Halliwell said that she missed the sisterhood, and the reality that she was on her own wasn’t easy to adjust to, but she pressed on with her solo career and wrote that she was pleased to see the Spice Girls thriving without her, and was happy for each of their solo successes when they had them.
The next big rumor to keep the cat-fight narrative alive sprung from Halliwell having a single due out the same day that Bunton, a.k.a. Baby Spice, was releasing her debut single as a solo artist, Nov. 7, 1999.
“It was like Blur v. Oasis all over again,” Halliwell wrote. But at the end of the day, she insisted, it was a complete coincidence, at least to the extent that she or Bunton had anything to do with it.
Beckham also ventured into solo territory in 2000, dropping her first single, “Out of Mind,” that August after, as she only recently revealed, she had realized that girl group life wasn’t for her.
“Remember years ago,” the fashion and cosmetics mogul wrote in a letter to her future self published in British Vogue , “watching your dear friend Elton John on stage in Las Vegas. He performed ‘Tiny Dancer,’ as if it were the first time, and you realized this was like oxygen for him. It was a life-changing moment—while singing and dancing was fun for you, it wasn’t your passion.”
“That day, you started your quest to uncover your own dreams,” she continued. “It was time to step away from being a Spice Girl. For the first time, you were venturing out on your own, and it was terrifying.”