Sweet and sour

The faces may have changed but the hit-making brand is still going strong. Sugababe Amelle Berrabah talks bitchiness, bonding and role models with LAUREN MURPHY

SUGABABES? More like Canderel-babes these days, if you ask us: sort of like the real thing, but not quite the same. If that sounds a smidgen “bitchy”, well, it’s appropriate for the girl group that has (unfairly, some would say) gained a reputation as one of the most callous in British pop music. We’re not saying that this band’s history is chequered, but their revolving-door policy would give the most limber doorman repetitive strain injury.

I’m hanging on the telephone, waiting to speak to Amelle Berrabah about the trio’s most eventful year yet, and to be perfectly frank, it’s not boding too well. Sugababes are proving rather difficult to pin down; a touted trip to London to speak to all three members soon became a phone call to just one, and even that’s proving somewhat problematic – although unsurprising, if rumours of their “difficult” disposition are anything to go by.

It comes as something of a surprise, then, to eventually hear a chirpy, apologetic and friendly voice on the other end of the line. The 25-year-old Berrabah has taken temporary refuge in her family homestead in Aldershot, a town unofficially known as “The Home of the British Army”. Growing up surrounded by the armed forces may have served the singer well; you need a thick skin to be a pop star, sure – but you need bulletproof armour to be a Sugababe.

“Yeah, definitely,” she agrees, with a slight chuckle. “That period last year, it was like a bloody nightmare. I try not to read anything. Just reading one bad thing could ruin your whole day. You analyse it, and you think: ‘Why do they think this of me? I’ve done nothing wrong’. So that was quite hard, but I dunno ... you have to just go along with it, and definitely not take it personally, because it happens to so many people in this weird bubble that we call the music industry. You just have to get on with the thing you love doing, and hopefully your music will speak for itself at the end of the day.”

She is, of course, talking about the most recent scandal to hit the Sugababes camp. Last year, the one remaining founder member (Berrabah joined in 2005, replacing Mutya Buena) Keisha Buchanan was apparently ousted from the group, amidst yet more rumours of in-fighting. Just this week, Buena staked a legal claim to the Sugababes name.

Yet Berrabah is quick to set the record straight – she and Heidi Range were the ones to leave the group, she says, not Buchanan. She gives measured, affable answers to all poking and prodding about what actually happened between the trio, not even responding to media barbs that Sugababes are more of a business these days than a pop group. Many discontented commentators, including Buchanan herself, even suggested that the current line-up (including new recruit Jade Ewen) were brazen to continue operating under the Sugababes name, sullying the reputation of a group who have produced such modern pop classics as Freak Like Meand Push the Button.

“Me and Heidi have never lied to the press,” she says, swiftly sidestepping the question of the moniker. “We don’t want to go into detail about why the line-up changed. We were out in Los Angeles, and we were like ‘No, we can’t carry on the way things are going.’ It was hard, I’m not gonna lie to you, but we still both have the utmost respect for Keisha. She’s a lovely girl and I just always try remember the good years we had together.”

So far, so tactful. Is it inevitable, then, that a group like the Sugababes will have their every move sensationalised by the tabloids, who seem intent on perpetuating the myth of the “bitchy girl group”? Would a male band such as JLS receive the same treatment in a similar situation?

“Exactly,” she says. “Put three girls together and most people think there’s gonna be trouble. I was even like that before I joined Sugababes – I think I went into it with preconceived thoughts, that there’d be a lot of bitchiness. Then when I saw them, I was like ‘I am sooo sorry, I feel really guilty! You’re not really like that at all, are you?’ I’d fallen for the same thing as well. I think it’s just always going to follow us, I think it will always follow girls, anyway. I think people find it hard to believe that girls do actually get along – and we generally do. Obviously, with our last line-up there were some problems there, and that’s why we went our separate ways, and that’s why me and Heidi left the band – there were no lies there. We were fine for a long time, then we weren’t fine for about a year. But at the moment, we’re generally having the time of our lives.”

Berrabah, in particular, felt the strain of the split. Having previously been subjected to more media intrusion into her private life than any other Sugababe, she spent time being treated for “nervous exhaustion” in a German clinic for several weeks in late 2009.

“At times, me and Heidi were very stressed out, and we were like ‘OK, let’s just tell people the bloody truth about what happened – not even go into detail, but we’re being made out as the bad people here. We’ve done nothing wrong, we just left a band that was getting too difficult to be in’.”

Such experiences must make your position as a role model to thousands of young girls all the more satisfying, I wager. How does she feel about the idea of setting an example to a generation of Sugababes fans? Berrabah seems hesitantly pleased, if not a little uncomfortable at the suggestion.

“I definitely love being in Sugababes, but I don’t really think of myself as being a role model; I’m just me.Growing up, I definitely idolised pop stars like Whitney, Mariah Carey, Madonna – really strong, independent females. Idols, basically. At the same time, my mum was so important to me. There’s a really good support network around me and I’m lucky to have that.”

She'll need it over the coming year, that's for sure. Sweet 7, the seventh Sugababes album – originally scheduled for release last year but delayed while Ewen recorded her own vocals in place of Buchanan's – finally hits the shelves next week. It's their first release on Jay-Z's Roc Nation label, and it comes as no surprise that it sees Sugababes Version 4.0 take on a slicker, sexier sound tailor-made for the US pop market, thanks to contributions from the Stargate production team of Ryan Tedder and r'n'b star Ne-Yo.

Success further afield would be extra-sweet following their recent troubles, she admits, but Berrabah – who has also tasted solo success as a collaborator of Tinchy Stryder’s – claims that the trio are nevertheless happy with their current level of fame.

“Obviously there’s been a lot of changes in Sugababes over the past year, but we’ve learned a lot about each other and about ourselves. If people hear our album and like it, then our work is done, really. So a new chapter, yeah. That sounds about right.”

With their continued success running parallel with rumours of the three original ’babes – Buchanan, Buena and Siobhan Donaghy – hatching plans to form a rival group, it’s clear that the Sugababes soap opera is far from over. One thing’s for sure, though: when the curtain does eventually fall on their career, its gonna make for one hell of a warts’n’all biography.

Sweet 7is released on March 12th