Overloaded (original) (raw)

The Sugababes are frequently touted as the most edgy, subversive UK pop group, although beyond their brilliant collaboration with Richard X on a Numan-sampling cover of Adina Howard's "Freak Like Me", their unsmiling façades, and frequent lineup changes, it can be hard to see why: The trio's songs are generally more in line with broader trends in pop or r&b than Girls Aloud's polystylistic romps, their lyrics usually more pedestrian. The kernel of truth to the critical line cum marketing angle lies in the group's vocals, which make a good argument for them being the best pop act of this decade-- perhaps less startling than Girls Aloud, but finally more endearing.

Initially dominated by the indie fragility of Siobhan Donaghy, the Sugababes only really hit their stride after her sudden exit following their first (and weakest) album One Touch, whose hesitant r&b-for-bedsits at least resulted in fantastically winsome singles. The reformed lineup was more confident and expansive, powered by its delicate balancing of Keisha Buchanan's sweet clarity, Siobhan-replacement Heidi Range's trembling diva grandeur, and the unadorned husky simplicity of the recently departed Mutya Buena, whom Xenomania's Brian Higgins claimed (perhaps correctly) was the UK's finest pop vocalist since Dusty Springfield.

Names are important here: While the singers of Girls Aloud are perfectly aligned with their song's intentions, the Sugababes' personalities constantly exceed the borders of their own material, only to dissolve into empathetic chorus harmonies. Sweetly girlish early on, these harmonies have become majestic and at times unabashedly emotional; while people may remember the group for their frothy pop ("Freak Like Me", "Hole in the Head", "Push the Button"), their greatest hits collection Overloaded is equally impressive for its devastatingly earnest balladry.

Frustratingly, many of their finest efforts were never chosen as singles, but then it appears that Sugababes, in all their incarnations, have never quite understood their own strengths, stumbling into brilliance by accident and almost as regularly going off the rails. Never more so than today: Mutya's replacement Amelle Berrabah simply sounds like a throatier facsimile of her predecessor, and while in principle there's no reason for her not to succeed as Heidi has, for a group whose charms are so precariously positioned, she might also be the fatal tipping point. The two new songs on Overloaded reveal the pitfalls of reading your own press, with the group attempting to reverse engineer the brand of cool that is commonly given to them via a limpid and largely tuneless rock-pop hybrid. Some of their collaborators know what they don't: Xenomania's four technicolor singles here portray a group so triumphantly insouciant they can afford to make pure, unashamed pop, improbably balancing disaffectedness with conviction. Whether it's going for the pop jugular or letting their tears smudge their eyeliner, the Sugababes are at their best when they do all the things the cool girls aren't supposed to.