Sugababes at Glastonbury: “We were one of the first, if not the first, female pop band to play the main stage”
The Sugababes have been looking back on their past Glastonbury appearances – and in particular, their Pyramid Stage set in 2003.
Founding members Keisha Buchanan and Mutya Buena played the Pyramid Stage alongside Heidi Range, who replaced Siobhán Donaghy in 2001, before the original trio played on the Avalon Stage in 2022 after reforming.
Although they’d reclaimed the rights to their band name in 2019, the pandemic meant that their 2022 Glastonbury set was only their second gig back.
“I remember quite vividly that Mutya, in particular, didn’t think anyone would come to see us,” Donaghy told the BBC, before explaining that she walked off the stage in “shock” due to the large number of festivalgoers who did turn up.
At Glastonbury 2024, the group are on the festival’s third-biggest stage, the West Holts Stage. It’ll be Donaghy’s first time on one of the outdoor stages, as opposed to Buchanan and Buena who were there on the Pyramid Stage over two decades ago – when they were seen as a rather risky booking.
As Buchanan said, “We were one of the first, if not the first, female pop band to play the main stage. It was very controversial at the time. I remember having conversations about what to do if anyone threw a bottle of pee at us.”
Buena added, “I feel like, by then, we’d already been able to kind of cross over into different genres of music. We’d done the NME tour and the BRITs, so I felt like we’d already made a name for ourselves.”
Sugababes play the West Holts Stage tomorrow (June 28) from 16:55 to 17:55.
Check out the stage times and full line-up here, and visit here for all the latest news, reviews, photos, interviews and more from Glastonbury 2024.
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Adam England
NME
