FEATURE:
Brilliance Overload
Sugarbabes’ One Touch at Twenty
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I wanted to do a quick feature…
on an album that turned twenty yesterday (27th November). It is amazing to think that Sugarbabes were dropped by their label after One Touch sold fewer copies than they hoped. The Pop market was pretty competitive in 2000, and it was a bit unfair that a new group had such expectations on their shoulders! Sugarbabes have gone through various iterations, but I think they were strongest on their debut. I remember the album coming out when I was in sixth form college, and I was hooked and really fascinated by the group. Prior to 2000, I think my experience with female Pop groups was the likes of All Saints and Spice Girls. To be fair, I think Sugarbabes were more eclectic than those groups from the start. I always felt Sugarbabes were far cooler and edgier than any other group there because they had this confidence and quality that was both accessible but unique. They could also put out more emotive songs, and I was really struck by that diversity and richness. Original member Siobhán Donaghy left the group in 2001. She initially stated that she wanted to pursue a fashion career, but she was eventually diagnosed with clinical depression amid reports of in-fighting between the Sugababes members. Only after one album, such a promising group were faced with split and disaster! Their second studio album, Angels with Dirty Faces, was released in 2002 and is not nearly as successful and memorable as One Touch. It has been ten years since the group released their final album, Sweet 7, and there is a distinct Sugarbabes-sized hole in music!
I forgot that the Sugbabes’ debut turned twenty yesterday, and I saw an article on CLASH – which I shall quote from soon – that highlighted it. I think the year 2000 was this very excited yet strange year where we said goodbye to the epic ‘90s and many were wondering how music would change and where it would head. There were some interesting and hugely popular girlbands still operating like Destiny’s Child, and All Saints, and Sugarbabes arrived with their own style and brand. I like the fact that the group - Keisha Buchanan, Mutya Buena and Siobhán Donaghy – co-wrote many the songs on One Touch. Of course, Overload is probably the most notable and popular single from the album. It was released on 11th September, 2000 and reached number-six in the U.K. There are other clear highlights like Soul Sound, Run for Cover, and New Year - and it is a surprise that the album did not do huge business! I will source from one of many positive reviews in a second but, right now, I wanted to bring in some observations from CLASH. The following is taken from a very illuminating retrospective:
“One Touch' opens with 'Overload', perhaps the most definitive opening statement of any British girl group, give or take a 'Wannabe'. Its refrains of teenage preciousness - "Strange fear I ain't felt for years/The boy's coming and I'm close to tears" - are paired, counter-intuitively, with a forthright bassline, reverberating clatter, random whooshes and later, surf guitars. It is impossibly groovy but held together with some diffident insouciance; an unbothered ditty crooned by teenage girls filing their nails.
This was very much the template for the Sugababes’ entry onto the music scene; a bunch of teenage girls somehow above it all. Live performances of 'Overload' had the three girls half-heartedly performing a routine on barstools, only magnifying this effect. To a market saturated with bright-eyed and eagerly performed pop, it must have been some hook.
Vocally, it is even more accomplished. The murmured quietness that forms the ambiance of the album frequently breaks out into flourishes from all three vocalists. The fact that they were teenagers is a fault only in comparison to the vocal heights all three themselves would go on to scale. Buena, as one of the voices of her generation; Buchanan, as the rich, honeyed gel to multiple incarnations of Sugababes; and Donaghy, as a crystalline bell jar on her own.
But on this first, lone outing, there is a certain magic when those voices come together, with quiet intimacy and nervous chemistry, particularly in their seamless harmonies - gorgeous and stirring one second, and wispily fluttering away in the background the next.
These technical aspects are perfect complement to the album’s high point which is its lyrical substance. The three members co-wrote most of the songs here, and their ruminations on growing up and finding your way through love and life here, despite the markers of adolescence attached to them, seem universal in many ways.
The jittery nervousness of approaching a new crush ('Overload'); the confident reproach of an uncommitted lover ('One Foot In'); and the bold excitement of revelling in a new love (the title track) are, after all, hardly limited to teenagehood. In the best of girl group tradition, most of the album reads like hanging out with a close friend, full of confessions and building up esteem”.
It is wonderful that there was some love and good vibes for One Touch on social media yesterday; it is kind of sad that such a promising group faced struggles and record label disappointment. Maybe their label, London, launched Sugarbabes as rivals to the American girlgroups that were coming through or dominating in the 1990s. There are blends of American and British influences through One Touch, but I feel the trio managed to create their own identities and there is a nice mixture of sounds throughout their debut. Perhaps a comparative lack of feelgood tunes and big energy put some off. I still find it baffling, even when we bring in the standards back in 2000, that Sugarbabes were sort of written off right away! I want to bring in a review from a review in Drowned in Sound from 2000:
“However , just when you thought if you saw another girl-group you'd lock yourself in a cupboard and slowly starve yourself to death only wishing it was they that were suffering your fate , Sugababes come along smelling of authenticity , kneeing convention in the balls , breathing indie-cool and screaming "The NME like us. The f*ing NME !!!!"
It is , in contrast to the other non typical NME acts to have featured in the NME this year (Kelis anyone ?) , understandable why. For a group of 16-year olds they write remarkably mature and sophisticated songs that could theoretically attract admiration from George Micheal and Damon Albarn (Not Bono though , no "own instruments" just yet).
Whereas the Spice Girls are currently the botched genetic epression to meld Destiny’s Child , Artful Dodger , Mariah Carey and early-Madonna , the Sugababes are the genetic experiment to throw together the conglomerate worldly dance-funk of modern Madonna and the loved-up tearful ballad William-Orbit-ingrained-into-it’s-soul brilliance of the All Saints. This experiment was almost perfect and even though the album contains nothing quite as brilliant as the debut single ‘Overload’ , which Radio One has almost certainly burnt into your brain by now , but it is still the finest collection of pop-songs released this year by a new artist. An album that kicks the collective asses of both Girl Thing AND Coldplay.
Just admit it , you loved ‘Overload’ and admit that you were wrong in your preconception that anything resembling anything Svengali-cultivated was totally soulless. Just take a listen to forthcoming single ‘New Year’ (“Older than my years / Drowning in my tears “ )
They ARE better than 90% of the corporate indie scene and underline the falseness of mainstream contemporary sounds. That Limp Bizkit’s anger is just as compulsively phoney as any marketable facet embraced by the Spice Girls. Fred Durst’s “difficult” childhood no different to Mel C’s apparent clinical epression. (Have you ever wondered where Fungus got the inspiration for ‘A fanclub would be nice’ ? Now you know)
Motwon Junk this ain’t. Unlike Girl Thing , they aren’t “Another Invented Disease”. Sugababes are 4REAL and if they come head-to-head with the Manics next summer who’s your money on”.
Nostalgia can be quite a dangerous and misleading thing, but I think the Sugarbabes exciting debut is packed with some great tracks and really confident performances that stand up now and sounded great back in 2000. Unlike many girlgroups, I think there is so much vocal strength and individuality in Sugarbabes; despite some in-fighting, they have a connection on One Touch. Twenty years later, the album still pops and really produces some surprises! It makes me wonder whether we will ever see a fresh and cool girlgroup like Sugarbabes come along because, apart from Little Mix, there are not many options! In a rather difficult and challenging 2020, I would recommend people revisit…
A classic from the year 2000.