notes about nothing

Sugababes 1.0 // Run For Cover (Live on BBC Radio 1)

I love pop music, really love it, really really love British pop music and our nation’s ability to have its own superstars.

The big news this morning on my Twitter feed was the Popjustice story that Sugababes are reforming. “Eh?” you might think, “they are still a band. That Scouser one is going in Dancing On Ice.” Alas, you need informing on the history of the only contemporary girl group from these parts anywhere near comparable in coolness to All Saints.

I can’t get the “Read More” to work.

Mutya, Keisha and Siobhan were Sugababes 1.0. They sort of formed in the playground at 11, got signed at 13, co-wrote an insanely good pop album, became mildly successful at about 16, released this as their 3rd(?) single, were LITERALLY NEVER PICTURED SMILING, went away for a bit, one of them left (Siobhan), she did a solo career that had some actual good singles but then she fell off the face of the planet, then the Scouser one (Heidi) joined the other two to become Sugababes 2.0, they started to smile, they became extremely successful and very very good with songs like this and this, they did two albums like this, one of them left (Mutya), she went on to still be semi-famous and won all written copyright to the name of Sugababes, then they were pretty shit as some randomer joined leaving Keisha the only remaining original member. Then they were so shit that she left and someone else replaced her and now Sugababes still exist, are still in the charts and the rags but as a version 4.0 (?) and frankly quite an utter shit heap.

Still with me? Cool.

Back in my teen days, my then-BFF Lucy Cope won a radio contest to meet Sugababes 2.0 before their show in York. The team from Galaxy 105 got lost on the way to her house and we were too late to meet them but watched the show from the photog’s pit. I was hooked. Having previously preferred 1.0, I switched immediately to 2.0 as the songs were better, the harmonies are still the tightest I’ve ever heard live (better than Fleet Foxes) and I wondered if they would have progressed the same if Siobhan had stayed. The promise from her own material suggested they could have been even better by this stage but that’s neither here nor there. They weren’t getting on and easily could have fizzled a la All Saints. Nothing really lasts forever.

This era of pop, in terms of groups at least, can only really be called the Age of Reformation. Since Take That had enormous success reforming, we’ve seen US counterparts do the same (BSB & NKotB anyone?), Boyzone did it and All Saints had a very disappointing crack as well. S Club 7 are still floating around somewhere, even if they are technically S Club 4 or 5 now, and Steps are back together performing their old hits. (Don’t get this one - who wants to see an old version of them doing the same stuff?) But there’s something exciting about the fact that the original three are recording again; something that makes it seem completely different to the other comebacks and reformed groups. OK, be prepared for an absolute cliché: there’s something very organic about the three of them being in the studio again with the same producers as the first time around (and the second time around). It’s like they’re back to how it’s supposed to be, what Sugababes are really about, like the freshness and honesty in their silky smooth pop will once again become roughed up a bit by the seemingly inherent integrity in serious artists from North London. No-one was really like them, still aren’t, and X Factor’s attempt at producing something similar in Little Mix may work but let’s not forget that during the show, they weren’t really compared to Sugababes (I think Louis may have said it) despite their similar sound. We’re so desperate to produce an “urban” (ugh), “real” (eeeuuurgh) girl group that we’ve forgotten Sugababes ever were one. Way to go, music industry.

Sheesh, I’m good at babbling, aren’t I? The point is, 1.0 will only ever be the real Sugababes. It’s different to saying that The Beatles with Pete Best was the real Beatles or that groups can never change members (the last Destiny’s Child is the real Destiny’s Child). Sugababes were technically manufactured but their whole inception was based around the three girls, not any three girls, three - ahem - artists. So my misguided teenage loyalty shift has now been rectified and I can’t wait to hear what they’re putting out and how much they are going to completely crush the current Sugababes. It’s like they will be new artists again, emerging from the murky depths of girl pop into a new light like Little Boots did in 2009 (and her new material is wicked), like Alexis Krauss and Lana Del Rey and Bethany Cosentino and whoever you like. They’re all still very pop but somehow more credible, something that 1.0 never got enough credit for. They never got credit for being credible. 

They should definitely be called One Touch now.