Sugababes Enter Phase Four
26 September 2009
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With 'Catfights and Spotlights', rarely has an album title summed up a band so well. While many bands hit the headlines for hard partying or their dramatic love lives, for Sugababes interest has always been about the friendships - or lack of - within the group.
With a career spanning 11 years, spawning seven chart-topping albums and a string of sell-out tours, Sugababes have enjoyed more successes than any other British girl band in recent years - but have done so with a string of line-up changes amid rumours of constant in-fighting and backstabbing.
Earlier this month, few were surprised when whispers started to circulate that Amelle Berrabah - who replaced founder member Mutya Buena in 2005 - had gone missing and was planning to quit the band, feeling "depressed" and sick of being "bullied" by Keisha Buchanan. However, the real shock came when Keisha revealed she had left - insisting it was "not her choice" to depart the band she helped found while still a school girl.
With the addition of UK Eurovision hopeful Jade Ewen, the group now find themselves in the unusual position of having no one in the band who has been there since the beginning and now face a struggle to carry on without turning into a joke or little more than a brand.
Already the new-look Sugababes are striving to forge a new identity for themselves, with stills from the video for their new single, 'About A Girl', showing the trio scantily-clad and posing suggestively - a far cry from their earlier, girls-next-door image which even saw them blast pop rivals Girls Aloud for dressing sexily to sell records.
"Our music is strong enough, we don't need to show too much. It doesn't go with our personalities. Girls Aloud have quite a clubby, sexy image. I'm not being b***hy, they're absolutely beautiful - it works for them. But it won't work with us," insisted Amelle just 18 months ago.
Mutya has gone as far as suggesting Sugababes are now "defunct" and shouldn't be using the group's name as they press ahead with their new look, which also includes recording over Keisha's vocals for their forthcoming album 'Sweet 7'.
"It kind of doesn't make sense that there is a Sugababes anymore. I don't know if it's just me, but with Keisha being the only original member that was left now out of the band, they can't be the Sugababes really," Mutya said. "I don't know how they replace her or carry on without her. I just think it's really sad. To me it just means the Sugababes have ended, because there are no original members remaining."
Early signs change was afoot with the group came from their last single 'Get Sexy'. Gone were their clever lyrics and pure pop sound, replaced by R'n'B electronica. Admittedly commercially successful - more so than the previous singles from 'Catfights and Spotlights' - many felt the track had seen Sugababes turn their back on what they represented. Pop critic Peter Robinson argued: "Sugababes made pop whose values and attitudes were strong enough to inadvertently create a brand. Theirs was smart, British, soulful pop, occasionally arty but always melodic, lush and a cut above most of the rest.
"However, their last single, 'Get Sexy', pushed the band in a different direction: a soul-free, sex-led, moronically-lyriced attempt to chase an American electronic R'n'B sound which sounded brilliant, but jettisoned any semblance of what made many fall in love with the band. Today the Sugababes don't exist as a band, and after 'Get Sexy' they don't really exist as a sound either."
the real shock came when Keisha revealed she had left - insisting it was not her choice
Although they may have a new sound and a whole new line-up, the group has a long way to go before they can shake off their image as backstabbers and bullies which has existed almost as long as the trio.
Formed in 1998 by 14-year-old friends Keisha and Mutya who were joined by Siobhan Donaghy, they scored a UK top ten hit with their debut single 'Overload'. Debut album 'One Touch' gave them modest success but saw their fledgling career hit by crisis when Siobhan walked out midway through a promotional tour of Japan. Feeling "forced out" by Keisha and Mutya - who had been friends since the age of eight, six years before meeting Siobhan at a party - the redhead opted to leave of her own accord, and despite the official reason for her departure being given as wanting to pursue a fashion career, Siobhan later revealed she felt bullied by Keisha, and admitted they never got along.
"It's difficult to leave a band and then make a solo career. I left for a very good reason and I've never for a second wanted to go back there," she admitted later, adding that she still speaks to Mutya.
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