Spices losing their heat?

Uh-oh. Suddenly things don't look so rosy in Spiceworld.

Barely a week has gone by since the Spice Girls issued their new record, Spiceworld, but already there's speculation all over the place that the death knell is sounding for Britain's biggest musical export since the Beatles.

The last week has seen the five Spices fire the manager who masterminded their global success and get booed off the stage by a gang of industry types in Barcelona. In Rome yesterday they capped it by fending off mounting rumors that the group is about to break up.

"We're not splitting up. We're not fighting. We're stronger than ever," they told reporters during a stop on their European promotional tour.

The night before, hundreds of people attending the Onda entertainment awards ceremony in Barcelona jeered the fivesome after they refused to let photographers shoot an apparently lip-synced performance.

That little debacle came hot on the heels of reports Spiceworld -- which debuts at No. 8 on Billboard's U.S. chart next week -- is selling below expectations (the group's debut, Spice, sold 19 million copies worldwide), and only days after the girls sent manager Simon Fuller packing.

So, are the Spice Girls' 15 minutes up?

"I don't think so," says Larry LeBlanc, Canadian editor of Billboard. "I think 15 minutes is longer than you think. It's never up before Christmas. I'm willing to bet this new album will still do 15 million. The momentum is still there. As much as music critics and the industry don't like them, they're not the people buying it."

A sophomore album following up a huge success "will always do well," says LeBlanc, although it rarely matches the performance of its predecessor. Plus, he adds, the Spice Girls have tapped into a young music-buying market that was all but ignored for most of the past decade while record labels hunted for the next Nirvana.

The real test of Girl Power's staying power will come when a third disc appears. "When the Spice Girls become un-cool for that age group," says LeBlanc, "that's when they'll stop selling."

As for the booing, Carleton music professor Alan Stanbridge wonders if that wasn't just sour grapes on the part of a music industry upset because a prefab commercial act is doing so well.

"The one thing you have to do is separate the audience at an awards show from the audience you'd get at a Spice Girls show," he says, noting that many in the music biz could be "envious, downright jealous, disgusted by their success, or feel they're possessed with a greater pop-music authenticity" than the Pepsi spokesgirls.