Fans Think A Love Affair Between Mel B And Geri Halliwell Is What Actually Broke Up The Spice Girls — And One Woman Has Laid Out All The Evidence
The evidence is pretty compelling and shows just how much queer representation and our attitudes toward LGBTQ+ has changed since the 90s.
Kathy Hutchins, Featureflash Photo Agency / Shutterstock.com; Canva ProFor younger Gen X'ers and elder Millennials, there was arguably no greater 1990s cultural touchstone than the Spice Girls. And if you're of a certain age, you remember exactly where you were when the earth-shattering news entered your tween ears that Geri Halliwell, "Ginger Spice" herself, was leaving the band forever.
The remaining four Spice Girls members, Melanie "Scary Spice" Brown aka Mel B, Melanie "Sporty Spice" Chisholm aka Mel C, Emma "Baby Spice" Bunton and Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham, attempted to soldier on as a foursome. But the magic was just not quite there, and after making 2000's criminally underrated — and inaptly titled — album "Forever" together, the quartet disbanded for good.
At the time, the break-up was chalked up to everything from personal rifts and contract disputes to Halliwell's desire for a solo career. But it turns out there was likely more to the story, and a break-up of a different kind was actually to blame.
Many fans think a love affair between Mel B and Geri Halliwell is what actually broke up the Spice Girls.
To be fair, this is not exactly new information — it's been circulating for years. But when lesbian TikToker @sapphicunderground jokingly mentioned the story in a TikTok video recently, the chorus of gazillions of TikTok users collectively shrieking "WHAT?!," suggested that not everyone has heard the tale — this writer included, despite being a fan from the very beginning who took a day off work to buy tickets to the Spice Girls' 2008 reunion tour.
Mel B has publicly alluded to a love affair with Geri Halliwell in interviews.
"If we're being honest, neither of them have ever been subtle about the fact that they're fruity or subtle about their feelings for each other," the TikToker said in her first video laying out the evidence, which includes clips of the two women joking about having "a good tongue on you" and wanting to "shag" each other back in the 90s.
"The evidence suggests," the TikToker says, "that Mel B and Geri very much started out as a friends-with-benefits situation, but it quickly developed into a romantic relationship. And when that relationship broke down, Geri was so heartbroken it resulted in her leaving the Spice Girls, not so coincidentally around Mel B's birthday." Drama!
But the biggest piece of evidence of all is a 2019 interview with Piers Morgan in which Mel B all but openly admitted to having had a sexual relationship with Halliwell.
"She didn't elaborate too much," the TikToker said, "but she pretty much confirmed what a lot of us had been knowing for years." The TikToker also cited an interview with Mel B's ex-husband in which he discussed the "deep connection between Geri and Mel B" in a way that seems obviously euphemistic by today's standards.
Photo: @sapphicunderground / TikTok
But long before that, there were plenty of indicators that Halliwell and Mel B were far more than just friends and that their entanglement spelled the end of the band.
Geri Halliwell also cryptically wrote about an affair with Mel B in her memoir, 'Geri-Just For The Record'
"Just for the record, she says the reason that she left the band was specifically because of a relationship breakdown," the TikToker says of Halliwell's 2002 memoir. She then provided a passage from the book in which Halliwell describes herself as having decided, "'I have loved and lost. I give up. My heart is breaking.'"
Photo: @sapphicunderground / TikTok
"There's no evidence of Geri having any kind of serious long-term boyfriend during the Spice Girls," the TikToker adds — but she and Mel B were inseparable. "They consistently traveled and went on a multitude of adventures with each other, just the two of them, a lot... Mel was the long-term boyfriend."
The Spice Girls' final song as a fivesome is about a secret love affair — and it dropped just before Mel B got engaged and Geri Halliwell left the band.
"Then we have the song lyrics in 'Viva Forever,'" @sapphicunderground said in her follow-up video about the affair. The 1997 hit was mainly written by Halliwell, and, tellingly, it was the final single the Spice Girls released as a full fivesome.
The lyrics center on a secret romance, and as @sapphicunderground notes, they "do not contain any male pronouns" but lots of secretive imagery. As the TikTok put it, citing the lyrics, "'feelings unfold, they will never be sold and the secrets safe with me' — these lyrics are quite obviously referring to their secret romance and it being kept away fromthe tabloids because, of course, if people knew, they would have absolutely sold them out."
The timing of everything is revealing too. Shortly after "Viva Forever's" release, Mel B got engaged to the aforementioned husband who spoke of her deep connection with Halliwell. And shortly after that is when Halliwell made her exit.
"I believe the engagement absolutely contributed to why Geri was feeling so heartbroken," the TikToker says. Halliwell herself has likened her response to Mel B's engagement to throwing a child-like temper tantrum, which she followed with leaving the band right around Mel B's birthday. "
The story of the alleged love affair between Mel B and Geri Halliwell shows how much times have changed when it comes to LGBTQ+ issues.
Can you imagine this sort of thing being that big of a deal nowadays — or even kept hush-hush in the first place? Nowadays, artists would probably push the story out themselves to boost their album sales. "There's no such thing as bad publicity," after all.
But even if they hadn't gone that far, it's hard to imagine this whole thing going down quite like it did in the 90s. As @sapphicunderground put it, "the 90s were a different time.That kind of scandal would have absolutely damaged their career."
Photo: @sapphicunderground / TikTok
Today's resurgent right-wing homophobia and transphobia aside, it's hard to imagine that being true nowadays, especially as attitudes toward bisexuality and the idea of sexual orientation existing on a spectrum are more and more accepted.
Heck, nowadays, those "Viva Forever" lyrics alone would probably set off gay alarms just like many the stories of many historical and ancient literary figures do today. As @sapphicunderground put it, "will [Mel B and Geri] ever come out and talk explicitly about what happened in detail? Probably not, but I don't think they need to."
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.