Spice Girls Open European Reunion Tour With Inclusivity Proclamations, Sound Issues

By Variety Staff

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Posh Spice chose not to be included, but there was a lot of other inclusivity to go around as the four other Spice Girls opened their reunion tour in Dublin Friday night.

“We welcome all ages, all races, all gender identifies, all countries of origin, all sexual orientations, all religions and beliefs, all abilities,” they said in opening the show at Croke Park Stadium.

“Like a king or a queen, we celebrate you. But I’ve got to say, there are a lot of queens here tonight,” Geri “Ginger Spice” Halliwell Horner said later (“winking hard enough to cause a hernia,” noted the Guardian) to the 71,000 fans on hand.

The missing Victoria Beckham was referenced only briefly, as the lyric “Easy V don’t come for free” in “Wannabe” was amended by Halliwell Horner to add, “Where is she?”

Sound was an issue for some at the concert, with numerous tweets attesting to the fact that the songs were nearly indistinguishable from one another in same parts of the stadium. Melanie “Scary Spice” Brown addressed the issue in an Instagram post afterward, writing, “Thank you for attending our show tonight in Dublin. We will see you in Cardiff and hopefully the vocals and sound will be much, much better… Pfft.”

The group has reunited for the first time since 2007 for a tour of the UK and Ireland that wraps up with a three-night stand June 13-15 at Wembley Stadium. The originally split in 2000. No new recordings have been released; all of the material being performed date back to their late ’90s heyday.

SET LIST:

Spice Up Your Life / If You Can’t Dance
Who Do You Think You Are?
Do It
Something Kind Of Funny
Military Cadence / Sound Off
Holler
Queer Tango
Viva Forever
Let Love Lead The Way
Goodbye
Car Wash
Never Give Up On The Good Times
We Are Family
Love Thing
Lady Is a Vamp
The Last Waltz
Too Much
Say You’ll Be There
2 Become 1
Stop
Mama
Wannabe