SUGABABES

2 million singles sold, four Number Ones; 5 million album sales including three triple-platinum discs in the UK. More Top 10 singles than the Spice Girls, All Saints, Destiny’s Child or Bananarama, and more Top 10 hits with original songs than any girl group since The Supremes. The first girl group since the 1980s to release more than three hit albums – trouncing Destiny’s Child, The Three Degrees, the Spice Girls and The Bangles.

More impressive statistics than you’d get from your average pop group - principally because Sugababes have never been your average pop group. Over six years, the Sugababes have become synonymous with imaginative, cutting edge, daring and effervescent pop music, turning in several defining moments in the modern pop era along the way. They worked with British pop masterminds like Richard X and Xenomania before others even got a sniff of their hitmaking potential; overseas, their work with Dallas Austin inspired his best work since his mid-90s TLC heyday, and a roll-call of collaborators including William Orbit, Cathy Dennis, Cameron McVey, Sting and Diane Warren have worked their magic along the way.

The band’s achievements are many - a diverse array of awards numerous enough to clutter the most expansive of mantelpieces: a Brit award (along with various nominations), a Q award, a Smash Hits award, two TMF awards, 2 Capital Radio awards, two Elle Style awards, a Glamour gong.

Unusually in today’s pop climate, the hits strewn across ‘Overloaded’ only tell half the band’s story. As well as turning in contemporary pop classic after contemporary pop classic, the band are a brilliant proposition off record too – a credible, believable and dependable unit, with a well-earned reputation as one of the country’s best live acts, justified by everything from sets at Live 8 and Glastonbury to support slots with the likes of Take That, as well, of course, as their very own sold out headline tours.

The band burst onto the scene at the turn of the century, adding a little suga to the spice of the then-current pop climate. Founding members Keisha Buchanan and Mutya Buena met at a party when they were both 13, signing the band to London Records in 1998. Debut single ‘Overload’ was instantly selected as an NME Single Of The Week, subsequently propelling the girls into the teen press, the radio playlists and the Top 10. Three further singles were lifted from the band’s critically acclaimed debut album ‘One Touch’, before Keisha and Mutya’s well documented split with third member Siobhan and, more significantly, their record label.

"We enjoyed making music and once we’d had a taste of success, and the respect that came with it, we had to continue," Keisha states. "We didn’t understand what the big deal was with media training, smiling like this or like that – we just wanted to do our thing." And that’s exactly what they did. Not for the last time, a newly inducted Sugababe introduced a new twist to the group without blurring or compromising the band’s core values. Taking something of a leap of faith, Heidi Range joined the group before there was even a new deal on the horizon. "I’d loved the first Sugababes album so much that I didn’t even think twice about joining them," Heidi recalls now. "Even without a deal it seemed like the best idea in the world!"

The new trio worked on new material; ‘Freak Like Me’, based on an early Richard X mash-up which had been doing the rounds on the bootleg circuit in 2001, was their first single for new label Island. It shot to Number One in the summer of 2002, swiftly followed three months later by ‘Round Round’ - the group’s second Number One, and one which introduced pop powerhouse Xenomania, led by writer and producer Brian Higgins, to the 21st century pop charts. The Sugababes’ creative partnership with Xenomania continues throughout the Greatest Hits album - throwing up ‘In The Middle’ (which earned the band a Brit nomination for Best British Single), ‘Red Dress’ (the first Sugababes single to feature the band’s newest member, Amele Berrabah) and another Number One, the riotious boy-bashing anthem ‘Hole In The Head’ – which hit the UK top spot in October 2003 and took the band to previously unscaled heights on the US Billboard charts. US success might seem strange for such an unusual-sounding song, but the Sugababes have always thrived on delivering the unexpected in a curiously palatable format.

Complementing the dancefloor smashes, ‘Overloaded’ is also buoyed by the group’s soulful touches, across modern ballads like ‘Stronger’, the Sting collaboration ‘Shape’, ‘Too Lost In You’ (the lead single from the hit film from ‘Love, Actually’) and the magical ‘Caught In A Moment’. "‘Stronger’ has a huge meaning for me," Keisha notes. "When we were sitting there writing a song we didn’t expect to get any feedback from our fans – this song was a real turning point, because we got so many emails and fan letters from people saying that our lyrics had helped them out of some pretty dark times."

Each of the girls’ ballads exudes a rare class and dignity without the sickly production sheen that ordinarily spews forth when pop groups hit the ballad button – underscoring the fact that the Sugababes have spent the best part of a decade raising the bar far beyond the reach of their peers, having never succumbed to the expected route of the modern-day girl group, shrugging off the hen party mentality of their nearest rivals, with no bit parts in cheapo movies, fly-on-the-wall TV shows or Kool & The Gang covers. "People can say what they like about the ups and downs of the group," Amelle says, "but there’s no questioning the consistency of the music."

The new material on ‘Overloaded’ picks up where tracks like the Number One ‘Push The Button’ and radio smash ‘Ugly’ - the lead singles from Sugababes’ fourth album ‘Taller In More Ways’ - left off, reinforcing the band’s streetwise, refreshing and frequently intellectual approach to the lost art of a cracking pop tune.

Lead single ‘Easy’ already sounds like a Sugababes classic – low-slung, sexy verses, an un-secondguessable blast of pure pop for a chorus, and a brilliantly eccentric scream from Keisha as the song hurtles into the final furlong. Co-written by the Sugababes and Jason Pebworth and George Astasio from chart toppers Orson, it’s at once smart, sexy and danceable, packed with hooks and undeniably fun. "We were trying to think of the right way to launch our greatest hits, and we knew the song had to be something really special," Keisha explains. "We were thinking of people we wanted to duet with, or songs we wanted to cover, and we worked with a few people trying to get the right sort of song. When we started working with the guys from Orson the sound just blew us away – it’s completely fresh but at the same time has the same qualities as the biggest songs of our career, so it’s perfect for this album!" Adds Heidi: "We’re fans of our own music and we hate to repeat ourselves, so as soon as we heard the track we loved it and knew it had to be the single to launch the Singles Collection."

Those who persistently question the band’s resilience – surely a rather thankless pursuit, with the band still going strong half a decade after the first apocalyptic split rumours – will find plenty to chew on in the new tracks, as invigorating and characteristically luminous as anything else on ‘Overloaded’ and a little hint at what is still to come from the UK’s most enduring and well-loved girl group.

And contrary to expectations, this hits collection really doesn’t mark the end of the band - recording sessions for the fifth Sugababes album are already booked in and, as Keisha notes with a smirk, "we love what we’re doing so you’ve not seen the last of us yet!". From the teenage three piece who kick-started their own career before they’d even taken their GCSEs to the rather different-looking trio before us today with four albums under their belts, it’s hard to question the Sugababes’ role as the best British pop group of modern times. And when the music’s this good, who’s asking questions anyway?

"The album really tells a story," Keisha explains, "because the band has been our life for so long. In ‘Overload’ one of the lyrics is about skipping school. We were in the band when we were at school! That seems a long time ago now…"