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Girl Power! Live in Istanbul

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Girl Power! Live in Istanbul
Special concert by Spice Girls
VHS release cover
LocationIstanbul, Turkey
VenueAbdi İpekçi Arena
Associated albums
Date(s)12–13 October 1997
Spice Girls concert chronology

Girl Power! Live in Istanbul was a two-night concert by English girl group the Spice Girls. The concerts, which were organized by Pepsi as part of the group's sponsorship deal, were performed at the Abdi İpekçi Arena in Istanbul, Turkey on 12 and 13 October 1997.

Broadcast

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See also: Spice Girls filmography

In the UK, highlights from the concert were broadcast on ITV on 25 December 1997 under the title Spice Up Your Christmas!. The Christmas Day broadcast included a special greeting by the group.[1]

In the US, an airing of the full concert was first made available as a pay-per-view event on 17 January 1998 at 9 p.m. (E.T.) via Showtime Event Television.[2] The broadcast was titled Spice Girls In Concert: Wild! The pay-per-view event was deemed to be "hugely successful", and the concert subsequently premiered on Showtime's main channel on April 5, 1998.[3]

The concert was again aired in the US on Fox Family Channel (formerly USA Network) on Sunday, 16 August 1998 at 6:00 pm.[4] This broadcast coincided with the Spice Girls' first North American tour which was ongoing from 16 June 1998 through the end of August 1998. The televised concert event was titled Spice Girls: Wild! in Concert[5] and, besides the musical performances, featured the same interviews and behind-the-scenes footage included on the home video. The broadcast was roughly two hours in length, including commercials, and managed to receive 1.8 million viewers when it aired, despite being up-against a four-hour Spice Girls MTV special and a different pay-per-view Spice Girls documentary airing that same weekend.[4] All songs from the setlist, except for "Naked", were aired during the broadcast. The concert would go on to be aired several more times on the Fox Family Channel throughout 1998, up-until nearly a year later, in July 1999.

Set list

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Act 1

  1. Intro / "If U Can't Dance"
  2. "Who Do You Think You Are" (with elements of "Diva" by Club 69 and "Cover Girl" by RuPaul)
  3. "Something Kinda Funny"
  4. "Saturday Night Divas"
  5. "Say You'll Be There"
  6. "Step to Me"

Act 2

  2. "Naked" (with excerpts from the film Batman Forever (1995))

Act 3

  2. "2 Become 1"
  3. "Stop"
  4. "Too Much"

Act 4

  2. "Spice Up Your Life"
  3. "Love Thing"
  4. "Mama"

Act 5

  2. "Move Over"
  3. "Wannabe"

Video & DVD release

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Following its global live broadcasts on various channels, a VHS version of the show was released. Interestingly, the video features only 9/15 of the original setlist's songs, as production opted to omit "Something Kinda Funny" (song no. 2), "Saturday Night Divas" (no. 3), "Stop" (no. 9), "Too Much" (no. 10), "Love Thing" (no. 12) and "Mama" (no. 13) from the final edit. However, the entire show was broadcast on television (minus "Naked", which does appear on the video). The video includes extended interviews with the girls and behind-the-scenes footage, filmed in and around Istanbul, as well as pre-show and rehearsal footage. Before the show begins, footage shows the girls excitedly arriving to the venue, in-costume, and taking to the stage. Additionally, while the concert itself was sung and broadcast completely live, studio vocals were dubbed-in to portions of certain songs for the final home video edit.

A DVD of the concert was made available on 10 December 2007 to coincide with the release of the girls' compilation album Greatest Hits (2007) as well as their Return of the Spice Girls (2007-08) reunion tour. The DVD features a documentary called "Girl Talk" and a countdown to the concert, as well as the edited, nine-track setlist, as was previously available on VHS.[6]


Audio release

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In 1998 the Mégaphone company released a CD with the complete concert of 15 songs in audio format with the voices dubbed from the video edition entitled Spice Songs. [7]

Personnel

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Vocals

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Band

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  • Simon Ellis – Musical Director / Keyboards
  • Andy Gangadeen – Drums
  • Paul Gendler – Guitars
  • Fergus Gerrand – Percussion
  • Steve Lewinson – Bass
  • Michael Martin – Keyboards

Certifications

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Region Certification Certified units/sales
France (SNEP)[8] Diamond 100,000*
United Kingdom (BPI)[9] 5× Platinum 250,000^
United States (RIAA)[10] Platinum 100,000^

* Sales figures based on certification alone.
^ Shipments figures based on certification alone.

References

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  1. ^ "ITV Christmas TV 1997". UK Christmas TV. Retrieved 14 February 2017.
  2. ^ "SPICE GIRLS GO PAY-PER-VIEW". MTV News. 3 December 1997. Archived from the original on December 7, 2014. Retrieved 3 April 2021.
  3. ^ "Dateline: Viacom". Business Wire. 29 April 1998. p. 1. ProQuest 446927691. Retrieved 29 March 2021 – via ProQuest.
  4. ^ a b Katz, Richard (19 August 1998). "Fox Family debuts well". Variety. Retrieved 3 April 2021.
  5. ^ Sterngold, James (9 August 1998). "COVER STORY; A Family Channel Welcomes Black Sheep". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 May 2010.
  6. ^ "Woolworths DVD sale page".
  7. ^ "Spice Songs". Discogs.
  8. ^ "French video certifications – Spice Girls – Girls Talk" (in French). Syndicat National de l'Édition Phonographique. Retrieved September 28, 2015.
  9. ^ "British video certifications – Spice Girls – Girl Power - Live In Istanbul". British Phonographic Industry. Retrieved 2016-07-26.
  10. ^ "American video certifications – Spice Girls – GIRL POWER: LIVE IN ISTANBUL". Recording Industry Association of America. Retrieved 2016-07-26.
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