To Tell You The Truth…
by Paul Tierney
music
Mutya Beuna speaks openly to Ponystep on Celebrity Big Brother, being 'disrespected' by Keisha and opening for Prince...
Mutya Buena flutters into the Mayfair Hotel like an exotic pop butterfly, high of heel and scarlet of wing, all smiles and breathless apologies for her negligible lateness. She’s dressed like she means business - striding into the bar on perilously high dominatrix boots, wearing diamante-studded leggings and the kind of blingular D&G belt Ali G would sell his mother for. Groups of business diners crane their necks as she glimmers by, trying to work out who this fascinating little creature might be. And she is quite head turning. Covered in more tattoos than Robert De Niro in Cape Fear, including the word ‘Princess’ scrawled around the side of her neck, Mutya’s ink is body-art as statement and certainly not for the feint-hearted of Green Park. With a plunging décolleté the ‘boys’ are on display for all to see, and – as if compensating for her height (she is tiny) - hair, nails, even her eyelashes all benefit from a touch of salon lengthening. No believer in restraint, that’s for certain, yet there’s a sultry, comedy glamour about this girl’s excesses that is quite compelling and very true to herself. At the request of the photographer she is suddenly lying on a couch, arching her eyebrow into the lens and twitching that studded nose (a self-confessed nervous habit) like some ghetto-fabulous princess. She looks great, obviously. She is also immensely charming.
Of course, you all know Mutya from her time as ‘the bitch’ in the Sugababes, but she’s been forging her own path for some time now and is keen to leave all that behind. Her recent solo album, Real Girl, didn’t perform as well as it might, but it did contain the genius Song 4 Mutya, and she did get to duet with George Michael, which she maintains was a definite career high. Still, record companies are nothing if not brutal to the underperforming and she’s now currently without a label. It’s hard being a baby diva in 2009, so back in January she entered the Celebrity Big Brother house in, one imagines, a naïve attempt to ‘be herself’. However, after 16 days she walked out, citing stress and concerns about being away from her young daughter. The tabloids were all for making something out of nothing, and headlines ran about ‘nervous breakdowns’ and sexual harassment from washed-up rapper Coolio, but that doesn’t seem to be on her mind today. Instead she orders a mozzarella salad and a Bellini. Oh, and a double vodka red Bull for good measure.
Paul Tierney: Can we talk about those nails.
Mutya Buena: “Oh my God. They were a lot longer, but I started going to the gym and my trainer said I had to cut them down. Now I need to go back and get them long and colourful and pretty again. To tell you the truth, I’ve been having nail extensions since I was about eleven. I think I was inspired by a lot of the American artists I used to watch, like SWV and Escape. Coco from SWV had really long natural nails that curled over. I’ve always been fascinated by nails.”
PT: You’re from Kingsbury in north-west London, aren’t you? That area doesn’t have a great reputation.
MB: “There’s a lot of culture going on in north-west London - a lot of talent, but recently with the whole guns and knife crime stuff it has made it look bad. But in every area you’re always gonna find individuals who crave attention in that way.”
PT: Have you been around people who carry knives?
MB: “I’ve seen a lot, but I wouldn’t go around talking about it because it’s not fascinating to people. I know a lot of people who have been involved in knife crime and gun crime. I know about it, but I don’t want to involve myself in it. I try to stay away from it.”
PT: You’re a mum now, though. It must worry you that your daughter’s being brought up in that environment.
MB: “Yeah, every day’s a worry, but because I know that if I’m not with her I’ve got friends and family who are looking after her, I feel a lot more secure.”
PT: You had your daughter really young, when you were nineteen. What was that like?
MB: “I didn’t plan it, but I don’t regret it. She’s done me so much justice. She’s made me a better person. I’ve grown up a lot quicker, and she’s made me realise what’s important and what’s not important. It’s helped me out a lot. I know that for a fact, so for me personally it’s just been a blessing.”
PT: You started your career really young too. Even before the Sugababes you were on Michael Barrymore’s My Kind Of People, weren’t you?
MB: “God, I was about seven or eight years old! First of all I went to Whiteley’s shopping centre, then I got called back. I can’t really remember much about it to be honest. It was a one off thing really and didn’t mean that much.”
PT: But who told you you could sing? Or did you just know?
MB: “When I was about six, in my Dad’s Filipino community, I used to do a lot of dancing, but I used to sing as well. Gradually, whenever there used to be a party or something they used to ask for me to be there. Then it became one of those things: ‘can Mutya come and sing?’ “
PT: And then the Sugababes thing happened. Do you ever get sick of talking about your time in the group?
MB: “Yeah, I do get sick and tired of it, but it’s my roots, that’s where I came from. It can be quite annoying, just because it seems so long ago.”
PT: What do you think of the girl who replaced you?
MB: “It seemed like a really immediate thing, didn’t it? And she’s not that far removed from me, is she? I was pretty upset. Just because I said to my manager at that time, if you’re gonna replace me with somebody, please replace me with somebody completely totally opposite from me. Just because, obviously, I worked so hard with the Sugababes that I would like to be recognised as somebody who did a lot for them.”
PT: Are they flogging a dead horse now?
MB: “The funny thing is, to tell you the truth I don’t even know what they’re doing right now. I don’t keep in contact with the girls so I don’t now what’s new or what’s not. I’m the type of person that gets on with my life and moves on. I can’t keep standing still and watching everybody else.”
PT: I prefer the really early stuff, like One Touch
MB: “Oh my God, that first album, One Touch was the best album we ever did, just because it was so raw. It wasn’t perfect, we didn’t tune up the vocals; we just went into the studio and put it out. It was real. Even to this day I sit at home and listen to it. I have very good memories of that time.”
PT: Sitting here talking to you now, you seem really nice, but the press have always made you out to be such a bitch.
MB: “It isn’t fair, and it is quite annoying to be known as a bitch. But I’ve moved on from how I was. When I was sixteen, other girls would give me dirty looks all day long. But that was when I was sixteen – I’m twenty-three going on twenty-four now. I’ve got a child and I live by myself. It’s just me and my daughter now. I’m very independent, and I’m so far from removed from that bitch person that I’m meant to be. However, I think the press judge me as though I’m still that little girl.”
PT: I think it spread from all those horrible rumours that you and Keisha bullied Siobhan. It just seemed like a really uncomfortable situation.
MB: “It’s quite funny because me and Siobhan are still friends and we’ve never ever not been friends.”
PT: What about Keisha, do you still speak to her?
“No, I don’t. Just because I’ve got my reasons. I like real people. I like people that are going to tell me real things and are not going to lie behind my back. I’m a very straightforward person. If I’ve heard something, or I’ve seen it for myself then I know I can’t be friends with that person, that’s how I am. And that’s not just with Keisha that could be with anyone. Me and her were close but she disrespected me in the wrong way. She was an adult, she knew what she was saying, so you’ve got to take the consequences.”
PT: What about Heidi? She doesn’t seem like she’s got a bad bone in her body.
MB: “I got along with Heidi really well to tell you the truth, I’m not going to lie. Me and her became quite close. I think where we went wrong is, when I left the Sugababes it became all quite bitchy and there was a lot of talking behind my back. But I had my daughter to think about and I had my career to think about, so I didn’t have time to be backtracking myself with people who haven’t got anything better to do than to keep mentioning my name just to keep them going. I mean, they had a new member, so why does my name keep having to be brought up? It did kind of annoy me, but you’ve never heard me say one bad thing about the girls in the press. I’ve got nothing good to say, and I’ve got nothing bad to say.”
PT: You just bite your lip?
MB: “Right. People can say what they like about me, but if I hear my daughter’s name mentioned, that’s another matter!”
PT: Did you see Sharon Osbourne decking that girl on American TV for daring to badmouth Ozzie?
MB: “I feel the same way. Diss me, but not my family.”
PT: Being a solo artist must be a relief in some ways, but also quite scary I should imagine?
MB: “It was tough, and to tell you the truth there’s so many talented young female artists out there right now. No matter how good my voice is or whatever, you need a lot of money and time and effort to put into artists to make them number one these days. But to tell you the truth, I don’t go out there to gain money or to gain attention; I go out there because I love singing. If I was told to just sing in a jazz café every Thursday I’d be happy.”
PT: Okay, Big Brother. Did you do it to clear the air and give the public a proper perception of you? Or was the money just irresistible?
MB” No, my main reason was that I just wanted a new experience. It took me months and months to decide whether I should do it or not and the day I was going in I nearly changed my mind. I’m so close to my family and friends that to be away from them is hard. And not to have contact with my baby – she was constantly on my mind.”
PT: But ultimately, being separated from her forced you to quit in the end, right?
MB: “I just thought, right, I’ve done two weeks and felt like I’d achieved what I need to achieve. I lived without money or my phone or proper food – so it made me realise how grateful I should be for certain things.”
PT: Did you learn anything else about yourself?
MB: “Yeah, I did. I learnt that I can deal with things, that I can sit down and think about a situation with out jumping into it. Being in the house you’ve got plenty of time to think about things. You lie in bed at night thinking, Shit, what’s gonna happen in my life after this?”
PT: It must be the most surreal experience. I mean playing ‘foot piano’ with Latoya Jackson, dressed up as Widow Twanky is not an everyday occurrence.
MB: “She’s such a beautiful woman. At first I didn’t know what to do with myself, I mean I was thinking, God this is Latoya Jackson, Michael Jackson’s sister! But me and her clicked alright, she was really nice to me and we had some nice little conversations. She’s someone I’d like to keep in contact with, not because of who she is, but just because she’s such a lovely woman.”
PT: What was the deal with Coolio? The News of The World were stoking up all kinds of sleaze.
MB: “It was all rubbish. It annoyed me because it made out like I was trying to make myself look good and him look bad. I never said anything bad about him. I find it really funny because I know guys that are much worse then him. It’s not hard to tell a guy to fuck off – you just tell ‘em. That’s why when Coolio tried it on with me I just laughed. I know guys who, if you told them to fuck off, they would punch you. He was so harmless it was unbelievable. That’s why I’m still talking to him now.”
PT: That’s quite a look you’re working today, are you going out somewhere later?
MB: “Yeah, me and my mate are going to Heaven. We love heaven. They play R & B tonight and I know quite a lot of people who are going to be there. I quite like fashion but I like to do my own thing. I have my own style.”
PT: You seem to play with your image all the time – especially your hair.
MB: “I think my hair and my nails are my main thing – I like to update them on a regular basis. But clothes-wise I really want to try that ‘funky-fresh’ look, you know? My sister’s really into it – the brightly coloured scarves, the big chain ropes, and big pink glasses with hearts on them. It’s quite loud, quite 80s – shiny leggings, shiny little plimsoll shoes. I really want to try that but because I’m so short I always end up in heels.”
PT: It’s a shame the Real Girl album didn’t do better.
MB: “Yeah, I expected my first album to do a lot better, but I also knew there was an awful lot of competition. I reckon some people have got it better than others, and that’s how it goes.”
PT: The thing is though, even if it all ended tomorrow, you’ve achieved so much already: countless number ones, being part of one of the most successful girl groups of all time, amazing collaborations…
MB: “Every day is a blessing for me, and even more so when I’m working with such amazing people. George Michael for instance: great artist, great singer, great person. There are four people on his greatest hits album: Mary J Blige, Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, and me!”
PT: And you worked with Prince too!
MB: “Yeah, he asked me to open his shows at the O2. I remember walking backstage towards the dressing room and there was this little guy there who I nearly bumped into, and it was Prince. He said, ‘Hi, I’m a really big fan of yours and I want to sing one of your songs with you at the after party later’. Unfortunately, I had to leave straight after the gig so (sigh) it never happened. But I know someone who works for him and she told me that there’s a picture of me on his computer desktop. Isn’t that crazy?”
Source:
http://www.ponystep.com/article/ToTellYouTheTruth_280.aspx