The Sugababes are culturally synonymous with cool, which is as good an explanation as any for the way that Mutya Buena, Keisha Buchanan and Siobhan Donaghy are completely unfazed by the conditions in which they are shooting their Glamour Women of the Year cover spread. It’s a blazing hot July day in North London, near to where Mutya and Keisha were raised, but the ’Babes – as they are sometimes referred to in shorthand – are kitted out in chic wool, leather and faux fur for the autumn/winter season. No one would have begrudged them a full-on diva meltdown to complement the sweltering heat, but not a single word of complaint escapes their lips. They don’t sweat, they don’t scowl and they don’t shirk off.
Between resets and relocations, they reminisce about the late ’90s, recording their 2000 debut album One Touch with producer Cameron McVey at a studio down the road from The Lansdowne pub in Primrose Hill, where Glamour has set up camp for the day. The studio no longer exists, but the memories of those after-school sessions – eating fish and chips and playing with McVey’s daughter, the now Brit Award-winning singer/songwriter Mabel, then aged just three – are still fresh.
Where Siobhan (“always more mature”, say the others) is sensible, showing up well prepared with a vinyl and a gold Sharpie for the group to sign and gift to a married couple who told her father-in-law they fell in love to the band’s first album, Mutya is mischievous, regaling the crew with tales of her touring hijinks and telling everyone what a great time she had watching Chris Brown perform at Wembley Stadium — in spite of the fixed smiles on her other band mate’s faces that suggest they would prefer her to perhaps not mention it. Keisha talks in paragraphs, frequently cutting herself off mid-thought to start another, confesses to using ChatGPT as a therapist and self-deprecates about winning men over with her comic timing rather than her looks. (It’s both!) When work wraps, they gather round Keisha’s phone to fulfil various content creation obligations, just the three of them, no direction (or, indeed, coercion) necessary.
Perhaps a better, more accurate explanation for the group’s sunny enthusiasm as they bounce from pub to park to cafe to hotel and back to pub again is that they are genuinely, unequivocally happy. “I’m having probably the most fun time, at this moment, as I’ve ever had,” Mutya tells me when we all sit down to chat after the shoot. The high fashion fits and pristine hair and makeup have been stripped off and washed away, revealing the three remarkably fresh-faced women in off-duty comfies that lie beneath.
They certainly have plenty to be happy about. This year alone has seen the Sugababes close out their biggest ever headline tour and begin the rollout for their forthcoming studio album, co-written and produced by hitmaker Jon Shave, whose recent credits include cuts on Charli XCX’s zeitgeist-dominating Brat record of 2024. To anyone even nominally familiar with the group’s history (including the ’Babes themselves), their renaissance – almost three decades in the making – has been nothing short of a miracle.
The Sugababes fanbase is a broad church, but the familiar themes that recur time and again in the group’s history – unprotected, undermined, under-valued, under-estimated – strike a resonant chord with a certain generation of women and young girls in particular. For those who grew up with the Sugababes, watched them falling apart and then find their way back to each other, their triumphant third act is the fairytale ending that keeps on giving. “Everyone has a relationship in their life where they wonder what could have been different and I honestly think it’s been a big part of our success that people look at the three of us together and it’s such a joyful, hopeful thing,” says Siobhan.
Mutya, Keisha and Siobhan had just become teenagers when development began on what would eventually become the original Sugababes project. The original band was formed in 1998 when they were all still schoolgirls, by All Saints manager Ron Tom, who had previously signed both Mutya and Siobhan as solo artists two years prior. The addition of Mutya’s childhood best friend Keisha, who would join her in the studio after school for moral support, set a new chain of events in motion. “The minute the three of us were in a room and sang together it was very obvious to everyone that there was something special there,” says Siobhan. “I still think that when we sing together.”
The trio christened themselves Sugababes and set about crafting the inimitable sonic imprint that would come to define their artistic legacy. Success, at this stage, had not even crossed their minds. “Fame was very different back then, so you didn’t have the aspiration to become famous as such,” explains Keisha. “We just wanted to sing and we really loved the music we were doing and we wanted people to hear us.”
Sugababes signed to London Records in 1998. Two years of artist development later, in 2000, their debut single, Overload, a singularly fresh slice of distinctly British pop, hit the UK Top 10 hard enough to obliterate pop conventions. “Looking back it’s like, how amazing was our start?” Siobhan says, as if she’s still trying to get her head around it, 25 years later.
The single alone – written with a potent rush of teenage emotion – was enough to pique public interest. But it was also the effortlessly cool edge to their streetwear-inspired look and their casual air of detached nonchalance, atypical for a girl group, that set them apart from their glossy, picture-perfect peers. They attracted a laundry list of world-class creatives to help bring the project to life from producer Matt Rowe, fresh from a stint with the Spice Girls that had netted him six No.1 singles, to Anton Corbijn (noted for photographing icons such as Kate Bush and Annie Lennox) who captured the first images of the fledgling group in 1999 – Mutya, with a pixie cut sandwiched between Siobhan, sporting a pierced brow and Keisha’s punk twist on Bantu knots.
“People were changing their music videos to be very similar to ours, every picture they were doing, they weren’t smiling. It was a whole movement,” Keisha recalls. “We didn’t get what the big deal was. When you’re in it, you’re thinking, ‘I’m just being myself,’ but looking back you go, ‘Oh, OK, so this is why it was fresh and it was new.’” To hear all three speak of this time, it’s impossible not to get caught up in the excitement that still sweeps through them as they recall it. Dancing on the tables at iconic London jazz club Ronnie Scott’s, performing on Top Of The Pops and feeling like it didn’t really happen until they saw it on TV later. Touring up and down the country and around the world. “I don’t think we ever could have understood the cultural impact of that first song until years later,” Siobhan says now.
The initial highs, however, soon gave way to some devastating lows. Siobhan has spoken openly about the acute depression and feelings of isolation that characterised her first stint as a Sugababe, resulting in her eventual exit from the band in August 2001. “I don’t put myself in that headspace any more, but I have to say I’ve never regretted my decision,” she declares now. “Your life journey is your life journey.”
Sugababes re-emerged the following year in 2002 with new member, Heidi Range, a new label deal and a new single – a biting electro cover of Adina Howard’s Freak Like Me. It topped the charts. Eight years worth of hit singles, bestselling albums, sold-out shows, rave reviews and awards ensued – as did more line-up changes. At the turn of 2006, Keisha was the only original member still standing, alongside Heidi and Amelle Berrabah, who was hastily recruited in place of Mutya, before Keisha was then eventually ousted by the group’s management in 2009.
And so, in 2010, the stage was then set for ‘The Sacred Three’, as the original line-up had come to be known, to revisit their unfinished business and potentially work together again outside of the Sugababes name. But Keisha, still shellshocked by the circumstances of her removal, couldn’t have been more reluctant. The damage she incurred as the band was rebuilt around her – “we talk about the impact of someone leaving, but there’s also an impact from staying because you’re attacked by the media for things that they don’t know anything about” – only to have the rug pulled out from under her feet was severe. When the idea of reuniting with Mutya and Siobhan was first floated, she refused. “I was actually done with girl bands.” It took another year, and the urging and encouragement of family and friends, until the drive to answer some of those lingering ‘what if?’ questions outweighed Keisha’s misgivings. “For all of us, one thing that we wanted to do was meet with each other first to see if we had chemistry still,” Keisha explains. “Mutya and I have had this bond since we were kids, but Siobhan and I didn’t really have a relationship…”
All three stress how important it was to establish a foundation of sisterhood to anchor their working relationship with each other.
“The divide and conquer that went on between the three of us [when the band initially broke up] was a real disservice to us and we were too young to know that was at play. And that’s really sad,” Siobhan reflects. “Having young children around us now is so interesting because to me, when there’s an issue or insecurity with children and you’re the adult in the situation, the appropriate thing to do is try and fix them and bring them together,” says Keisha. “Unfortunately that wasn’t our experience.” “At all,” emphasises Siobhan.
Over the years, the slow disassembly of the original Sugababes has been somewhat trivialised by over-simplified tabloid narratives and online snark, but the long, careful pause each of the women takes before speaking about the road they took to reconciliation is still heavy with emotional weight. That early ice-breaker meeting was a therapeutic first step. “We wanted to feel confident that we were gonna approach each other with the sensitivity that the situation needed when we talk about childhood trauma like that,” says Siobhan. “We needed to know that we had each other’s back.”
Talks snowballed into studio sessions and then a major new label deal. The group’s first shot at a second chance – under the name Mutya Keisha Siobhan (MKS) put their newfound solidarity to the test. They released a single in 2013, Flatline, produced by Dev Hynes, which was critically well-received but commercially unsuccessful, which led to the entire project being shelved. They also faced complications over the ownership of the Sugababes trademark. But, they tell me, they stood their ground and fought – and won – for their original name.
These battles, Keisha says, made their relationship “way more solid. Being able to go through those trenches, to constantly be told no, constantly told who we should be, to have those frustrations… We had every reason to give up, but then God was like, ‘It’s your time.’”
In 2019, they got both their name and their groove back. They collaborated with DJ Spoony on a cover of the Sweet Female Attitude classic Flowers and hit a new chart peak with the 20th anniversary rerelease of One Touch in 2021 which included brand new remixes from MNEK and Blood Orange, as well as previously unheard demos. They booked a handful of festival appearances for 2022, “to test the waters and see if our nervous systems could take it”, making a triumphant return to the stage with an all-killer, no-filler headline performance at Mighty Hoopla that year, their first live show since 2013. The rapturous reception they received came as a surprise.
“We were gearing up for the struggle again,” Siobhan explains. “But then we did Mighty Hoopla,” says Keisha, “and it was like people really wanted us to do well.” But even Mighty Hoopla couldn’t prepare them for Glastonbury, a few weeks later. As a completely unprecedented number of fans flooded the Avalon stage, the festival was forced to shut the field down to prevent dangerous overcrowding. “It really was too much to process. It was very overwhelming,” Siobhan says. “They had to make the PA so loud to project it past the tent into the field. I think I was in shock when I came off stage.” Mutya adds: “I literally went deaf for about half an hour. I couldn’t walk, my knees were wobbling.”
Glastonbury 2022 marked a turning point for the group’s new public perception, as well as the way they perceived themselves. They shriek with laughter when I tell them about a rowdy (but remarkably respectful) group of young men I stood next to at their sold-out London show earlier this year, who lost their minds every time the choreography called for them to roll their hips. “I always get really nervous before we go on stage because you never know what the crowd is,” Mutya confesses. “But they’re starting to get younger and younger. There was one show we did that turned into a mosh pit. We were singing and the lads were just moshing. Hilarious.”
Their now multi-generational appeal is owed in part to the inroads they have made within the electronic music scene, with buzzy tracks from Joy Anonymous and Two Shell – sampling Push The Button and Round, respectively – and the release of Situation, a collaboration with drum and bass artist A Little Sound, opening up their catalogue to a new generation of music lovers. Their popularity is such that demand for tickets to their Boiler Room live set completely outstripped supply; it became the platform’s most subscribed event ever. (“How wild is that?” Siobhan says to Mutya, as Keisha elaborates on their drawing power. “Out of all the cool shit they’ve got going on!”)
“Physically, looking at each other, we are a representation of London,” says Keisha. “Obviously we’re from different cultures, so I think we’re able to tap into so many places. Our first tour was with NME, but then we would do Smash Hits and the MOBOs and the Brits. We love being an alternative pop band. It doesn’t go over our heads that not everyone gets those opportunities.”
Nor, indeed, their longevity. The Sugababes are now all in their early forties and Siobhan and Mutya are both mothers. The three band members spent the better part of their twenties and thirties wrestling back control of a legacy they began building nearly three decades ago. Taking into account everything they have endured, collectively and as individuals, they seem relatively well-adjusted.
“Just because our dark times haven’t been necessarily at the forefront, doesn’t mean we haven’t had [them],” Keisha clarifies. But maintaining a degree of separation from the industry has played a large part in keeping them grounded. “We go to work and we go home. We don’t hang around,” says Mutya. “We go to one or two parties here and there…” Keisha reminds her.
“But that’s work!” Mutya argues. “When there’s other people there in the same industry, I always say that’s work, ’cause you’ve always gotta take pictures and there’s cameras waiting outside. But aside from that, we go home and we live our normal lives with our families.”
These days, work/life is less of a balance and more of a blend, not by accident but by design. Siobhan’s sister and Keisha’s best friend handle their glam. They refer to their band as “brothers”. Mutya’s 20-year-old daughter Thalia is a near-constant presence. “She’s one of our biggest fans, she follows us everywhere we go,” she says with notable joy.
The most “non-industry industry” person in a trio of self-described “non-industry industry people”, Mutya is happy to let her bandmates lead the conversation 99% of the time, but she lights up whenever the topic turns to something other than show business and it’s obvious where her priorities lie. “It’s lovely to have them all around,” she beams, listing off all the assorted family members that make up their extended entourage. “Especially when we’ve got the babies round. It just makes everything feel like home.” Mutya, like Siobhan, found the Sugababes operation to be detrimental to her mental health, triggering her own departure from the group in 2005. “For me, when I left, it was at the time when I’d just had my daughter,” says Mutya. She was struggling with postnatal depression when she returned to work, just weeks after giving birth (recording sessions for the Taller In More Ways album, released later that year, were still ongoing) and the demanding promotional grind (the group announced a new single, Push The Button, less than six months later) put her under further pressure. She feels that if she had had “enough time to chill and be a mum for a couple of weeks,” she “probably would have stayed in the group, but at that moment my headspace was all over the place.” Ultimately, she put being a parent ahead of being a pop star – although in an ideal world, she says, she wouldn’t have had to choose.
Gruelling, unforgiving work schedules are happily a thing of the past. “Now we look to see if [work] fits with our personal lives,” says Keisha. “There are huge differences in our needs and interests, so how do we make wiggle room?” With independence comes responsibility. “We’re our own bosses and that’s not an easy thing – the buck does stop with us,” Keisha says. But they get to make room for joy: restaurant meals at set times, hiking on days off and enjoying wild nights out with the crew. “It’s like a holiday away from our real lives. I get sad sometimes because I look back and we’ve done so many amazing things, but I feel like it’s gone by so quickly. We enjoy it so much.”
“I love being on a tour bus,” Mutya attests, on the same satisfied note as someone sinking into a hot bath. “I rest and reset at work and come home ready to go again,” says Siobhan, a mother of two. The youngest of her children (she has a son, eight, and a daughter, four) was only a year old when the group toured Australia in 2023 and her energy levels were understandably depleted. “I slept all the way from London to Sydney and when I woke up I was like, ‘I no longer have postpartum tiredness any more.’” she laughs.
It’s almost an act of reparenting, giving themselves the emotional security they should have had the first time around and the career they wished for the second. “Speaking those things into existence and being that positive energy for each other really has been a powerful source of why it’s moved forward so positively,” says Siobhan. “It’s the essence of everything. We owe it to each other and we owe it to ourselves. The kind of success we’re having now, it does heal. You shouldn’t need that, but it does heal the wounds. It does. And the thing that I’ve taken from the last four years, the thing that I enjoy the most, is creating joyful moments for the audience. I get everything out of that, I love it. Look at them having a wild old time – and we did that!”
So now, to the future. A new album, finally, in early 2026. It will be their first full-length project since dropping their cancelled 2013 release The Lost Tapes on streaming services as a thank you to fans and finally bringing the Mutya Keisha Siobhan chapter of their story to a close. “Everything that we’re doing now is what we hoped MKS would have been back then,” Keisha says. “People talk about selling records and stuff, but I genuinely think the goal is to make an imprint. It’s actually so humbling, 25 years later, to sit and think: this is the dream.”
Their unwavering conviction in the intrinsic qualities the three of them bring to the table and a firm insistence that they be recognised for those contributions have held them together during the long fight for ownership of the legacy they created. Now, having survived the “trenches”, they are able to fully appreciate the powerful example their quiet resolve has set for other women.
“We’ve really worked our arses off throughout the years and been really humble about it as well,” says Mutya. “We’ve stuck through so much shit that’s been said about us. We could have all quit at different times, but we decided to stick together.”
“I’d like to think that what we reflect is strength and resilience and sisterhood,” Keisha says in agreement. “I’m just glad that we never compromised. It was never about the money, never about the fame. We love what we do and it’s now in our hands.”
Photographer: Jack Johnstone
Stylist: Lily Rimmer
Interview: Grace Medford
Hair: Jason Goh using colourwowhair and babylisspro
Make-Up: Pamela Cochrane at C/O Management
Nails: Joanna Newbold using Personaility tools and 79 Luxe Hand cream
Production: One Production
Senior Producer: Harriet Rosen
Videographer: Charlie Moore
Seamstress: Mel Lyse
2nd Cameraman: Tom Sweetland
Photographer Assistant: Joe Smart
Production Assistant: Indy Davvy
Stylist Assistant: Jack O’Neill
Stylist Assistant: Chloe Hogan
Hair Assistant: Ryan Steedman
Make-Up Assistant: Margot Schifano
Nails Assistant: Grace Blackwell
With thanks to Sam’s Cafe
