About Me
Grab your party pants and prepare yourself
for the pop experience of your lifetime.
They're fun, they're fresh, they're kitsch and they're cool. They're Girl Thing.
They're what pop fans have been praying for,
and they're coming your way!The Girl Thing story is a fascinating pop journey through instant fame, betrayal and sudden failure. Anika, Nikki, Linzi, Michelle and Jodi were five girls seeking to become the biggest band of the new millennium, but left a legacy of one great album and a huge financial loss for their record company. It's a story that has not yet been told, and is still playing itself out. Created by Bob and Chris Herbert of Safe Management, the father-and-son duo who discovered the Spice Girls and aiming to recreate the feisty five's international success, Girl Thing were one of the biggest stories of the Year 2000. Billed as an "all-singing, all-dancing, all-rapping fivesome." Girl Thing had the aim of spreading the GT message which translated as "Be yourself, have a good time, and you can't go wrong." Riding on the post-Spice girl-pop boom of the late 1990s, the group sought to emulate the chart-hogging antics of B*Witched, Billie, Britney, Daphne and Celeste and Christina Aguilera. The Girl Thing sound crossed a Betty Boo-meets-NWA rap-style with the incessant bounce of melodic dance pop. Hyped to the max from the start of 2000, Girl Thing became the first band to appear on the front cover of Smash Hits without a top three hit, and their expected domination of the charts even pushed back the release schedules of rival girl bands. But just as quickly as they rose to prominence, the backlash began, and by November of that year their second single didn't even make the UK top twenty. However, Girl Thing had won many fans in Australia and Japan, touring those countries and releasing an album with a cover design that positioned the band as a disco-fied version of Charlie's Angels. Comprised of Nicola Stuart, Anika Bostelaar, Michelle Barber and Linzi Martin, Girl Thing formed in September1998 from auditions in London and Manchester, and Jodi Albert made it a five-piece by February 1999. Girl Thing shared a flat in Surrey when they signed a million-pound record deal with RCA, whose label BMG were still smarting from having missed out on signing the Spice Girls three years before. Exactly two years to the day Geri Halliwell left the Spice Girls, Girl Thing made the coveted Smash Hits cover on 31 May 2000 without even ever having a single out. Now that Spice Girls were one member down, it appeared Anika, Nikki, Linzi, Michelle and Jodi could steal their crown. The basic idea of Girl Thing was a gang of friends, which is the basic unit of school life for many girls. More than that, it seemed Girl Thing aimed to be identity models for young girls, which is arguably a closer link than being a role model. A role model is someone you admire so much you want to grow up to do what they do. An identity model is someone you want to be NOW. The marketing of Girl Thing played on this heavily, and not just the high street chic, which made emulating the girls' sense of dress attainable. As a statement of intent, the introductory press release had Michelle declaring: "Five heads are better than one and we have this real vibe around us when we're all together." Jodi was quoted as saying: "We're just like all those girls out there, this is our dream. We're having the time of our lives and we want to say to everyone, 'Hey, come and join us. Stick with us and you'll have the time of your life too!'" Coming so soon after Spice, the Girl Thing message sounded like copycat slogans of what had come out in 1996. Even Girl Thing's first video had manufactured anarchy that was more than a wink to the video to 'Wannabe.' Shame, really, because Girl Thing's debut single 'Last One Standing' was a sensational track. Although it was bubblegum rap just as the Spice Girls' debut was, 'Last One Standing' had a style, finesse and lyrical with that showed Anika, Jodi, Michelle, Linzi and Nikki had enough talent to not have to jump on any Spice Girls bandwagon.
