THIS ONE IS FOR SWC

It genuinely was a coincidence yesterday that I posted a song called ‘Kirsty’ on the same day as SWC over at No Badger Required offered up my guest post on the late and great Kirsty MacColl.

He dropped me a note when he spotted what had happened.

“Your girl band piece is up tomorrow so I demand a piece on Sugababes on tnvv tomorrow’

Here’s the thing.

I did a piece on the old blog on Sugababes.  It’s gone forever as it’s one of those that hasn’t ever been captured by the Wayback Machine, otherwise I would have reproduced it today.

It was part of an occasional and short-lived series about songs you might be surprised to find in the vinyl/CD collection.  It was all about the debut single.

mp3: Sugababes – Overload

I think this is a magnificently crafted piece of pop music.  It was released in September 2000 and reached the Top 10 in the UK.  It introduced us to the original three members of the group – Siobhan Donaghy, Mutya Buena and Keisha Buchanan.

I was intending to just wax lyrically about the song.  It’s one that still sounds fantastic all these years later, but having come across an article that appeared in The Observer newspaper in June 2003, I was provoked into doing something a bit more substantial.

Siobhan Donaghy sits in a restaurant in Primrose Hill, north London, sipping mineral water. Talking comes easily; she is, after all, one of three sisters, her family are Irish; there’s not a lot of peace and quiet. She is skinny, not unnaturally so, but her slenderness accentuates a vulnerability. Although it’s a busy Friday lunchtime, no one even glances at this pretty girl in loose, pale blue dungarees, strappy black T-shirt, boxfresh white Converse.

Things move fast in the world of pop. Back in 2000 Siobhan had her first top 10 single. She was 16, as was Keisha Buchanan; the third Sugababe, Mutya Buena, was 15. A smoothly produced, seductive R&B track, ‘Overload’ stayed in the top 30 for six weeks, delivered a silver disc and was nominated for Best British Single at the Brits: not bad for a debut single. At the start of 2001 Sugababes released their debut album, the mature, classy One Touch . It was critically acclaimed and went gold.

Sugababes had been brought together by Ron Tom, who worked with the fantastically successful All Saints (Ron Tom was managing Siobhan for two years before he found Mutya; Mutya had known Keisha since they were eight). The girls signed to London, the same record label as All Saints; they lured Cameron McVey, husband of Neneh Cherry, producer of Massive Attack and All Saints, into the studio. With their slick R&B pop and honey vocals, Sugababes were worthy successors to All Saints.

Anyone coming to the article with no knowledge of the group would think they had been spat out by the industry, given that it had opened with Siobhan not being recognised.  However, the piece was reflecting on the fact that, at the age of 19, she was about to embark on a solo comeback, having quit the group back in 2000 at the age of 17.  In her own words:-

‘I was 12 when I met the manager, 14 when I met the girls, 16 on the first release, 17 when I left. At which point I was happy never to work again. I had got to the point where I’d look in the mirror and not know who I was. I felt like I didn’t have a personality. I’d lost my identity… I felt like a zombie. A dead person.’

The author of the piece later writes:-

At 17, she had learned the rules of the music business the hard way. Like any other big business, it is motivated by money. Creativity is a means to an end. It has no time to indulge depressed young girls.

It’s a sobering thought that many of us who love music to the extent of buying records, attending gigs and hoovering up merchandise are, to a large part, simply propping up large businesses. OK, it has changed a bit in recent years as in many cases the support goes direct to the singers and bands (especially those who are starting out or are increasingly involved in self-releasing their material), but all too often, the money we spend on music, and indeed on all forms of the creative and performing arts, ends up in the pockets of those with no real talent other than the ability to make a quick buck….with no better example being those involved in the selling and distribution of tickets.  But that’s for a rant for some other time…..

Sugababes weren’t as manufactured as was perhaps portrayed when they burst onto the scene.  The trio contributed a great deal beyond their vocal talents to the debut album, to the extent of receiving writing credits on nine of its twelve tracks. A long career surely beckoned….which of course proved to be the case.

There have been six #1 hits in the UK, beginning with Freak Like Me in 2002, with the last of them being About You Now in 2008, by which time just Keisha Buchanan was left from the original trio.

A year later, she quit, but to nobody’s surprise the management and record label brought in a replacement and work got underway on new material, all of which was critically panned on release, but more crucially didn’t sell well.

To nobody’s surprise, the record industry pulled the plug on Sugababes.

In 2012, it was revealed that the group had been re-formed by the original trio but  under the name Mutya Keisha Siobhan.  They had no legal rights to the name Sugababes.

They finally won a long battle to get their name back in 2019, since when they have recorded and toured to what remains a fairly loyal fanbase.

I’ve nothing else in the collection other than the debut single on CD. It’s far from the most valuable piece of plastic lining the shelves of Villain Towers as it can be bought for as little as 23p on Discogs.  But what price can you really put on such a piece of great pop music?

Here’s the two other tracks on the CD:-

mp3: Sugababes – Lush Life
mp3: Sugababes – Overload (instrumental)

Oh, and click here if you want to read what I’ve got to say today about some more contemporary and ‘punky’ girl groups over at No Badger Required.

JC