Mutya Buena, Keisha Buchanan and Siobhan Donaghy – the original lineup of the Sugababes – have formed a new act descriptively called Mutya Keisha Siobhan. This is a good thing, and according to Popjustice, their music is “officially not s***”. In fact, they claim, it’s actually “really good”.
This comes as absolutely no surprise to anyone who heard the early Sugababes, because they were also really good. Let’s remind ourselves:
.
.
The girls were just 13 years old when they were put together by All Saints manager Ron Tom, who likened their diverse look to the United Colors of Benetton campaign. They were still only 15 when debut album One Touch was released in 2000, most remembered for the gloriously infectious Overload, but which also produced the memorable Run For Cover.
.
.
Siobhan left soon afterwards, and was replaced by former Atomic Kitten member Heidi Range. The band’s next major hit was Freak Like Me, which was a mashup of Adina Howard’s 1995 song to the backing of Gary Numan’s Are Friends Electric? Adina’s original itself pilfered parts of Bootsy Collins’s I’d Rather Be With You.
.
.
The Sugababes continued releasing some amazingly good songs for a couple of years afterwards:
.
.
I only went to half a dozen gigs between 2001 and 2010, and one of those was a magical evening at Thetford Forest, watching The Sugababes under a canopy of leaves. Sadly, internal conflicts and further line-ups fractured the cohesive brand the band had established and with it disappeared the quirky, sophisticated and complex pop songs that endeared them to us in the first place. I couldn’t even tell you how the later hits sounded, they were so forgettable, but their early singles made them one of the classic pop acts whose reunion makes me cautiously excited.
.
Reinspired 