please bring sheet music or backing cassette". About 400 women who answered the ad went to Dance Works studios. There, they were put into groups of 10 and danced a routine to "Stay" by Eternal. After that, the selection continued and the girls had to sing solo songs. Victoria Adams sang "Mein Herr", Melanie Brown sang "The Greatest Love of All", Melanie Chisholm sang "I'm So Excited", Michelle Stephenson sang "Don't Be a Stranger". After the auditions, the women returned home and waited for some weeks. Geri Halliwell had seen the ad but went skiing in Spain and missed the audition because her face got sunburnt.