Blame it on the bogey

Because band members Mutya Buena, Keisha Buchanan and Heidi Range keep their personal lives close to their chests, Sugababes have become somewhat dehumanised in the music press. In a world where their girl-group peers are boundlessly energetic, Sugababes are characterised as austere, consciously stroppy upstarts who constantly bicker and, it would seem, are always on the verge of calling it a day.

“It is getting pretty boring,” says Buena of the tabloids’ insistence that Sugababes are on the brink of implosion. “You just don’t know what to say when all the questions you’re ever asked are ‘is it true that Heidi is bullied?’ and ‘are you splitting up?’ Put it this way, Heidi would be pretty stupid to stay in a group that she was bullied in, and we’d be stupid to give up on something that’s going so well.”
Last March, Dublin’s Olympia was the backdrop for the latest chapter in the saga; the British tabloids had reported that, five minute before curtain call, Buchanan and Range had an ‘almighty catfight’, fuelling rumours of an imminent split.
“Basically, there was laryngitis going around, and we wanted to put on a proper performance,” explains Buena when asked of the incident. “We felt there was no point going on stage if people have paid money to come see a group that they like. At the same time, there was this story going round that Keisha and Heidi were having a little fallout…it wasn’t as bad as everyone claimed it was. It was a small disagreement, but that’s not the reason we cancelled the show. We wouldn’t cancel a gig because of an argument…we’re not that silly.”
In the course of this interview, Buena is wholly polite, gracious, open and humorous – an old head on young shoulders, having spent a decade on the road. Despite this, Buena has been particularly vilified in the press, painted as a bully, the catalyst of all tensions, and the real reason that original member Siobhan Donaghy fled the group.
“A lot of people think of me as rude, but it’s just because I stick up for myself when I have to,” she reflects. “People don’t understand that I’m not as bitchy as they would like. It’s horrible to think that people can hate what you do so much. People come up to me in the street and ask, ‘So do you get along with Heidi?’. I could be in a club and at least one person comes up and says, ‘I think you’re rude’. They don’t know me, but it’s perfectly fine now, and it doesn’t bother me at all.”
So what is her take on the ‘Blame Mutya’ website, a darkly comedic site that blames the ‘evil Sugababe’ for Third World Debt, the Third Reich and the Ebola virus?
“I’ve heard about it, but I haven’t seen it,” she replies. “One day I was a nobody, now I have my own website. I hear that there’s a ‘Blame It On Beyoncé’ site, so it’s flattering in a way”.
Perhaps her no-nonsense attitude can be chalked down to a fiery Celtic temperament. If you happen to be a Hurley from Killarney, there’s every chance you may be related to the half-Irish, half-Filipino star.
“I go there a lot to chill, and when we have gigs in Ireland I invite the whole family,” she explains. “Literally, the whole town down there is made up of my cousins. We certainly know how to have the big families, don’t we?”