Mutya Buena Interview

'Whatever's whatever'

When Mutya Buena left the Sugababes, fans knew that the UK's best selling girl group would never the same again. Now, as she launches her solo career, life is sweet, she tells Sylvia Patterson

Saturday April 7, 2007
The Guardian

They were saying to me on my new video, 'try not to smile too much'," cackles Mutya Buena, who isn't in the Sugababes anymore, who spent seven years in the Sugababes not smiling, "but to tell you the truth, these days, it's all happy days for me ..."

Rosa Isabel Mutya Buena, 22 in May, is perched on the comfy couch of a rehearsal studio in west London, all bouncing black hair, tattoos, piercings and a huge silver eye-tooth glinting on the right. She's wearing giant gold-hoop earrings, skinny denim jeans, a brown Tommy Hilfiger bomber jacket and fabulous, kinky, brown suede boots, pulled up over the knee, fringed in fake-fur, with six inch needle-thin heels, "from Camden market, I bartered £30 off". So who has made, we might wonder, the Sugababe millions?

"I wish I knew, 'cos it definitely ain't me!" she snorts. "If I had, I woulda quit."

In December 2005, Mutya quit the Sugababes anyway to be with her daughter full-time (Tahlia, born March 2005), leaving the group she co-founded at 13 years old, the group officially declared in 2006 by reference tome British Hit Singles And Albums, the UK's All-Female Act Of The 21st Century (now with 18 hit singles this decade, nearly half a dozen more than Madonna). Mutya's departure plunged the arch-browed madams into no chaos whatsoever, re-emerging with latest member Amelle Berrabah in a revolving-door, reality-blurring manoeuvre so swift they had a No 4 hit before anyone really noticed, Red Dress, with Mutya's vocals re-recorded by Amelle - and the ever-shinier Sugababe Transformer sashayed invincibly on.

"I always really hated Red Dress so I was quite happy they did it," announces Mutya. "My problem was with Follow Me Home (the subsequent single). My verse was talking about my daughter, it was personal and then the video was awful. I just saw a bunch of perverted men and paedophile guys. And they're singing 'follow me home'!?"

Did the transitional speed bother her?

"It was quick," she blinks. "Within four, five days of me saying I've left, she's on the page. I literally said to my managers before, 'please, whatever you do, make me feel like I had a place in the Sugababes, don't make her like me'. A replacement but not a replacement, d'youknowhatImean? And it was like a cloning."

As pop people know, however, the Sugababes are not the same without Mutya, the supposed Bitch who was The Cool One All Along, the one with the voice which defined the Sugababes sound and the look on her face which defined the Sugababes attitude: insolent, aloof, borderline menacing, prone to the word "whatever". From aged 15, she'd been called "a miserable bitch, in nightclubs, by strangers, and I did have an attitude, I was 15 years old!" and something of a sexual force-field.

"There's things I would've done back then I'd be too embarrassed about now," she cringes. "I could walk up to a guy and be looking at him like I'm the man. I was bold but now I'm like a virgin again. If a guy came up now I'd be (sweetly) 'no, sorry, no hard feelings', whereas before I'd be 'yeah I'll take your number' or (bawls) 'not interested!' And have an argument. I was terrible! Because I can't play fake. I like to think I'm as real as it gets."

Mutya's debut solo album is called, fittingly, Real Girl. It's brilliant: smart, funny, fresh, deep, brimful of cheek, heart full of soul and as sharp as a pin in a tongue-stud. Co-written with a spectrum of writing/production wizards (including Salaam Remi, Red Eye, Full Phatt Productions), first single Real Girl drapes around the orchestral riff from Lenny "Benny" Kravitz's It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over and is considerably improved for his absence while elsewhere you'll find Amy Winehouse guesting on B-Boy Baby (hilarious homage to the Ronettes' Be My Baby) and the astounding Out Of Control (Song For Mutya) written and produced by Groove Armada, four minutes of thundering 1980s panic pop stuffed in a firework full of powdered adrenalin and blasted into approximately 2021. Her singing voice, avers Tom from Groove Armada, "is iconic, almost the voice of a generation", the icon who arrived at their studio two nights running "with battered sausage and chips". Mutya hopes B Boy Baby will be a single so she and Amy (already a pal) can promote it together, on-the-lash.

"We both like a drink, God knows what would happen!" she says, promisingly. "I see a comedy video there. I couldn't see myself taking things seriously like (po-faced) 'I'm back'. That song, there's too much crying of laughter and smiling and taking the piss out yourself. And that coming out of my mouth, you know things are a lot different! The Sugababes was serious. Now, I wanna rip myself open with... stupidness. I'm at that part of my life where I can't give a shit no more."

Formed in north-west London in 1998 by childhood chums Mutya, Keisha Buchanan and Siobhan Donaghy, Sugababes emerged in 2000 with the shuffling Overload classic like a cool-pop beanstalk in a field of toddler-pop weeds (Westlife, A1, Bob The Builder). That year Mutya was a 15-year-old girl who'd long left school, who still mixes past, present and future tense into every cavalier sentence. She grew up in controlled pop conditions for seven years - "it was restrictions" - over songs, clothes, booze, fags, through Siobhan's overnight walk-out in 2001 ("it was like losing a sister, me and Siobhan got on great and I never disrespected her"), her initial troubles with new girl Heidi Range ("at first I ignored her, then I loved her to bits") and Keisha's control freak tendencies. "Keisha is a very, very, very serious person when it comes to her job," notes Mutya, "and now, being the only original girl, she's probably a lot more serious!" In the early years, Keisha took her singing so seriously, she'd sing abnormally quietly in rehearsals so her mic would be turned up and then blast her vocals come the show, skewing the finely-tuned sound.

"How did you find out about that!?" guffaws Mutya. "Yeah, she'd be like that (coughs feebly) and then go on stage and be bam! 'Oh, you got your voice back quick enough!' It's funny, I'd completely forgot about that. Well, it's funny now ..."

In mid-2004, Mutya discovered she was pregnant (by her long-term boyfriend Jay) and the girls were initially supportive, "until my daughter was born, then I missed shows and they'd get mad, it was messy". They suggested a nanny. "My mum brought up eight of us while my dad was out working hard so I don't believe in nannies," she scoffs. "If a nanny made my daughter cry I'd have to kill 'em." She carried on but the stardust was fading anyway. "The girls said I used my daughter as an excuse to leave the band," she withers. "But the last two years, I'd been losing the fun, it wasn't even an issue with the girls. But me having my daughter made me realise the girls were important but they're not that important."

Today, the only Sugababe Mutya is in contact with is Siobhan, (who also releases a new album in June) after a reconciliation attempt with Keisha and Heidi at CD:UK in early 2006 was rebuffed.

"I actually went down there with Keisha," she muses. "I wanted to meet Amelle, I said hello and then I wasn't allowed to see them after because apparently Heidi was shocked and upset, I made Amelle feel out of place and put them all off their performance. (Bristles) It took me to get up out of my bed to come and show there's no hard feelings and I got it pushed back right in my face so I thought 'forget it'. And I haven't really spoken to them since. You learn what's good for your life. But whatever's whatever. I was in a great band, I've got no issues, I've got my daughter now, my own album, I'm living my life. I'm a lot happier ... than I think I've ever been."

The all-new, grown-up, non-bitchin', big-smilin' Mutya Buena is a technology-enthusiast "addicted" to MySpace, who owns seven mobile phones, is brash, tough and fuck-you funny, the sound and vision of what a modern proper pop star is.

"Right now, the talent in England is what everyone wants to listen to," she chirps. "I love Razorlights. (sic) And Arctic Monkeys. I do a cover of the Kooks' Naive. Then there's Amy, Lily Allen. It reminds me of the punk days when everyone did whatever they wanted. No one cares if they've got a cigarette, a pint in their hand, you can go on stage without makeup now and look the way you wanna look! When I was in the Sugababes, everything out during my time was so perfected. Now, I see guys not brushing their hair, even on the poppiest show. And this is what English talent's about. About not giving a shit."

· Real Girl is released next month

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