Everyone likes Sugababes. Even those who are convinced that all tweenybopper
bands were grown in test tubes in Dr Evil’s pop dungeon have time for the
British trio. Twentysomethings shuffle about to their icy urban sound,
tensomethings aspire to their streety style, style magazines gush that
their ethnic mix – black, Filipino/Spanish and white – symbolises modern
young Britain. And it’s near impossible to find anyone who didn’t love
Freak Like Me, the number-one song that won an unlikely trinity of music
awards from Smash Hits magazine, Q magazine and the Brits.
But if chart life doesn’t get better than this, what are the niggly
rumours about personality clashes within the group that have landed
original members Keisha Buchanan and Mutya Buena with reputations as
bullies (and ”evil-looking freaks”, as the London-based music newspaper
NME called them)? The story is this: Siobhan Donaghy, the first white Babe,
left in 2001, claiming she was frozen out by Keisha and Mutya, old
schoolmates with whom she had formed the band in 1998. At the same time,
the remaining two were dropped by their record company, while – sweet
revenge, presumably – Donaghy was kept on as a solo act.
She was replaced by current white Babe Heidi Range, who escaped an early
version of Atomic Kitten and moved from Liverpool to London to try her
luck. As soon as the Babes signed with a new label and began turning out
chart-topping singles such as Freak and Round Round, stories trickled out
about Heidi being picked on by Mutya. The Popbitch website even claimed
that a depressed Heidi was about to go the same way as Donaghy.
True? False? Who knows? All I can say is that, during an hour in
Sugababe company last week, I didn’t observe any scowls or tension. If
anything, I’d say Keisha and Mutya (”It’s Mu-tee-ah,” Keisha politely
corrects me) were charming. Mutya, a bite-sized club urchin whose long
nails were painted in alternating red and black, even showed signs of
enjoying herself – worth mentioning, as she is usually depicted as remote
if not openly bored.
It’s Keisha’s 19th birthday, and she’s laying into steak and chips in a
pub near Island Records’s west London office to distract herself from the
horrific decline into old age. ”It’s all downhill from here,” she
predicts grimly. ”But I’m not so worried about it since I heard Britney
say she was looking forward to getting old.” That’s Britney as in Spears,
aged 21. Mutya, 18, nudges her friend’s shoulder compassionately.
They’re a picture of teenage friendship, and it’s this apparently benign
gang mentality that distinguishes them from the rest of their genre. Pop
groups created on television, such as Girls Aloud, claim to feel like old
friends after two months, but Keisha and Mutya share a proper bond that
goes back to schooldays in Kingsbury, north London. They even resemble each
other, with little heart-shaped faces and a taste for maximum jewellery and
tummy-baring vests. As they sing along, heads nodding, to the song burbling
over the pub sound system – Craig David’s What’s Your Flava? – it’s easy to
see what London Records saw when they signed them five years ago: urban
street girls who write their own songs and keep it, in an uncliched sense,
real.
”When we first started, I just thought you wrote your own stuff. We
assumed everyone did,” says Keisha. ”And it became a big deal: ‘Oh, they
write their own stuff.”’ They were 15 when their first single, Overload,
came out late in 2000, and established them as a girl band with a
difference. It was cool, detached; it wasn’t about love. (Few of their
lyrics are typical teen fodder; the celebrated Freak Like Me still startles
in its dispassionate analysis of sexual attraction.) All Saints, the group
then occupying the real-pop slot, conveniently split up soon afterward, and
the girls from the estates of Kingsbury (in fact, only Mutya lived on one),
found themselves, in their mid-teens, the focus of much expectation.
But their next three singles didn’t sell as well, and although their
debut album, One Touch, was reasonably successful, it didn’t recoup
London’s pounds sterling 2 million outlay. Then, during a Japanese tour in
2001, Donaghy left the room in the middle of an interview to go to the
toilet. By the time the others went to find her, she was on her way to the
airport and a flight to London, leaving her unsuspecting bandmates reeling
with shock and anger. She complained that she’d felt cold-shouldered by
Keisha and Mutya: ”We never had a laugh or went out as a group.” She has
been erased from Sugababes history in Island’s current press release, which
doesn’t mention her.
”It was three years ago,” says Mutya, thermostat dropping to lukewarm.
Though it was a definitive moment in their short career, they won’t talk
about it. All right, but are they secretly pleased that Donaghy’s most
recent single stiffed at number 52? ”Not at all. We think Siobhan has
brilliant material, and it’s the record company, not her, that made it
chart really low. She’s very talented, but I don’t think she’s got the
right people around her.”
Sugababes assuredly do. The currently groovy Richard X produced Freak Like
Me, and their new album, III – follow-up to the much-liked Angels with
Dirty Faces – features material co-written with Pink songwriter Linda Perry
and a new song by the doyenne of grandiose balladry, Diane Warren. They
have fans among the diverse likes of Macy Gray, J-Lo and rapper Redman, and
were the only chart-pop band on this year’s Glastonbury music festival (in
Somerset, England) bill.
”It’s nice to be accepted by all sorts of markets, but we don’t do it
deliberately. The audience is really diverse,” says Heidi, who plays Quiet
Babe to Keisha’s Bubbly and Mutya’s Foxy. ”We’re the coolest girl group?”
Keisha does a creditable job of affecting surprise. It consists of raising
sleekly arched eyebrows and amping up her natural warmth. ”I never thought
we’d end up coolest. I guess we’re different to anything else that’s out
there,” she modestly admits. ”It didn’t sink in when we won the Q award
or the Brits or even got to number one – me and Mutya were, like [yawns],
‘Oh, yeah.’ I still don’t really realise how lucky we are right now.”
How lucky is that? Despite the money, travel and steak and chips, Sugababes
keep the brutal schedule of all pop bands. While they’re touring or
promoting a record, they work nearly every waking hour. On the way to the
pub, Keisha had confided that she rarely checks their daily diary because
”I don’t want to know everything I have to do. I looked today, though, and
I know we’re doing Heat after you.” None the less, she looks well on it,
as does Mutya, as they lustily attack their steaks. They’re serious eaters,
claiming they used to be ”much thinner than this”, though it’s difficult
to see how.
Heidi, though, I’m a bit worried about. Though as accomplished an R&B
singer as the others, she’s different from her sassy, slangy bandmates.
It’s not just the minimal jewellery, Marc Jacobs military jacket and
Liverpool accent; she still emanates a new-girl aura. ”Heidi’s not urban,
but she’s cool,” Keisha says protectively. But she seems to lack the
protective veneer of the other two, and their assertiveness. When she
speaks the others often talk over her. I dare say they don’t realise
they’re doing it, but each time Heidi trails off, letting them finish her
sentence.
Moreover, I inadvertently upset her so much that she leaves the
interview twice. Both times it’s over something apparently insignificant
that – I’m later told by someone at Island – Heidi interprets as a dig at
her and her background. The first was a jokey question about the Liverpool
male’s propensity for moustaches, the second a comment to the effect that
her grilled chicken and salad looked healthy. (”She thought you were
picking on her weight,” said the Island man. ”She’s sensitive about
what’s written about her.” For the record, Heidi probably weighs about
eight stone, and is tall and blonde with it.)
The second time she leaves, a furrow-browed Keisha follows, the two
eventually returning to the table, where we push along for another 20
minutes. While they’re gone, Mutya and I look at each other awkwardly. Is
Heidi all right? ”Yes,” she says positively. So, er, any truth to the
stories about Heidi feeling shut out, given that Mutya herself recently
admitted to being ”a little bitch” when Heidi joined? ”No,” says Heidi,
who is back. ”When I joined, and it’s two-and-a-half years now, it was
harder for the girls than me, cos I was just joining a group.”
”We’re very, very close now. Everyone has their own opinion [of us], but
we’re in our little circle together,” Mutya adds. Heidi nods: ”We spend
24/7 together, and we couldn’t do that if we didn’t get on. The main thing
is to be happy in life.”
One thing that especially pleases them is the fact that a band of different
ethnic and cultural backgrounds can reach the top in R&B. ”London is so
multi-cultural, but before you’d only see certain races doing certain
music,” says Keisha. ”It’s great to think we’re opening doors,” says
Mutya, ”but when we were in LA working on the album, they found it weird
to see [different] races together.” Heidi muses that perhaps it’s still
considered weird in the UK: ”When they auditioned for me, no black or
mixed girls turned up.”
Has success been worth it? Keisha says, professionally cheerful: ”You make
sacrifices. We left school at 14 and had private tuition, so we’ve lost our
teenage years, Heidi’s had to move down from Liverpool.” There has been
negative press – Mutya reserves particular rancour for the London-based
Mirror newspaper’s gossip columnists ‘3am Girls’, who ”should’ve been been
number two” in a recent poll of 100 Worst Britons. And then there are the
male gold diggers. ”If a guy asked me about my money, I’d say, ‘You’re
dating me, not my money.’ If you’re not giving them money or food or a
place to stay, then they’re not getting shit off you, and it’s just you
[they like],” Mutya says evenly. ”But guys are often intimidated by the
fact we’re successful. I don’t like British guys, anyway. Everyone knows
everyone else. The ones I meet have too much baggage, like kids. If you
meet a guy you like, you want your child to be his first child.”
Spoken like a cool, slightly cynical 21st century teenage girl – like, in
fact, a Sugababe. — COPYRIGHT: GUARDIAN NEWSPAPERS LIMITED 2003