Sugababes announce their self-titled album, out Feb. 12, 2027, the original trio’s first since ‘One Touch’ in 2000, led by single ‘Ghost’
Three teenagers from north-west London started the Sugababes in 1998. Over the following decade the group replaced every one of them, one at a time, until the band touring under the name shared no members with the band that made the records. On Wednesday (Sept. 24), the original three announced their second album together. It arrives 26 years after the first.
Sugababes, self-titled and due Feb. 12, 2027 via Sacred Three/The Orchard, is the first record from Mutya Buena, Keisha Buchanan and Siobhán Donaghy since their 2000 debut One Touch. It runs 12 tracks. Lead single “Ghost” landed alongside the announcement with a video.
“We knew from the beginning that we didn’t want to rush this record,” the group said in a statement, explaining that the more the songs came together, the clearer it became there was only one possible title. “It feels unmistakably us.”
The Name Was the Whole Fight
The self-titling is not a shrug. It is a claim, and understanding why requires the back story.
Donaghy left after One Touch and was replaced by Heidi Range. Buena departed in December 2005, with Amelle Berrabah stepping in. In September 2009, Buchanan, the last founding member standing after eleven years, was replaced by Jade Ewen. By the time Sweet 7 arrived in 2010, the Sugababes contained no Sugababes. The group went on hiatus in 2011.
The original three regrouped as Mutya Keisha Siobhán, released “Flatline” through Polydor in 2013 to modest returns, then stalled again. What followed was slower and less glamorous than a reunion tour: a legal and commercial campaign to get the name back, which they finally won in 2019. They reissued One Touch for its 20th anniversary in 2021, released the unearthed The Lost Tapes in 2022, and began playing under the Sugababes banner again.
Buchanan told The Guardian in 2023 that the comeback was “way more than just a financial thing,” framing it instead as restoring what was meant to be. Put a band’s own name on the cover after fighting that long to own it, and the gesture reads clearly enough.
What 26 Years Sounds Like
The record is not a heritage exercise. The press materials point to garage on “Modern Love”, amapiano on “After All,” dance on “Scorpio” and orchestral arrangements on “Love Language,” a spread that suggests a group treating the reunion as a starting point rather than a reward.
“Ghost” stays closer to home, in the R&B-pop register that made them, built around the feeling of wanting out of a relationship and being unable to actually leave. It was co-written with Jon Shave, who has worked with Charli xcx, and Wayne Hector, whose credits run from Westlife to Tate McRae. The tracklist also gathers up the independent singles the trio released in 2025: “Jungle,” “Weeds” and “Shook.”
Even the packaging closes a loop. The cover was photographed by Liz Collins, who shot One Touch a quarter of a century ago.
The audience did not have to be rebuilt from scratch. Their Glastonbury sets in 2022 and 2024 drew crowds large enough to become their own news stories, and a meaningful share of those crowds were too young to remember “Overload” the first time. The Sugababes catalog, particularly that eerie, minimal early UK garage-adjacent run, has aged into something closer to canon.
Which is the strange gift of the lost decades. A group that spent them watching its name get passed around now returns with the only thing that was ever really theirs. The songs, and the name on the cover.
