Single Review: Sugababes - Jungle

As a long time Sugababes fan, I am so proud of them. Not just that they are still going, but that they are still growing. Because “Jungle” is a step forward for the Sugababes. And it’s a step that previous iterations of the group tried to make, but stumbled with. NOT THIS TIME, BITCH.

Throughout the iterations of the Sugababes, the group has been trying to give us some type of version of “Jungle”, from as far back as “Angels With Dirty Faces”, but they were never quite able to land it. Each time felt as though the Sugababes were trying to conform and fit into the template of other girl groups, whose looks and sounds were more glossy and ‘glamorous’, and that just wasn’t who the Sugababes were back then. And I also don’t think that’s what fans or the general public wanted from the Sugababes. A huge part of the Sugababes’ charm and why people loved them is precisely because they weren’t like all of the other girl groups. So to see them try and become that was jarring. There was something so grounded and quintessentially UK about the Sugababes’ approach and their sound, and pivot away from this musically is what made the Sweet 7 album such a complete mess, more so than the sudden departure of Keisha — it completely lost sight of what the Sugababes was supposed to be in every sense. They tried to Americanise the Sugababes, which robbed them of their identity.

“Jungle” strikes the right balance of feeling like something new for the Sugababes, but still within the scope of something which feels Sugababesy. Especially after The Lost Tapes and songs such as “Drum”. It has the gloss you’d expect from a girl group and a sound that makes it work for now, but it doesn’t feel like it is trying so hard to tick boxes — and THIS is what makes it a good Sugababes song. It’s the effortlessness of the execution. There is no sense of it being a calculated choice or an attempt to appeal to a particular market. It’s just the Sugababes being the Sugababes in a way which makes sense for them now.

“Jungle” is fire. But I do have one big ol’ gripe with it and it’s a gripe which has become all too frequent and common over the past few years in music — the song is too damn short. “Jungle” really needed a bridge section and a cute little breakdown to shake ass to.

My second gripe isn’t really a gripe at all, but more of a ‘That’s strange’ — the mixing of the vocals. Mutya, Keisha and Siobhan’s vocals sound as though they each recorded their verses separately on different mics and each was mixed differently by a different person. Mixing different voices on a song differently is a very normal thing. Everybody sings differently. Maybe different vocals were recorded in different places on different mics. There are a million and one reasons to not mix different voices the same way. But the difference in mixing between Mutya, Keisha and Siobhan on “Jungle” is really obvious to me. And there are even instances where it feels like certain lines were comped / slotted in, but not mixed to match the lines sung either side of it. This is really obvious when Keisha sings the line ‘All of these hours wasted, acting civilised’, where ‘acting civilised’ sounded like it was re-sung, but not mixed the same way as ‘All of these hours wasted’. This all seems hyper specific and won’t be something a lot of people will even notice. But y’all. This is how I listen to music. And it’s shit like this that my ears and brain pick up on, then fixates on. So it’s hard for me to listen to “Jungle” and not hear these sorts of things. And it also doesn’t help that “Jungle” feels very segmented and we don’t get moments of all of the ‘babes singing together. And this issue of mixing also carries through into the live performances of “Jungle”, where each one I’ve heard has had terrible mixing. It’s very odd. But thankfully, the catchiness of the hook and the slickness of the production carries the song.

Sugababes - Jungle | Sugababes

One of the cool things about the Sugababes from the beginning is that they never felt like a group of the time. Their style and their sound felt like it could be dropped into any decade and work — which was cemented when the Mutya Keisha Siobhan material leaked. It was the Sugababes doing classic Sugababes shit and it was still hitting in 2015, which was so reassuring to me as a fan. It was proof that the Sugababes’ original sound and vibe could exist in any time. And that despite the landscape of music changing, the Sugababes could still work and make sense within it. And now “Jungle” comes along and is like ‘Told ya bitch’. It’s very reassuring after their 2023 single “When the Rain Comes”, which was a nice song, but kinda boring and now what I think fans wanted from the Sugababes.

From a commercial standpoint, “Jungle” isn’t just great for UK radio, but global airplay. “Jungle” manages to feel very London and UK in vibe, but also global in a way that Craig David’s music was when it first hit. And ‘global’ has a different connotation in music now, given that we are now in a time when African music and K-pop is charting around the world in ways they weren’t before. You could plug a Korean girl group into “Jungle” and it would work as a K-pop song, especially with Siobhan’s rap verse. You could plug an African artist into “Jungle” and it could work as a song from the continent. You could fling an American girl group into the song and it works as a glossy girl group pop song. But despite this, in the hands of the Sugababes, it still feels like a Sugababes song — a testament to what they bring to the table.

“Jungle” is some real good shit. It’s just too damn short.

---

💿 Album reviews: Sugababes 2.0 Angels with Dirty Faces | Three | Sugababes 3.0 Change | Catfights and Spotlights | Sugababes 4.0 Sweet 7 | Sugababes The Lost Tapes