Sugababes became the most successful British girl bands of the 21st century with six Number One singles, millions of global sales and multiple multi-platinum albums. Along the way they told one of the most spectacular stories of the modern pop era, but it all started in the summer of 2000 with one song, three voices and a mysterious white label 7”. “The first time Overload was played on the radio they announced it as Sugababes, but they didn’t know anything else about us,” remembers Siobhan Donaghy. “They had no idea who was in the band, what we looked like, how old we were. Nothing. It was a mystery: who are these girls?”
Those girls were north-Londoners Siobhan Donaghy (then 16), Mutya Buena and Keisha Buchanan (both 15) and for the last year and a half they’d been working on One Touch, an album whose nonchalant magnetism dragged pop music into the 21st century. It bewitched critics everywhere from Smash Hits and TOTP to the NME and The Face, with the Independent praising its ability to “skip playfully between upbeat R&B, poppy soul and groove-laden ballads” and the Guardian, making it album of the week, noting “One Touch is all about experiencing the pain of growing up while retaining that invincible teenage glow”. In the twenty years that followed, the album’s own glow has never diminished. It went gold at the time while singles Overload, New Year, Run For Cover and Soul Sound hit the charts around the world, but it was in that space between then and now, as the Sugababes story took its various twists and turns, that One Touch slowly took on a life of its own. In 2021 One Touch remains a blueprint for genre-hopping mainstream music and a byword for effortlessly stylish British pop.
Those girls were north-Londoners Siobhan Donaghy (then 16), Mutya Buena and Keisha Buchanan (both 15) and for the last year and a half they’d been working on One Touch, an album whose nonchalant magnetism dragged pop music into the 21st century. It bewitched critics everywhere from Smash Hits and TOTP to the NME and The Face, with the Independent praising its ability to “skip playfully between upbeat R&B, poppy soul and groove-laden ballads” and the Guardian, making it album of the week, noting “One Touch is all about experiencing the pain of growing up while retaining that invincible teenage glow”. In the twenty years that followed, the album’s own glow has never diminished. It went gold at the time while singles Overload, New Year, Run For Cover and Soul Sound hit the charts around the world, but it was in that space between then and now, as the Sugababes story took its various twists and turns, that One Touch slowly took on a life of its own. In 2021 One Touch remains a blueprint for genre-hopping mainstream music and a byword for effortlessly stylish British pop.