On their comeback, the Sugababes are getting their clubland flowers

Musically, influence has been there from the start. Their debut single ‘Overload’, released in 2000 when they were just 16, sounded nothing like the other ‘pop’ groups of the era — a mutant blend of electronic, indie and hip hop production, with a dynamic bassline and shuffling percussion one moment, a deranged guitar solo the next. After Siobhán left the group in 2001, dance music came into bigger focus for all three, despite the divide. Siobhán went on to DJ at fashionista club night Boombox and frequented East London nightspots like Dalston Superstore in her free time. Keisha and Mutya set to work on second album ‘Angels With Dirty Faces’, alongside new member Heidi Range, with electronic production a prominent feature. The lead single was a cover of ‘We Don’t Give A Damn About Our Friends’, an unauthorised mashup combining the R&B vocal from Adina Howard’s ‘Freak Like Me’ with the brash, synth-led production of Gary Numan’s ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric?’ that was making waves on pirate radio. Its producer Richard X (AKA Girls On Top) was intent on releasing it commercially, however Howard refused permission for the use of her vocals, so the Sugababes were chosen to front an official release. “It was kind of bubbling on the underground,” recalls Keisha of the bootleg. “Mutya and I grew up with Adina Howard. When we were told that was going to be our single and we just need to cut it, we didn’t have to write anything down, we just knew it, because we’ve been singing it most of our lives. It was all very exciting.” The single rocketed to Number 1, the group’s first chart-topper, and so too did follow-up single ‘Round Round’, a dance-pop heater which sampled German electronica group Dublex Inc.

This direction largely came from the production team behind the album, which included Xenomania, the eclectic and eccentric songwriting troupe founded by Brian Higgins, Bloodyshy & Avant, a relatively new-on-the-scene Swedish duo whose work on Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic’ the following year earned them a GRAMMY win for Best Dance Recording, and Lucas Secon, another future GRAMMY nominee in the Dance category. “I don’t think there was a conscious effort to make electronic pop,” recalls Keisha of her own experience of the recording process. “We would get played a bunch of beats from different genres, and we just naturally gravitated towards the ones that we felt like we could come up with the most catchiest melodies to.” Nevertheless, the Sugababes vocal talents and ability to combine in this framework was unusual. Their adaptability is audible on a track like ‘Round Round’, which switches up into a ballad in the middle eight, before accelerating back into dance mode to close. “At the time [of writing] that piece of music was going to be a ballad,” Keisha explains, but when the main production changed course, their verses did too. “Somehow it was all kind of blended together,” she adds, which is easier said than done. Group vocals aren’t common in dance music, with styles like ‘diva’ house, disco and most dance-pop favouring soloists. It’s something that Siobhán commented on in a 2022 interview with Dazed. “For a long time it’s been dance music with a single female voice. When you’re a harmony group like us, that’s really difficult,” she said. She elaborates when we speak. “When you try and hear what you’re writing through other people’s ears, you know that they are so used to hearing a single vocal on top of that dance track, so it’s quite hard to get that pared back, raw, kind of effortless sound with the three vocals,” she says. “But it’s possible and we really push for up-tempo tracks.”

The result of the Sugababes nailing harmonic vocals on these dancier beats is they represent a sound that’s distinctly of the pop and R&B world, while undeniably fitting in with club sonics too. The blurring of the lines between mainstream pop and underground dance in recent years has shown this was ahead of its time. Those worlds, however you define them, were more separate back then. Though the Sugababes were getting nods for their dance tendencies, with singles in dance charts and a BRIT Award for Best Dance Act in 2003 (still the only girl group to win the prize), this type of industry recognition was more aligned with the mainstream than what was going on in the clubs. You might have heard the odd 4/4 house edit of a track while out – like this Kujay Dada mix – but nothing compared to the swell of dance-pop hybrids taking over the nicher spots of club culture in recent years.