After half a decade of alternative rock authenticity ruling the popular culture landscape, Britain's Spice Girls burst upon the scene in 1996 and—seemingly within five minutes after the release of their debut single, "Wannabe,"—helped change the direction of mainstream pop music for the latter half of the 1990s. While their explosion happened on a smaller scale than Madonna, Prince, or the nuclear bomb that was Michael Jackson, the Spice Girls nevertheless left a noticeable crater in the pop culture landscape that was still evident by the turn of the century. Just as alternative angst-ridden demigods Nirvana and Pearl Jam wiped away the superficial spectacle that was pop music in the late 1980s, the Spice Girls made being shallow and fun cool again, paving the way for a number of other commercially successful soul/dance-influenced, good-looking boy and girl bands.

The Spice Girls comprised...