Last Friday, the singer Siobhán Donaghy popped a picture on Instagram stories of her and two friends. “My girls,” read the caption. Obviously, it should have said “babes”, considering the picture included Keisha Buchanan and Mutya Buena, AKA the other two members of the original (and best?) incarnation of pop’s most turbulent girlband, Sugababes.
The picture immediately caused a stir in the more nostalgic corners of the internet, despite this marking the trio’s second reunion attempt since 2012. Back then, the reformed band was dubbed Mutya Keisha Siobhán, or MKS, because of a rights issue over the name. It ended with a No 50 single, the prophetically titled Flatline, and a leaked album called Sacred Three.
Formed in 1998 when Donaghy and Buena were just 13, Sugababes were initially billed as more All Saints than Spice Girls, ie they rarely smiled and had a penchant for loose-fitting trousers. Their debut single, Overload, released two years later, was a sophisticated slice of moody art-pop that crashed into the Top 10 and ushered in the similarly high-end album One Touch.
By 2001, however, Donaghy had quit. A year later, she had been replaced by the former Atomic Kitten chanteuse and middle-eight expert Heidi Range. The band went on to achieve four UK number one singles before Buena quit suddenly at the end of 2005, in the middle of the campaign for their fourth album, Taller in More Ways.
As the revolving door continued to spin, in walked Amelle Berrabah, who would go on to re-record three of that album’s 12 songs, before joining in with more singing duties on 2007’s Change.
As the sole original member, Buchanan was now vulnerable to being picked off in what had become pop’s version of The Hunger Games. She left in 2009 and was replaced by that year’s UK Eurovision entrant, Jade Ewen. An album followed, the odious Sweet 7, but by that point everyone seemed to have lost track of who was left.
Shortly before MKS announced their first reunion, rumours began to circulate that Buena had won back the Sugababes name, which, in a way, she had. According to an EU trademark website, Buena owned Sugababes rights to “paper gift wrap and paper gift wrapping ribbons”, which was exciting news for stationers across the country. But, in 2018, while confirming new music from the original lineup was on its way, Buchanan hinted that there had been a development vis-a-vis the name, claiming she was not an “EX-Sugababe”. So, will the latest iteration in this soap-esque saga finally give pop fans the long anticipated reunion they deserve? If so, we can only hope it comes tied up neatly in a Sugababes-branded bow.