The Alan Sugababes

The Sugababes are back, except they're not. But they are. If you hadn't heard the Sugababes have gone and sacked founding member Keisha Buchanan. “That's not unusual” I hear you cry, “the Sugababes always replace members” well, yes. But this time it's different; Keisha was the only original member left in the band she formed, over ten years ago, with Mutya and some other girl no one really remembers, but she wasn't Heidi, which matters all of a sudden. This is brilliant because it has opened up all manner of debate over the authenticity of pop music, and has seen some brilliant hand wringing from muso types harping on how music has 'no soul' and that as it was Keisha's band they should quit- The Sugababes have become a soulless corporate production with an endless treadmill of desperate wannabes, kind of like The Apprentice. I don't agree with any of this. I think it's ace. Pop music has never been authentic – Pat Boon sang Little Richard records and Elvis had blonde hair! All that's happened is that 3 reasonably pretty girls with nice voices have replaced three less reasonably pretty girls with nice voices, it's not the end of the world. It's only a name, if Mika was Mika by any other name would he still be as shit? Yes. Names are meaningless, and the fact they have kept the Sugabaes name only means it will be much easier to search for any new songs they produce on Spotify. Far from being the final corporate nail in the music industry, I think we should embrace this as the next evolution in how the public digests music. For instance, there's too many bands as there is, who can really tell the difference between Fall Out Boy and Panic at the Disco? No one, not even their mums. We should turn music into a league based competition like football. Each Genre of music should have a league table with 12 bands who then go head to head over a season with results based on downloads and sales and number of tracks released, this way everyone gets to keep up with music as it's the same bands, there's far less copycat acts producing mindless disco-pap and music becomes generally interesting again as you support your band over everyone elses. You could even introduce transfer windows- imagine in the off season: “Following the disappointment of their last Album U2 have signed Jay Z! Or: “In an effort to combat accusations that their play is boring Coldplay have signed funk master Prince!” It would be awesome,and you know it. And we should thank the Sugababes, whatever Jayne, Deborah and Mary make them up.