Serious Saturday: Growing up with the Sugababes

Just as a quick disclaimer before getting to the meat of this post: I'm not really feeling outfit posts right now, I want to put more opinions and realness and effort into this blog. I'm just going to feel my way through this until I find sure footing by semi-impulsively posting things (like the birth control post from last week!). Not saying I'll stop doing outfit posts, I'll just be dialing them down a bit.

And today, I feel like writing about one of my favourite bands: the Sugababes.

Let's start with the spark that lit the fire for this post. Just yesterday, through a random course of events I stumbled upon the news that the original line up of the Sugababes have reunited and will be putting out a new album later this year or early next year. Now, you may or may not have known this about me, but I was a huge Sugababes fan in my early teens. Today the girl band is mostly known for their straight forward pop music that plays more to the clubs than to your heart, but back in the day, before all of the line up changes that eventually swapped out every single original member (and every inch of character, if you ask me), there was heart. And soul. Lots of heart and soul, that's how I would describe the early Sugababes.

I was about 2 years younger than their youngest member Mutya Buena, who was just 13 when most of their early stuff was written and recorded, and their vulnerability combined with their alternative soul/pop sound and those hauntingly beautiful voices harmonizing with effortless perfection wrapped me around their little fingers. Of course, I was also head over heels with their awesome look (because image is everything when you're a young teen): Mutya, Siobhan and Keisha all had really awesome hair, make up and outfits, and permanently looked like unaffected, surly badasses to boot. The girls got a lot of crap for it, but they were basically bitchy resting faces before that became a feminist meme.

“We were never media trained! They just threw us out there,” says Mutya, before Keisha disagrees. “They tried to, but as soon as we got on camera we forgot everything we’d been told. We’d go into interviews with faces like thunder.”

“We weren’t even moody,” insists Siobhan, “we just didn’t realise that you have to smile or else you look aloof when you’re on TV. A lot of it was nerves, I was crippled with them. Perhaps people thought we were encouraged to be [moody], but we weren’t old enough to be contrived.”

- Ponystep interview, August 2nd 2013

Whether they were typical moody teenagers or not, their image and sound set them miles apart from other, more typical girl bands like the Spice Girls or Atomic Kitten. I was a self-identified surly/troubled teen so yeah, that spoke to me. Apart from that, they had the kind of nascent sex appeal that pubescent girls have whether they are trying or not, without looking like cookie-cutter barbie dolls. The Sugababes were all about diversity and realness. They always had real girl bodies, and through their culturally diverse roots they represented the sort of sticking-together that I've always loved about girl power. These girls were different on the outside but had the same issues and feelings and inner turmoil. Just like me. And they had street cred! Basically, they were everything I was or wanted to be.

Mutya was always my fave because she is awesome, and because her body shape and style were very similar to mine. She was probably my main inspiration for desperately wanting tattoos and piercings at 14.

And the music. Mutya, Keisha and Siobhan co-wrote every song on their debut album One Touch, which made for achingly real, straight forward songs about girl-troubles set to their angelic voices. Note: the wording of girl-troubles is not meant to belittle their worries, but to express how incredibly familiar it all felt. They really were just like me, struggling to find the words to express their frustrations, worries and individuality.

(those outfits kill me because the remind me of being 13 or 14 and thinking stiletto boots with boot cut denim were the key to womanhood)

But then Siobhan left in the middle of a Japanese promo tour because she was depressed, and both Siobhan and the Sugababes (with new member Heidi Range) went on to have the success their talent merited: Siobhan with two amazing, Kate Bush esque solo albums and the Sugababes with a streak of electro-pop hits.

I still loved the band up until Mutya left, but it never was quite the same. They lost bits of authenticity and agency through the years, but especially their first two albums A.S. (after Siobhan) still had girl power truth bombs to drop.

"I walk past looking good
Doesn't give you the right
To put that hand where you think that you should

(...) I don't want any man to tell me what to do
Anyone to say to me my feelings are not true
For your information
I maintain my station"

- Just Don't Need This - Angels With Dirty Faces

My love kind of fizzled out with their Taller in More Ways album because that one and everything that came after was just a bit too mainstream to inspire true love from me.

But! Rejoice! After Mutya left to focus on a solo career (replaced by Amelle Berrabah) and Keisha got kicked out for unspecified reasons (replaced by Jade Ewen), the original girls - who actually kept in touch throughout the years - have gotten back together again! Making a new start under the moniker MutyaKeishaSiobhan aka MKS. And I am psyched. Out. Their voices sound as perfect as ever, and each of them has grown as a songwriter and a person since their debut more than ten years ago.

I feel like the history of the Sugababes is a testament to the strength and inner beauty of these women. Brimming with talent at 13, starting out filled with passion and ambition and slowly being beaten and molded to be less of them and more of what the pop biz wanted them to be, until they had enough and broke free to go back to their roots. A slightly more mature, alternative pop sound. Realness. Soul. And heart.

I am in love with the videoclip to their comeback single Flatline: there is joy and there is freedom. The scenes in the desert almost make me tear up because of how fucking proud I am of those girls for having made it through. Just like I have.

You can bet your ass I'll be first in line to buy tickets when they do a Belgian show. Were/are you a Sugababes fan? What are the bands that made your early teens bearable? Who is your favourite Sugababe (don't say Jade because: ew)?