Scary Spice revealed how the Spice Girls got their nicknames on “The Late Show”
Mel B has had quite the career. While she’s currently starring in Chicago on Broadway, her roots will always be with the Spice Girls — otherwise known as that funky girl group who totally dominated the music scene in the ’90s. Last night, the girl we know best as Scary Spice discussed the Spice Girls nicknames on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and we have to admit, their origins are pretty interesting. In fact, we just kind of assumed they made them up themselves.
The best part of all is that while Mel B has definitely moved on, it’s obvious that she’s still quite fond of her girl band roots. In fact, Mel B thinks it’s pretty spectacular that they made it so far, as the concept of a girl band was somewhat unheard of back then.
And weirdly enough, that’s loosely linked to how names like “Sporty” and “Baby” came to be. Watch her discuss around the 4-minute mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApaX7bE_j3k?feature=oembed
"We had this one journalist who I guess was extremely lazy, and couldn't bother to learn all of our names and just gave us nicknames. 'That one's a bit Scary, that one's a bit Posh'...and they just kind of stuck," Mel B said. "He couldn't be bothered."
Wow.
While it’s a bummer that lazy reporting ended up blossoming into so much more, “Scary” was really happy about the way it turned out for her.
"It kind of just worked," she noted. "I like mine, because at least I'm scaring people before I even walk in the room."
Mel B also cleared up one big misconception about the girl group — they weren’t assembled. Yes, the girls all met during an audition, but they weren’t signed from there. Becoming friends, they worked hard on their songs and music before meeting the manager who would help them rocket into the spotlight.
"We found Simon [Fuller], and the whole band erupted," Mel B said.
As a fun piece of trivia, the girls were close to working with another Simon — Simon Cowell, to be specific.
Unfortunately, things fell through. To this day, Cowell still considers the lack of a partnership to be one of his biggest career mistakes.
Whether or not a full Spice Girls reunion ever happens, we’ll keep supporting these girls — and, listening to their two most incredible albums.
