There may have been bitter vibes in the past, but these days Sugababes are all sweetness. The three tell Caroline Sullivan how success has changed their lives.
Everyone likes Sugababes. Even those who are convinced all tweenybopper bands were grown in test tubes in Dr Evil's pop dungeon have time for the British trio. Twentysomethings shuffle about to their icy urban sound, tensomethings aspire to their streety style, style magazines gush that their ethnic mix - black, Filipino-Spanish and white - symbolises modern young Britain. And it's nearly impossible to find anyone who didn't love Freak Like Me, the number-one song that won an unlikely trinity of music awards from Smash Hits magazine, Q magazine and the Brits.
But if chart life doesn't get better than this, what are the niggly rumours about personality clashes within the group that have landed original members Keisha Buchanan and Mutya Buena with reputations as bullies (and "evil-looking freaks", as the music newspaper NME called them)? The story is this: Siobhan Donaghy, the first white Babe, left in 2001, claiming she was frozen out by Keisha and Mutya, old schoolmates with whom she had formed the band in 1998. At the same time, the remaining two were dropped by their record company, while - sweet revenge, presumably - Donaghy was kept on as a solo act.
She was replaced by current white Babe Heidi Range, who escaped an early version of Atomic Kitten and moved from Liverpool to London to try her luck. As soon as the Babes signed with a new label and began turning out chart-topping singles such as Freak and Round Round, stories trickled out about Heidi being picked on by Mutya. The Popbitch website even claimed a depressed Heidi was about to go the same way as Donaghy.
True? False? Who knows? All I can say is that, during an hour in Sugababe company last week, I observed no scowls or tension. If anything, I'd say Keisha and Mutya ("It's Mu-tee-ah," Keisha politely corrects me) were charming. Mutya, a bite-sized club urchin whose long nails were painted in alternating red and black, even showed signs of enjoying herself - worth mentioning, as she is usually depicted as remote if not openly bored.
It's Keisha's 19th birthday, and she's laying into steak and chips in a pub near Island Records' west London office to distract herself from the horrific decline into old age. "It's all downhill from here," she predicts grimly. "But I'm not so worried about it since I heard Britney say she was looking forward to getting old." That's Britney as in Spears, aged 21. Mutya, who is 18, nudges her friend's shoulder compassionately.
They're a picture of teenage friendship, and it's this apparently benign gang mentality that distinguishes them from the rest of their genre. Pop groups created on television, such as Girls Aloud, claim to feel like old friends after two months, but Keisha and Mutya share a proper bond that goes back to schooldays in Kingsbury, north London. They even resemble each other, with little heart-shaped faces and a taste for maximum jewellery and tummy-baring vests. As they sing along, heads nodding, to the song burbling over the pub sound system - Craig David's What's Your Flava? - it's easy to see what London Records saw when it signed them five years ago: urban street girls who write their own songs and keep it, in an unclichéd sense, real.
"When we first started, I just thought you wrote your own stuff. We assumed everyone did," says Keisha. "And it became a big deal: 'Oh, they write their own stuff.' " They were 15 when their first single, Overload, came out, late in 2000, and it established them as a girl band with a difference. It was cool, detached; it wasn't about love. (Few of their lyrics are typical teen fodder; the celebrated Freak Like Me still startles in its dispassionate analysis of sexual attraction.)
All Saints, the group then occupying the real-pop slot, conveniently split up soon afterwards, and the girls from the estates of Kingsbury (in fact, only Mutya lived on one), found themselves, in their mid-teens, the focus of much expectation. But their next three singles didn't sell as well, and although their debut album, One Touch, was reasonably successful, it didn't recoup London's €3 million outlay.
Then, during a Japanese tour in 2001, Donaghy left the room in the middle of an interview to go to the toilet. By the time the others went to find her, she was on her way to the airport and a flight to London, leaving her unsuspecting bandmates reeling with shock and anger. She complained that she'd felt cold-shouldered by Keisha and Mutya: "We never had a laugh or went out as a group." She has been erased from Sugababes history in Island's current press release, which doesn't mention her.
"It was three years ago," says Mutya, thermostat dropping to lukewarm. Though it was a definitive moment in their short career, they won't talk about it. Alright, but are they secretly pleased that Donaghy's most recent single stiffed at number 52? "Not at all. We think Siobhan has brilliant material, and it's the record company, not her, that made it chart really low. She's very talented, but I don't think she's got the right people around her."
Sugababes assuredly do. The currently groovy Richard X produced Freak Like Me, and their new album, Three - follow-up to the much-liked Angels With Dirty Faces - features material written with Pink songwriter Linda Perry and a new song by the doyenne of grandiose balladry, Diane Warren. They have fans among the diverse likes of Macy Gray, J-Lo and rapper Redman and were the only chart-pop band on the bill at this year's Glastonbury music festival.
"It's nice to be accepted by all sorts of markets, but we don't do it deliberately. The audience is really diverse," says Heidi, who plays Quiet Babe to Keisha's Bubbly and Mutya's Foxy.
"We're the coolest girl group?" Keisha does a creditable job of affecting surprise. It consists of raising sleekly arched eyebrows and amping up her natural warmth. "I never thought we'd end up coolest. I guess we're different to anything else that's out there," she modestly admits. "It didn't sink in when we won the Q award or the Brits or even got to number one - me and Mutya were, like \, oh, yeah. I still don't really realise how lucky we are right now."
How lucky is that? Despite the money, travel and steak and chips, Sugababes keep the brutal schedule of all pop bands. While they're touring or promoting a record, they work nearly every waking hour. On the way to the pub, Keisha had confided that she rarely checks their daily diary, because "I don't want to know everything I have to do. I looked today, though, and I know we're doing Heat after you". Nonetheless, she looks well on it, as does Mutya, as they lustily attack their steaks. They're serious eaters, claiming they used to be "much thinner than this", though it's difficult to see how.
Heidi, though, I'm a bit worried about. Though as accomplished an r 'n' b singer as the others, she's different from her sassy, slangy bandmates. It's not just the minimal jewellery, Marc Jacobs military jacket and Liverpool accent; she still emanates a new-girl aura. "Heidi's not urban, but she's cool," Keisha says protectively. But she seems to lack the protective veneer and assertiveness of the other two. When she speaks the others often talk over her. I dare say they don't realise they're doing it, but each time Heidi trails off, letting them finish her sentence.
And I inadvertently upset her so much that she leaves the interview twice. Both times it's over something apparently insignificant that, I'm later told by someone at Island, Heidi interprets as a dig at her and her background. The first was a jokey question about the Liverpool male's propensity for moustaches, the second a comment to the effect that her grilled chicken and salad looked healthy. ("She thought you were picking on her weight," said the Island man. "She's sensitive about what's written about her." For the record, Heidi probably weighs about eight stone and is tall and blonde with it.)
The second time she leaves, a furrow-browed Keisha follows, the two eventually returning to the table, where we push along for another 20 minutes. While they're gone, Mutya and I look at each other awkwardly. Is Heidi all right? "Yes," she says positively. So, any truth to the stories about Heidi feeling shut out, given that Mutya recently admitted to being "a little bitch" when Heidi joined? "No," says Heidi, who is back. "When I joined, and it's two and a half years now, it was harder for the girls than me, cos I was just joining a group."
Mutya adds: "We're very, very close. Everyone has their own opinion [of us\], but we're in our little circle together." Heidi nods: "We spend 24/7 together, and we couldn't do that if we didn't get on. The main thing is to be happy in life."
One thing that especially pleases them is that a band of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds can reach the top in r 'n' b. "London is so multicultural, but before you'd only see certain races doing certain music," says Keisha. "It's great to think we're opening doors," says Mutya, "but when we were in LA working on the album, they found it weird to see [different races\] together." Heidi muses that perhaps it's still considered weird in the UK. "When they auditioned for me, no black or mixed girls turned up."
Has success been worth it? Keisha says, professionally cheerful: "You make sacrifices. We left school at 14 and had private tuition, so we've lost our teenage years, Heidi's had to move down from Liverpool." There has been negative press - Mutya reserves particular rancour for the Mirror newspaper's gossip columnists, the 3 a.m. Girls.
And then there are the male gold- diggers. "If a guy asked me about my money, I'd say: 'You're dating me, not my money.' If you're not giving them money or food or a place to stay, then they're not getting shit off you, and it's just you [they like\]," Mutya says evenly. "But guys are often intimidated by the fact we're successful. I don't like British guys, anyway. Everyone knows everyone else. The ones I meet have too much baggage, like kids. If you meet a guy you like, you want your child to be his first child."
Spoken like a cool, slightly cynical 21st-century teenage girl. Like, in fact, a Sugababe. - Guardian service
Three is on Universal/Island
