Sugababes at Dreamland

The crowd at Margate’s Dreamland, for the final show of Sugababes’ first ever arena tour, was a mix of hen-party ladies in pink cowboy hats, long-term Sugababes fans and curious rock dads with their cameras out. Where we were standing, ten people deep from the middle of the stage, we had a clear view of the trio, now in their forties, all three glowing with purpose. Keisha looked so young she ‘must have been kept in Tupperware’, my friend Rosie said.

Mel C had opened, running through some of her solo hits and some of the Spice Girls’, but her mic seemed to cut her off in her soaring moments, so I wondered whether she hadn’t lost the top end of her voice. When Sugababes came on, whose voices have only grown in richness and agility as they’ve got older, I realised it was the sound that was at fault. The vocals were mixed low, notably quieter than the bass, which was so heavy it made the show sound as if it were happening next door. Some of my friends, partway through the set, moved to the sidelines and reported that life was much better there, that the girls sounded wonderful. But we were hemmed in where we were and I didn’t want to lose my sight of them.

Girl bands have been seen, by the gatekeepers of the male rock canon, as disposable, faddish and unserious, their talent dismissed if they don’t write their own songs or play instruments, as if individual members, and groups themselves, were single-use disposables. Sugababes as an entity has, for some, played into that narrative, but it is one of the great pop triumphs of our time that its originators, healed from trauma and division, have reunited, selling out shows and releasing new music on their own terms.

Separately and as strangers, Mutya Buena, aged eleven, and Siobhán Donaghy, twelve, signed as solo artists to the same management company that was about to launch All Saints (a few months after the Spice Girls found instant, international success with ‘Wannabe’). The management suggested Mutya and Siobhán form a group, and soon Mutya brought along a schoolfriend, Keisha Buchanan, to rehearsals. The Sugar Babies, as they were then called, were put through several years of artist development. It was the late 1990s, and elements of British indie, US R&B and hip-hop, as well as trip-hop, ambient and early UK garage, found their way into the Sugababes’ catalogue, based around their R&B-inflected vocals and immaculate three-part harmonies that conveyed real emotion.

Keisha and Siobhán were sixteen, and Mutya fifteen, when ‘Overload’ was released in September 2000. The Spice Girls and All Saints were both pretty much done by then. A song about alienation was a bold choice for a debut pop single. Nobody at the turn of the millennium was asking for dark psychedelic mainstream pop, and because it was neither a copy nor copied, it has endured both on record and as a concert staple. The adolescent fragility of the vocals matched its lyrical content: ‘Strange fear I ain’t felt for years.’ It flips with Mutya’s stormy middle eight – ‘The tension is incredible, boy I’m in charge’ – turning the song into celebration of doomed youth.

The music video captured the trio in close-up against a white backdrop and was compared to a Benetton ad. They looked striking together: a pale-skinned redhead, a biracial Asian girl with piercings and a dark-skinned Black girl. The Spice Girls, All Saints and Eternal before them had taught their young fans to embrace multiculturalism as central to British identity. Sugababes, the sound of young millennial London with roots in dancehall, R&B and UK garage, nodded their heads to the beat, showing that they were about the music, not a superficial pop confection; they were in it for the long run, even if complications would soon follow.

Their first album, One Touch, was critically acclaimed but underperformed commercially leaving the band vulnerable to being dropped by their label. Before that could happen, Siobhán quit during a Japanese promotional tour. She cited in-group bullying, but whatever the truth in that, the adults around them were playing them off against each other. One of the team, an adult man, began a relationship with Siobhán when she was sixteen. Another suggested Keisha start a fight with Mutya. Keisha recently said that, just before the release of ‘Overload’, she was sexually assaulted. With hindsight, it’s unsurprising that this line-up, known to the fanbase as Sugababes 1.0, so young and treated so carelessly by the people supposed to be looking after them, didn’t thrive for long. But they left fans hoping the ‘Sacred Three’ would one day return.

Less than a year after Siobhán’s departure, Sugababes 2.0 hit number one for the first time with her replacement, Heidi Range, and a new record deal. The track, ‘Freak Like Me’, is one of their signature songs but also a classic of the early 2000s bootleg mashup craze. Its producer, Richard X, had had club success with ‘We Don’t Give a Damn about Our Friends’, which mated Adina Howard’s 1995 song ‘Freak Like Me’ with Gary Numan and the Tubeway Army’s ‘Are “Friends” Electric?’ from 1979. X wanted to release it as an official single; Howard declined clearance for her vocals but consented to a cover. Sugababes were the right fit, perfectly blending the sultry and the austere. The record reignited critical interest in Numan, but was a lightning in a bottle moment.

Sugababes’ next single, ‘Round Round’, another number one, was their true relaunch, setting the template for their sustained chart success. Mutya left the band after having a baby in 2005, at their commercial peak. She was replaced by Amelle Berrabah (3.0). In 2009 Keisha was replaced against her will (by Jade Ewen), and Sugababes 4.0, widely mocked in the press for having lost its identity, continued to record and release music with no original members for another year or so before they, in Heidi’s words, ‘fizzled out’.

While 4.0 quietly disbanded, Mutya, Keisha and Siobhán decided to meet, talk things over and see how it went. Unable to operate as Sugababes, they performed as MKS. In 2012-13 they recorded an album’s worth of material under a new record deal, but the results were leaked online and not officially released until 2022 as The Lost Tapes, by which time the band had won back the rights to the Sugababes name after almost a decade of legal wrangling.

Their live set is made up of songs from every era of the band, including new singles and old ballads given garage reworks, and it’s fascinating to hear Mutya or Siobhán’s vocals on songs they did not record. Siobhán’s pristine soprano brings alt-pop ethereality to Heidi’s parts, perfectly complemented by Mutya’s seasoned contralto and Keisha’s powerhouse mezzo.

So it was a shame not to be able to hear them properly at Dreamland at the same time as see them clearly. But I was glad to watch them perform a homecoming gig of sorts, three years on from their headlining (which I missed) at Margate Pride, fondly remembered by those who were there. There has always been something slightly unknowable and fugitive about Sugababes. One minute they seem to be inactive – Mutya performing solo gigs, Keisha living in Canada – the next they’re surprise-releasing singles. Sugababes are indivisible, and as long-term queer allies like Mel C, ever beloved.