Sugarbabes

Woebot

Well-known member
Are these people taking the mick or what?

First they lose one of the three members, the red-head was quite distinctive-looking and sounding, and replace her with that one who looks like a sports trainer. And now they've substituted the interesting and gourgeous Asian girl for a much blander girl.

Sorry to reduce this to a case of their appearance, but the music aint really worth much consideration (though for the record Ian Penman was a fan of their first record), but they *did* have an unusual looks and that was sort of radical in itself. They were beautiful in a quirky way. Only that Mutya is left, and now she has a solo career in the offing, perhaps she's next. It'd be sort of callous if they pulled the racial-replacement hand again.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
Only that Mutya is left, and now she has a solo career in the offing, perhaps she's next.

Eh? Mutya left last year. Her solo album came out on Monday. Keisha is the only remaining original.
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
Eh? Mutya left last year. Her solo album came out on Monday. Keisha is the only remaining original.

Sort out yer Sugababes Woebot!

'Round, round' was written by 15 people. True. I liked them before Mutya left, and her forthcoming single with George Michael is a good song, and her tattoo is pukka. But yeah, they did get a bit Menudo on our arses there.
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
i loved the asian girl. siobhan was pretty good looking too. shockingly bad solo records from her but she has personality, at least she did in her popworld interview. they should end it now though, the revolving door policy has gone a bit out of control. and mutyas solo album is crap.
 

hint

party record with a siren
The original (red-headed) member tried to return as the new Kate Bush recently, but it doesn't seem to have worked out:

 

gumdrops

Well-known member
they used to be quite inventive but their music has just become blanded out might-as-well-be-made-by-someone-from-pop-idol fare in the last few years.
 

benjybars

village elder.
mutya is tick.

the new one is rubbish and the other two blatantly don't like her which is quite funny
 

Diggedy Derek

Stray Dog
Come now chaps, you're being a little harsh on the Sugababes here. "Round Round" and "Hole In The Head" are both superlatively good tunes, and anyone who doesn't like them is insane.

I didn't used to like Keisha, but these days, I think she looks pretty amazing.
 
that's a bit unfair

The original (red-headed) member tried to return as the new Kate Bush recently, but it doesn't seem to have worked out:


Siobhan is actually fantastic...'Revolution In Me' was a decent first album while this upcoming one is probably gonna be sick...now if only she could get on a decent label :slanted:

you can't deny that single

on another note...she would get it in a sec ;)

Sugababes had a decent first album...Overload, New Year, Run For Cover - all undeniable

for me it's all been really down hill since Siobhan left but they still get a few good odd singles out

I can't stand Mutya - knew too many girls like her :mad:

oh and its Sugababes Woebot...Suga ;)
 
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Tim F

Well-known member
I think the Sugababes are - or were - pretty amazing. The two post Mutya songs were bad but the heights they've hit previously have been pretty fucking high.

Here is something I recently wrote about the gorgeous "Ace Reject", which wasn't even a single:

Sugababes - "Ace Reject"

This song has become immensely important to me over the last year or so, for reasons i can't necessarily pin down.

One of the things that makes (made?) the Sugababes well-equipped to do big, epic, lifechanging pop ballads is the really clear differentiation of their voices, which comes through very strongly in this tune. In fact apart from the chorus, the three girls sing entirely different melodic lines - Mutya does this kind of depressive, resigned verse/bridge, and as it so often does her refusal to adorn her vocals comes across as a kind of wisdom, she sounds so much older than she is, like this is the final chapter in not just a love song but some epic in which two lovers are kept apart not by fate but by their own choices, their own betrayals. Then Keisha swoops in with an entirely different verse/bridge that is much higher and almost cathartically frustrated, and yet very pure - Keisha always sounds cosmically right in such songs, like she's the voice of the relationship as well as a voice in the relationship.

Heidi gets a bit shortchanged on the middle-eight, partly because it's such a typical place for her, and partly because she sorta sounds distant and multitracked, subsumed within the song's expression of fragility rather than offering her own stamp on it. But it's a great middle-eight, so camp in its melodrama, which really of the three only Heidi can pull off - that quiver she puts into it is perfect. Heidi's vocals in these songs always give me a "slowly rotting away in a decadent but lifeless celebrity relationship" kinda vibe, I imagine her in a white dress in a white room eating a plate of spaghetti with pesto, all alone (also she gets the great first verse in the next song "2 Hearts").

Underneath it all the slightly ska groove pretty much does not change at all, just accumulating airy synth and guitar layers like a stick accumulating fairy floss. The chorus is as pop as anything the group ever did, and it works really well, its overt repetition matching perfectly the repetition in the lyrics ("We break up to make it up/back and forth we never stop/every time a change of heart/can't keep up"). The formula of the chorus might not work if the verses (particularly the first) were more straightforwardly complicit with it, but instead the song works on a split level in a reverse of what you would expect: the verses are outside the drama of the relationship looking in, effectively an expression of the intervention, whereas the chorus is the relationship itself, unchecked and uncheckable, all the reflection of the verses lost.

The song is a depiction of a relationship at the breaking point, but when I'm not focusing on it, but simply listening, the story of this song is not about an actually existing relationship but a relationship-to-come, a complicated love letter to someone the singers haven't met. It makes me sad because I wonder, somewhat incoherently, if this is the best they can hope for.
 

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
Siobhan is actually fantastic...'Revolution In Me' was a decent first album while this upcoming one is probably gonna be sick...now if only she could get on a decent label :slanted:

you can't deny that single

on another note...she would get it in a sec ;)

Sugababes had a decent first album...Overload, New Year, Run For Cover - all undeniable

for me it's all been really down hill since Siobhan left but they still get a few good odd singles out

I can't stand Mutya - knew too many girls like her :mad:

oh and its Sugababes Woebot...Suga ;)

lol

I wouldn't of expected such enthusiasm for the Sugababes from you.

Jokes.
 
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Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
I think the Sugababes are - or were - pretty amazing. The two post Mutya songs were bad but the heights they've hit previously have been pretty fucking high.

Here is something I recently wrote about the gorgeous "Ace Reject", which wasn't even a single:

Sugababes - "Ace Reject"

This song has become immensely important to me over the last year or so, for reasons i can't necessarily pin down.

One of the things that makes (made?) the Sugababes well-equipped to do big, epic, lifechanging pop ballads is the really clear differentiation of their voices, which comes through very strongly in this tune. In fact apart from the chorus, the three girls sing entirely different melodic lines - Mutya does this kind of depressive, resigned verse/bridge, and as it so often does her refusal to adorn her vocals comes across as a kind of wisdom, she sounds so much older than she is, like this is the final chapter in not just a love song but some epic in which two lovers are kept apart not by fate but by their own choices, their own betrayals. Then Keisha swoops in with an entirely different verse/bridge that is much higher and almost cathartically frustrated, and yet very pure - Keisha always sounds cosmically right in such songs, like she's the voice of the relationship as well as a voice in the relationship.

Heidi gets a bit shortchanged on the middle-eight, partly because it's such a typical place for her, and partly because she sorta sounds distant and multitracked, subsumed within the song's expression of fragility rather than offering her own stamp on it. But it's a great middle-eight, so camp in its melodrama, which really of the three only Heidi can pull off - that quiver she puts into it is perfect. Heidi's vocals in these songs always give me a "slowly rotting away in a decadent but lifeless celebrity relationship" kinda vibe, I imagine her in a white dress in a white room eating a plate of spaghetti with pesto, all alone (also she gets the great first verse in the next song "2 Hearts").

Underneath it all the slightly ska groove pretty much does not change at all, just accumulating airy synth and guitar layers like a stick accumulating fairy floss. The chorus is as pop as anything the group ever did, and it works really well, its overt repetition matching perfectly the repetition in the lyrics ("We break up to make it up/back and forth we never stop/every time a change of heart/can't keep up"). The formula of the chorus might not work if the verses (particularly the first) were more straightforwardly complicit with it, but instead the song works on a split level in a reverse of what you would expect: the verses are outside the drama of the relationship looking in, effectively an expression of the intervention, whereas the chorus is the relationship itself, unchecked and uncheckable, all the reflection of the verses lost.

The song is a depiction of a relationship at the breaking point, but when I'm not focusing on it, but simply listening, the story of this song is not about an actually existing relationship but a relationship-to-come, a complicated love letter to someone the singers haven't met. It makes me sad because I wonder, somewhat incoherently, if this is the best they can hope for.

Has anyone read American Psycho? Go read the part where he talks about why he likes Whitney Houston and Huey Lewis and the News.
 

Tim F

Well-known member
Bateman had pretty interesting taste in music actually. He would have made a good music critic.

The most boring and simple response anyone can have to American Psycho - even more than "it is America itself that is psychopathic DO YOU SEE!?!" - is "ha ha lol Huey Lewis & the News suck".
 

Pulchritude

Active member
I think the Sugababes are - or were - pretty amazing. The two post Mutya songs were bad but the heights they've hit previously have been pretty fucking high.

Here is something I recently wrote about the gorgeous "Ace Reject", which wasn't even a single:

Sugababes - "Ace Reject"

This song has become immensely important to me over the last year or so, for reasons i can't necessarily pin down.

One of the things that makes (made?) the Sugababes well-equipped to do big, epic, lifechanging pop ballads is the really clear differentiation of their voices, which comes through very strongly in this tune. In fact apart from the chorus, the three girls sing entirely different melodic lines - Mutya does this kind of depressive, resigned verse/bridge, and as it so often does her refusal to adorn her vocals comes across as a kind of wisdom, she sounds so much older than she is, like this is the final chapter in not just a love song but some epic in which two lovers are kept apart not by fate but by their own choices, their own betrayals. Then Keisha swoops in with an entirely different verse/bridge that is much higher and almost cathartically frustrated, and yet very pure - Keisha always sounds cosmically right in such songs, like she's the voice of the relationship as well as a voice in the relationship.

Heidi gets a bit shortchanged on the middle-eight, partly because it's such a typical place for her, and partly because she sorta sounds distant and multitracked, subsumed within the song's expression of fragility rather than offering her own stamp on it. But it's a great middle-eight, so camp in its melodrama, which really of the three only Heidi can pull off - that quiver she puts into it is perfect. Heidi's vocals in these songs always give me a "slowly rotting away in a decadent but lifeless celebrity relationship" kinda vibe, I imagine her in a white dress in a white room eating a plate of spaghetti with pesto, all alone (also she gets the great first verse in the next song "2 Hearts").

Underneath it all the slightly ska groove pretty much does not change at all, just accumulating airy synth and guitar layers like a stick accumulating fairy floss. The chorus is as pop as anything the group ever did, and it works really well, its overt repetition matching perfectly the repetition in the lyrics ("We break up to make it up/back and forth we never stop/every time a change of heart/can't keep up"). The formula of the chorus might not work if the verses (particularly the first) were more straightforwardly complicit with it, but instead the song works on a split level in a reverse of what you would expect: the verses are outside the drama of the relationship looking in, effectively an expression of the intervention, whereas the chorus is the relationship itself, unchecked and uncheckable, all the reflection of the verses lost.

The song is a depiction of a relationship at the breaking point, but when I'm not focusing on it, but simply listening, the story of this song is not about an actually existing relationship but a relationship-to-come, a complicated love letter to someone the singers haven't met. It makes me sad because I wonder, somewhat incoherently, if this is the best they can hope for.

Brilliance.

I've always been a Sugababes fan. Their first album was brilliant and they seemed so far removed from current pop music at the time. Their member-changing policy is farcical but, amidst the increasingly sterilised style of their newer songs and style, there's still some great tracks.
 

anhhh

Well-known member
Carl Craig remixes “So You Say” by Siobhan on the limited vinyl edition of the single.

By the way, the press is saying things about the record as beautiful as
“Siobhan's back, and has decided to become Lindsay Lohan doing Kate Bush on Stars In Their Eyes”(http://music.guardian.co.uk/pop/reviews/story/0,,2056625,00.html) I suppose because all of them are women, redheads and they are “irrational” ones. It’s a very lazy take on the record. She lists her influences on her MySpace page and comes clear about that. Some of them: Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil, Annie Lennox, Brian Eno, Tori Amos, Kate Bush, Kylie, Shakespeare’s Sister,…
Also I noted some kind of nostalgia about travelling on the music and the kind of images she is using for the promos and the videos, that traces back to the 4AD catalog and people like Dead Can Dance. Maybe I need to read some post-colonial essays,…

And to finish my unconexed thoughts, I started to listening her music in a different way when she spoke about his producer being an addict to heroine. Then all those minimal sounds, those ambiences and the way the sounds are constructed where kind of linked to Spacemen 3. Maybe the record just want to be a good pop record and little else but…

And Sugababes are working with William Orbit for their next record, so I really don’t know what to expect…
 
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