Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want

Today is the birthday of former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell (A.K.A. Ginger Spice and, occasionally, Old Spice) and former it art boy Andy Warhol. Halliwell was born in 1972, Warhol in 1927. See: the same numbers. Different order. Spooky.

Warhol went to the big studio in the sky in 1987, a full nine years before the debut of the Spice Girls’ first hit single, “Wannabe,” knocked the world to its pop-starved knees in 1996. (“Oh... tell me what you want, what you really, really want...”) And 11 years before the toothsome British fivesome made the heroically awful movie Spice World. (Which is pictured above left and had absolutely nothing to do with Frank Herbert’s wonderful Dune books. You’ll have to have read Herbert’s books to get the reference.)

And, of course, the whole Spice Girls thing imploded years ago when birthday girl Geri left the group in 1999 for a solo career. She’s since released three studio albums and given birth to a daughter -- in May of this year -- whom she named Bluebell Madonna. Bluebell Madonna Halliwell. I’m not making this up.

But dontcha think Warhol would have loved the Spice Girls? Loved who they were and what they stood for? The synthetically created pop band that -- albeit ever so briefly -- ruled the world. It’s easy to forget it now but, for about a minute in the late 1990s, they were bigger than the Beatles, selling in excess of 50 million records in under three years.

Warhol would have loved the Spice Girls: loved how they looked and what they stood for. He would have loved their girl power costumes and the way they wore their shoes. Warhol would have made them into art. And nothing would be different.