[3] "Who Do You Think You Are" was released as the official Comic Relief single in the UK as a double A-side with "Mama" and both songs reached the top 20 in charts across Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

In February 1994, Chris and Bob Herbert, who together with financer Chic Murphy traded under the business name of Heart Management, placed an advert in The Stage magazine, which asked the question: "Are you street smart, extrovert, ambitious, and able to sing and dance?".

[4][5] The management received hundreds of replies, but eventually reduced their search down to a final group of five girls: Victoria Beckham, Mel B, Melanie C, Geri Halliwell and Michelle Stephenson.

They started to meet with producers, musicians and other business executives, among which were composer Tim Hawes, and writers Richard Stannard and Matthew Rowe.

Mel B and Halliwell drove to Sheffield the day after the departure from Heart Management and looked for the first phone book they came across; Eliot was the third Kennedy that they called.

They had previously worked with the girls in January 1995 before their departure from Heart Management; that was the group's first professional songwriting session, held at the Strongroom in Curtain Road, east London.

[10] In the first session with Stannard and Rowe, they wrote "Feed Your Love", a slow, soulful song which was eventually recorded and mastered for the album, but not released because it was considered too rude and racy for their target audience.

[13][14] During the writing process, each member wrote a small verse in a different corner of the recording studio, while the chorus was finished around the piano with a guitar.

A songwriting session was booked within the next few days at Absolute's studio located on Tagg's Island near Chertsey, but the musical association between them did not seem to go well at the beginning.

"[19] The Spice Girls introduced two key innovations that have had a lasting impact on the way which modern pop acts go about their creative business.

This was a familiar concept in rock bands like Queen or the Sex Pistols, but not in the world of "manufactured pop", where the credits of songwriting would be divided out strictly in accordance with whoever had written the song.

The Spice Girls recognised their solidarity as a group, which depended on maintaining parity in all departments, including the songwriting credits and the resulting royalties.

[20] In an interview with Apple Music for the Spice25 release, Melanie C divulged, "We had [a] risqué song called 'C U Next Tuesday', which was vetoed for the 25th anniversary edition, but I do have plans for it.

[17] The ninth track, "Naked" deals with vulnerability and the step from girls to women and how this process made the group stronger, something they were experiencing at that moment.

[22][36][24] Two of the three ballads of the album, "2 Become 1" and "Mama", were co–written and produced by Stannard and Rowe, and both feature the use of keyboards, guitars, string arrangements and backing vocals.

[34] The main concept of the album centred on the idea of Girl Power,[39] embodying a feminist image, as both Madonna and Bananarama had employed before.

[40] Every track of the album deals with different aspects of this notion: the lead single "Wannabe" makes demands of sincerity and is a feminist message of choosing friends over relationships; "Say You'll Be There" motivates girls to stand up for themselves as individuals,[22] while the focus of "Love Thing" is the symbolic expression of unity as a group; "Something Kinda Funny" deals with the identification of goals in life and "Last Time Lover" encourages the use of sexual charm as a weapon to be deployed along with any other skills that would help to get a result.

[42] Despite receiving mixed reviews from critics, who called it "a melodious but disposable tune that typifies this debut's tart bubblegum and packaged sexiness" and found the track as "more a compendium of music styles than an actual song",[43] [36] it became the best-selling single by a female group, selling over six million copies worldwide.

As a result of its popularity, the song was released in 1997 in Australia, receiving a Gold certification by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), and in North America, entering the top five in Canada and peaking at number three in the United States.

In July 1997, the song was released in the United States, peaking at number four on the Billboard Hot 100, and receiving a Gold certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

"[50] AllMusic reviewer Stephen Thomas Erlewine deemed it "immaculately crafted pop" that is "infectious" and "irresistible", adding that "Spice doesn't need to be original to be entertaining" and that "none of the girls have great voices, but they do exude personality and charisma".

"[30] In The Guardian, Caroline Sullivan wrote that despite the album's "unbelievably slick" and commercial sound, "all those Girl Power declarations aren't just empty slogans, one feels.

Sara Scribner of the Los Angeles Times found the group's music and image "shamelessly one-dimensional",[48] while Christina Kelly from Rolling Stone dismissed them as another "bubblegum-pop" group who "offer a watered-down mix of hip-hop and cheesy pop balladry", stating that "despite their pro-woman posing, the Girls don't get bogged down by anything deeper than mugging for promo shots and giving out tips on getting boys in bed.

[57] Reflecting on the album in 2019, Pitchfork's Aimee Cliff opined that despite its somewhat "flimsy" feminism, "Spice remains an audacious achievement ... it snuck five Girls who were not on the guest list inside the establishment, causing chaos for a brief, surreal moment.

"[51] The commercial success of Spice was unprecedented and drew comparisons to Beatlemania (it was dubbed "Spicemania") due to the sheer volume of interest in the group.

The album was certified 10-times Platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) on 1 August 1997,[59] and as of November 2021, it had sold 3,022,090 copies in the United Kingdom.

[61] The album reached number one in France[62] and was certified Diamond by the Syndicat National de l'Édition Phonographique (SNEP),[63] triple Gold in Germany by the Bundesverband Musikindustrie (BVMI), and 10-times Platinum in Spain for one million copies sold.

[68] On 19 May 1999, the album was certified seven-times Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA),[69] and as of May 2017, it had sold 7.5 million copies in the US, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

[73][74] To mark the 25th anniversary of "Wannabe", an EP of the group's debut single was released in July 2021 that included previously unreleased demos.

The CDs come in an A5 hardback booklet, with a collection of iconic images and a set of six Spice Girls postcards, while the original album is also available on limited edition vinyl and cassette.