Last week, Stereoboard reported that Keisha Buchanan, Mutya Buena and Siobhan Donaghy – known to many as the original Sugababes – had been working together on new material for the first time in 12 years. Die-hard Sugababes fans will of course remember their 2000 debut ‘One Touch’ – the first and only album to feature all three of the group’s founding members.
This latest news follows last year’s announcement that Buena had won “limited” rights to use of the band’s name, six years after her departure from the group. The 26-year-old singer had apparently taken this action after expressing her disapproval of how the Sugababes had chosen to continue using the name, despite having none of their original members since the exit of Keisha Buchanan in 2009. In light of this latest news, let’s look back at the 12-year history of the Sugababes so far and ask what will become of the two current incarnations of the band?
There’s a good reason that Sugababes have become known as the “Trigger’s broom” of the music industry in the last few years. For anyone a bit uncertain about this reference, please allow us to refer you to a memorable episode of ‘Only Fools and Horses’, in which lovable but dim road-sweeper Trigger announces to Del Boy and co that he has owned the same broom for 20 years. Going on to explain the reason for its durability, he reveals that the broom has had 17 new heads and 14 new handles, to which someone replies: “How the hell can it be the same bloody broom?” Does this sound familiar? In philosophy, this is known as Theseus’ Paradox. Look it up and you will discover that the Sugababes aren’t the first example of a pop group to carry on without their original members.
When Mutya Buena first announced plans to apply for rights to use of the name “Sugababes”, her former bandmate Heidi Range downplayed the news in an interview with the BBC, saying: “Our record company own the name ‘Sugababes’. I signed to Universal Records eight-and-a-half years ago with Mutya and Keisha as the Sugababes, so we've still got the name.” Following last year’s announcement that Buena had won “limited” rights to the use of the name, Range may well have been proved right. While the original line-up have yet to make an official announcement about their plans or about what name they will be using, it currently seems unlikely that they will be able to call themselves the Sugababes.
However, Range’s earlier comment that the “record company own the name” and the belief that it is merely a case of legal ownership, regardless of other factors, seems to highlight the somewhat synthetic nature of modern pop music in general. But let’s not pretend that the Sugababes were ever anything other than another manufactured creation of the music industry from the very beginning. Although Buena and Buchanan had started out as friends prior to the group’s launch, Sugababes originally came about as the idea of manager Ron Tom, who had previously achieved success with another girl band, All Saints. Unlike other pop groups around at the time, however, Sugababes had a certain appeal that others seemed to lack. In many ways, they were the girl band that it was OK to like.
Compared with the likes of the Spice Girls, for instance, Sugababes seemed less keen on using skimpy garments to help them sell records. Admittedly, this may have had much more to do with the fact that the three members were aged between 14 and 16 at the time of their debut album, but it certainly helped them to stand out amongst the many manufactured groups that had come before them. Also, unlike Sugababes’ most-recent offering, 2010’s ‘Sweet 7’, all three girls had co-written many of the lyrics to the songs on ‘One Touch’. 12 years on, you only need to look at both album covers to realise that it isn’t just the line-up that has changed. During those dozen years, Sugababes have slowly but surely made a complete U-turn on what they originally seemed to represent. Looking back, where exactly did things start to go right/wrong?
Just one year after the release of ‘One Touch’ and the trio’s first Top 10 single ‘Overload’, Siobhan Donaghy announced plans to part ways with the group to pursue other interests, although it was later revealed that relations within the band had been far from good. This marked the arrival of the Sugababes’ first replacement and the birth of their second line-up. The newest member was, of course, Heidi Range - one of the original members of fellow girl band Atomic Kitten alongside Kerry Katona and Liz McClarnon. The first offering from the new line-up was 2002’s ‘Angels with Dirty Faces’, which earned the Sugababes their first Top 10 album and remains the group’s best-selling UK release to date.
The next line-up change wouldn’t occur until 2005 when, after seven years and four albums with the group, Mutya Buena decided to quit, leaving Buchanan as the last-remaining original member. In a rather odd move, Sugababes revealed Buena’s replacement just one day after her previous announcement. This time around, their new addition was Amelle Berrabah, a self-confessed fan of the group who, after a series of widely-publicised incidents including charges for assault and drink-driving, has earned Sugababes their most controversies to date. With just one founding member left, this was probably the first occasion where fans began to question whether the group would continue for much longer and whether they should still be calling themselves Sugababes at all.
The final straw came in 2009, when Keisha Buchanan announced that she would also be leaving the group amid suggestions that she had been sacked. The Sugababes were officially no more… or were they? The following year, the all-new line-up released ‘Sweet 7’ with the group’s latest addition Jade Ewen and, more importantly, without any of their original members.
So, with the original band members now working together again, the question is what will become of the Sugababes? Although there had previously been talk of the current line-up working on an eighth album, an interesting twist came last week following Range’s addition to the new series of ‘Dancing on Ice’. In an interview with ITN, in which the singer spoke about her involvement with the celebrity talent show, she also revealed that Sugababes were not in fact working on a new album, saying: “We’re not planning anything at the moment, but we’ve not broken up. We’re just doing our own thing for a while.”
The saga continues… Let us know what you think
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However, Range’s earlier comment that the “record company own the name” and the belief that it is merely a case of legal ownership, regardless of other factors, seems to highlight the somewhat synthetic nature of modern pop music in general. But let’s not pretend that the Sugababes were ever anything other than another manufactured creation of the music industry from the very beginning. Although Buena and Buchanan had started out as friends prior to the group’s launch, Sugababes originally came about as the idea of manager Ron Tom, who had previously achieved success with another girl band, All Saints. Unlike other pop groups around at the time, however, Sugababes had a certain appeal that others seemed to lack. In many ways, they were the girl band that it was OK to like. 
