RIP The Sugababes

They were a three-piece pop group whose platinum-selling albums put a new spin on post-millennial British pop. True, the Island group never quite managed to crack the US market, but to their UK fans, the trio's massive string of hits was quite enough to be getting on with, thank you very much. And better still, they pulled it all off without the crutch of a reality show.
Still, enough about Busted, because today's Sugababes news is far more exciting: founding member Keisha Buchanan has been unceremoniously booted out of the lineup. Her place has been taken by this year's Eurovision entrant Jade Ewen who, until recently, was looking at a solo career with Polydor (in fact, her rather good launch single My Man was only released yesterday). Buchanan, meanwhile, remains signed to Island.
This is all great news for the Statlers and Waldorfs of the pop commentary world – those self-appointed "pop experts" who snootily pass judgment on the comings and goings of mainstream pop without ever dirtying their ears by actually listening to the stuff. They've been hooting on about the band's lineup changes since Heidi Range first joined the band, replacing Siobhan Donaghy, at the start of the decade. But as long as one member of the original team remained, there was something brilliant about the Sugababes. Even when Mutya Buena left, taking her phenomenal vocals with her, the Sugababes still made sense.
Today, of course, they make no sense at all. It is one lineup change too many, and moves the band from a clever shape-shifting pop force into a total laughing stock. There are questions that need answers, and the answers will no doubt come thick and fast when Buchanan takes to promoting her solo material. What role, for example, did the band's management and record label play in these decisions? Was there any truth that Amelle Berrabah was due for the boot? And did Buchanan's own attempts to eject a member backfire catastrophically, leading to a coup? And what of the rather odd arrival of Ewen, whose former label, Polydor, paid for her to record an entire album and then paid even more to start marketing it?
That's all some way off. In the more immediate future expect some undignified scenes over the next few months, during which Range, Berrabah and Ewen (let's not call them Sugababes) traipse around the country attempting to flog a hastily re-recorded version of Sweet 7, the album due for release on 23 November.
It is a rather miserable, undignified end to a band who fell together at school, made their name with a sophisticated pop sound and achieved what they did with a rare class. Pop which is invented in order to be a brand is often unpleasant. But Sugababes made pop whose values and attitudes were strong enough to inadvertently create a brand. Theirs was smart, British, soulful pop, occasionally arty but always melodic, lush and a cut above most of the rest.
However, their last single, Get Sexy, pushed the band in a different direction: a soul-free, sex-led, moronically-lyriced attempt to chase an American electronic R&B sound which sounded brilliant, but jettisoned any semblance of what made many fall in love with the band.
Today the Sugababes don't exist as a band, and after Get Sexy they don't really exist as a sound either. If this new girl group before us today is to have any future at all, and Ewen, Berrabah and Range do actually make a great three-piece, it must find a new name. Sugababes died when Buchanan left.

- Peter Robinson for 'The Guardian'