Alright, I'm here to do my Mutya appreciation post. She is, after all, the reason we are all here in this thread discussing a new Sugababes album in 2023, and not still having circular discussions in the Comeback Corner about which version of Get Sexy or Red Dress is the best one. If Mutya hadn't booked an interview with Lorraine Kelly to talk about implants, and really, to talk about Keisha being ejected from the band, and hadn't declared 'we should all just get back together', confirmed she still had contact with Siobhán and Keisha and declared if someone else had left, it would still be Sugababes, would any of these events have been set in motion?
It's an interesting thought experiment. As Keisha says, the last thing she would have wanted to do after the events of 2009 would have been to jump right back into a band, but they at least met up sometime not too long after Mutya made those comments from what we know.
Listening to the spectacular chat she had with RAYE is a good insight to how Mutya thinks nowadays, that she used to be shy and has learned to spot bullshitters from a mile off over time; how she just doesn't give a fuck when people have negative, pointless comments to make about her. You really get the impression that being in this band and singing songs that mean something are what truly motivate her.
That voice... it has changed so much over the years, doubling down on the Mutya we came to know from the 2nd album onwards. It has such depth and gravitas now. Just checking the writing credits and she's credited on Flatline, Metal Heart, Today, Back in the Day, Back to Life and Only You which makes a lot of sense because I'd argue that the first four (being from the standard edition of the album) provide the four most distinctive vibes; Flatline tapping into the cooler rock-tinged stuff the band has always had a foot in, Metal Heart and Today both landing in the industrial soundscape and Back in the Day being the emotive kind of Sugababes ballad that made the band so great in the first place but being very different from the ballads they've released before. Back to Life is closer to the Sugababes ballad template; I'd say Only You is the outlier of those tracks, not too similar to anything Mutya's ever done in the band before.
Between the tour and the album, it's really just been nice to see Mutya enjoy herself on a big stage again. I know she's been quite settled in who she is and the energy she brings to a stage for at least the past 10 years because I got the same impression when I saw the MKS tour, but that was so tiny compared to the tour last year and it's just nice to see her vibing and having a good time, compared with when she was in the band the first time and her shyness came off as not bothered. Her verse in No Regrets might be my favourite Mutya moment on the album, though the majority of I Lay Down is a contender for that title. What a woman.
