The Sugababes Discography Rate

londonrain

Staff member
One Touch babes aren't as good as people make them out to be. Nostalgia must be a part of their high scores because I just don't get it. The teenage vocals grate on me more than anything and I honestly would listen to Change a thousand times over One Touch.

Sorry, not sorry.

I bought One Touch when it came out and I loved it then, and would have happily given Same Old Story the same score (or possibly higher) back then. I'm not going back and giving shitty 2000 tracks inflated scores just because I'm nostalgic for 2000 - and I doubt the other One Touch fans are either.

I also really like Change but it's a completely different style of music recorded by an almost completely different girl group. For example, I could imagine Same Old Story possibly being done by Mis-Teeq. I can't imagine Mis-Teeq bothering with anything on Change.
 
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he/him
I bought One Touch when it came out and I loved it then, and would have happily given Same Old Story the same score (or possibly higher) back then. I'm not going back and giving shitty 2000 tracks inflated scores just because I'm nostalgic for 2000 - and I doubt the other One Touch fans are either.

I also really like Change but it's a completely different style of music recorded by an almost completely different girl group. For example, I could imagine Same Old Story possibly being done by Mis-Teeq. I can't imagine Mis-Teeq bothering with anything on Change.
I myself started becoming a fan of the babes when Amelie joined. I was 13 at the time and I had seen in the news that Mutya had left the band and seeing Red Dress on the music channels I watched out of curiosity to see the new member. Instantly hooked (damn Xenomania.) I then went back over their old music and fell in love with everything apart from One Touch, it has never clicked with me whereas Angels and Three did.
 
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londonrain

Staff member
I myself started becoming a fan of the babes when Amelie joined. I was 13 at the time and I had seen in the news that Mutya had left the band so when I saw Red Dress on the music channels I watched out of curiosity to see the new member. Instantly hooked (damn Xenomania)

Ah. So by the time you became a fan they were miles away from anything on One Touch, and you didn't have the experience of One Touch sounding 'current', as that sound had stopped being prevalent long before Amelle joined. Against that background, I can get why you wouldn't necessarily like One Touch, as 1.0 is a very different girl group from the group you became a fan of.

The way I see it, I was a big fan of this teenage girl group that broke up after their first album, and I was genuinely not expecting to hear from them again as a group. Then two of them came back in a new band with new producers and just happened to use the same band name to release their massive Richard X-produced debut single. It just so happened that my taste extended to that sound as well, so I became a fan of the new band.

I was a bit baffled by Amelle joining the band as I didn't really like the tone of her voice in comparison to Mutya's (and unlike the 1.0-2.0 switch, this happened in the middle of an album campaign, so I had to adjust to hearing Amelle's voice on songs that I already knew very well with Mutya's voice on them). From Easy onwards it was much easier for me to like her voice.
 
One Touch babes aren't as good as people make them out to be. Nostalgia must be a part of their high scores because I just don't get it. The teenage vocals grate on me more than anything and I honestly would listen to Change a thousand times over One Touch.

Sorry, not sorry.
I'm totally not trying to target you, since clearly you weren't the only one to rate the album so low, but are the grating vocals really it? Because on an individual level they're only a touch weaker than say Angels', and the harmonies are arguably the best overall/at least on par with 2.0's and Catfights'. And are the vocals weak enough to overpower everything else happening on the album? Like the songwriting, the arrangements and the lyrics? Bad enough to warrant 0s for things as innocuous and self-contained like "Same Old Story"? I mean, it's hardly "She's A Mess"!

Even if you grant Change strong vocals, about half the album is not particularly challenging sonically or lyrically. I'm not saying nostalgia plays a factor in how One Touch was rated but it's hard to carry a torch for that long in a wilfully blind way. The album is just genuinely liked and appreciated by a range of listeners, from those with older histories with it to no history at all (a bunch of the higher scores came from self-professed newcomers to the Sugababes).

Finally, the nostalgia thing cuts both ways, since a lot of fans who came on board when Amelle was drafted (including I think you?) rated Change and Catfights much higher than the others. I dunno.
 
He/Him
I'm totally not trying to target you, since clearly you weren't the only one to rate the album so low, but are the grating vocals really it? Because on an individual level they're only a touch weaker than say Angels', and the harmonies are arguably the best overall/at least on par with 2.0's and Catfights'. And are the vocals weak enough to overpower everything else happening on the album? Like the songwriting, the arrangements and the lyrics? Bad enough to warrant 0s for things as innocuous and self-contained like "Same Old Story"? I mean, it's hardly "She's A Mess"!

Even if you grant Change strong vocals, about half the album is not particularly challenging sonically or lyrically. I'm not saying nostalgia plays a factor in how One Touch was rated but it's hard to carry a torch for that long in a wilfully blind way. The album is just genuinely liked and appreciated by a range of listeners, from those with older histories with it to no history at all (a bunch of the higher scores came from self-professed newcomers to the Sugababes).

Finally, the nostalgia thing cuts both ways, since a lot of fans who came on board when Amelle was drafted (including I think you?) rated Change and Catfights much higher than the others. I dunno.

Very succinct and well argued! Just what I have come to expect from you, @beyoncésweave
 

londonrain

Staff member
To be honest I prefer Siobhan's vocals on One Touch to anything Heidi has done since. I just think she has a more interesting and emotive voice.
 
he/him
I rated the songs as fairly as I could, I knew every album from Angels to Sweet 7 extremely well having played them on repeat over the past ten years, obviously depending on the release date. One Touch was the album I could never get into and believe me I tried ridiculously to. At one point on this forum people didn't even take you seriously if you didn't like it, discrediting your 'fandom' if you were a post Mutya fan.

That's why I enjoyed doing this rate, it felt fair in a sense that people had their own opinions on line ups and the music they brought to the table. Sorry if it sounded brash with what I said earlier @beyoncésweave , I just saw the minor comment about my 0 and snapped a little.

I am also pretty drunk and will forget everything I have posted tomorrow.
 

londonrain

Staff member
I just saw the minor comment about my 0 and snapped a little.

You were the only person out of eighty-five voters to hand this a zero, to be fair.

I do get why you don't like it (my husband got into the Sugababes from Three onwards and he once referred to One Touch as "nice background music") but it's a little hard for me to imagine anything on One Touch inspiring enough hatred to deserve a zero.
 
Say what you like about 'Change', it was classy and grown up. And even if it was more bland than I would have liked, it was worth it for 'Never Gonna Dance Again'. I want to hear Mutya's version, because I can't imagine anything topping Amelle's intro. Probably my favorite Amelle moment.
 

ohnostalgia

Staff member
She/her
Considering I heard all these albums for the first time in 2016, it has nothing to do with nostalgia. I genuinely love One Touch more than all the other albums and I don't have complaints about the vocals (which is thankfully something you didn't really have to worry much about with Sugababes- at least until the Sweet 7 debacle). This is a tragic result.
 
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