Catfights & Spotlights by the Sugababes

With the popularity of the first five albums and the notorious reputation of the last album, it’s a shame that the sixth album of the Sugababes is so overshadowed. It may not have sold as well as the previous five albums, but it’s pleasant album to listen to because I love the 60’s vibes to it and the ballads are lovely. The album does have some weak links, mostly the singles for me because I’m not too keen on them much. The Sugababes have had a fair few flop singles, but they’ve always seemed to bounce back up afterwards.

I think the reason I started to dislike Girls was because of how overplayed it was back in the day. I used to hear the Boots advert all the time and it would bore me to tears. It’s a shame out of all the songs they picked as a follow-up single to this they picked No Can Do. As a song it’s okay, I don’t care for it very much, but the music video is kinda cool. I wish they picked another song as a single.

My personal choice would have been Every Heart Broken but I can see the theme not being appopriate for normal radio show. It’s a song about a woman asking for mercy in the chorus and in the verses and middle eight she goes through how each of the eight boys meet their sticky ends. I love the orchestral feel to it.

The Sound of Goodbye has a nice universal appeal to it. I love the chorus and production on it. Heidi sounds so good on this record, but on Sweet 7, she hardly sings and when she does she sounds tired or drowned in auto tune.

Another good choice of a single would have been Unbreakable Heart or Call A Truce. I think Unbreakable Heart captures the sound of the third line-up wonderfully and so does Call A Truce. It’s jus a shame that as many strong links there are with the album, there are also a few weak links as well.

I already said I wasn’t too keen on the choice of singles, but there’s a few of the album tracks that don’t sit right with me. The reworked version of Taio Cruz’s star feels out of place with the album. I find it hard to listen to Hanging On A Star because it feels like a juvenile mess, also not keen on the vocal performance on that track. Though on the other tracks, the vocal performances are great most of the time. I love Keisha’s middle 8 in Girls, even though I hate the actual song. The album ends with an acoustic version of About You Now. It’s nice, I guess, but I feel like it’s riding off the success of About You Now.

Catfights & Spotlights has it’s highs and lows, but I do think it’s a nice album with some gorgous tracks. At the same time, I do feel there are so autobiographical moments and a play of words in the title. You can kinda feel there are cracks going on between the band. It’s easy to say it’s because Mutya isn’t in the band anymore, but there was a big drop in quality when Mutya left. Amelle had big boots to fill when Mutya left because she left a big footprint in the British music industry.

This is a nice album, but there are some songs that you can skip. I think the second half of the album is so much better than the first. I thought it was lazy of the label to release the first two songs of the album and just ride on the success of the past.