Shiny & New Turns 2: #19 "Freak Like Me" - Sugababes

"Boy you're moving kinda slow / You gotta keep up now / There you go / That's just something that a man must do"

Aside from “Freak Like Me” being quite clearly one of the finest pop songs ever to be laid down, it actually isn’t a Sugababes song whatsoever. The positively filthy lyrics are taken from Adina Howard’s original “Freak Like Me”, while the spine-shiver-inducing backing track is lifted from Gary Numan’s “Are Friends Electric?”. The only remotely Sugababes thing about it is the voices which give life to the lyrics. These points forgotten, the melding of the lyrics and music paired with the husky voices of three council estate tarts creates a completely mainstream pop song which manages to sound entirely underground and hypnotic in a nightclub environment. The bass is mesmerising, the chorus elates and the sound is devastatingly fresh today, nine years after its release.

I first heard this song when I was 11 years old and remember driving my sister up the wall refusing to listen to any other track on Angels with Dirty Faces (an excellent pop album) – nine years later, it holds new resonance as a symbol of the seemingly omnipresent throwaway quality of the Sugababes. Already onto their second line up, this song, in my opinion their finest ever, is made from two components from two very un-Sugababes tracks, mashed up by a separate producer. Nine years later, only one member of the “Freak Like Me” line up remains, herself not even an original member. They were, are and always will be record label constructs and mannequins, but I have to thank for them for helping provide a genuine 21st century pop classic. I miss Mutya.