Mutya Buena - the husky-voiced heart and soul of the Sugababes - was both late and early for our interview. We bumped into each other outside the band's management offices in east London where Buena was huffing on a vape. It was 10.40am and when I mentioned that we were both early for our 11am appointment, Buena looked confused. "I was told 10.30," she said, "I thought I was late." When it dawned on her that she had been told an earlier time, perhaps on purpose, she offered a blunt summation of the situation: "Little fuckers!"
Her bandmates Keisha Buchanan and Siobhán Donaghy arrived shortly after. They all looked fresh-faced despite battling extreme tiredness: Buchanan had just landed in London from Toronto; Donaghy was at her wits' end given it was the summer holidays and she had two small children to wrangle; and Buena had just returned from a family holiday at Disneyland.
The exhaustion was tinged with an undercurrent of mania, the three of them chatting over each other with hurried life updates and concerns about the final mix of their soulful new single, When the Rain Comes, their first in this lineup as the Sugababes in more than 20 years. They seemed genuinely thrilled to be together.
This story is from the September 22, 2023 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
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This story is from the September 22, 2023 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
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