Mutya Buena on Mental Struggles: Quitting Sugababes and Returning to Work Just Two Weeks Post-Birth

Mutya Buena has opened up about ‘suffering mentally’ before quitting the Sugababes and revealed she was forced to go back to recording just two weeks after giving birth. 

The English singer-songwriter, 40, rose to fame in 1998 at just 13 years old when she formed a third of the Sugababes alongside Siobhán Donaghy and Keisha Buchanan.

Mutya left the band in 2005 shortly after giving birth to her daughter Tahlia-May – but now she has revealed that she would have stayed if the record label gave her just a month of maternity leave. 

Doing her first ever podcast interview, Mutya revealed on Not My Baggs on Tuesday that she was forced to go back to work just two weeks after giving birth to Tahlia-May.     

‘When I left was actually at the height of our career,’ she said. ‘It was a very hard decision but at the same time, I think mentally I was suffering.’

She continued: ‘If they had just given me a month off, I probably would have stayed. I would have stayed if they’d given me a month off. But I gave birth and two weeks later went straight back into the studio and then doing the video for Push The Button.

‘I was ill when I did that, [laughs] I lost the most weight ever, but I was so ill.’

Mutya added: ‘My illness was because I was prone to catching kidney infections and having my daughter made me really sick. 

‘So I was sick and at the same time still breastfeeding at the like 5am in the morning, and in the studio and still doing videos. 

‘So we did Push The Button then flew to America to do… to New York to do Ugly. It was continuous.’

Mutya admitted she hadn’t been a fan of how the music they were putting out changed, and the straw which broke the camels back was when she heard their next single would be a song she didn’t like. 

‘Then I heard the next single was going to be Red Dress,’ she began. ‘I was like this is it, I’m not doing this no more. 

‘That bothered me because I was like “What are we even talking about in this song?”.’

It comes after Mutya admitted how she was ‘forced to pull herself together’ for the sake of her daughter as she struggled with drugs and alcohol at height of her fame. 

Speaking in an interview, ahead of the release of her tell-all autobiography, she detailed her intense partying that left her ‘popping antidepressants like crazy’ and banning herself from visiting Ibiza for fears she would ‘die there.’

Mutya, who famously left the band a few months after the birth of her daughter Tahlia-May, now 20, in 2005, recalled how her birth forced her to make changes. 

She told The Times: ‘Having her was the best thing for me. I’ve had to pull myself together – I don’t want my daughter to see me as a drunk, taking drugs. 

‘I want to be someone that she can turn to at all times, and be proud of.’ 

Mutya said how in the years prior she found herself getting ‘a bit out of control’ and was often ‘buzzed’ off booze on daytime TV. 

The extent of her partying forced her to impose a ban on visiting Ibiza, ‘I felt like there was a real possibility that it was the place I was going to die,’ she admitted. 

The singer’s new book, called Real Girl is named after her 2007 solo album and her single of the same name which reached number 2 in the charts. 

In the publication she writes about her health struggles and incidents in her personal life which have so far been unknown to her fans. 

Mutya was part of the original line-up of the Sugababes with Keisha Buchanan and Siobhan Donaghy.

Siobhan left the group in 2001 and was replaced with Heidi Range with Mutya leaving four years later.

Keisha – the last original member – then left the group in 2009 and was replaced by former Eurovision entrant Jade Ewan. The group split two years later.

The original members reunited in 2019 and have since sold out The O2, shut down Glastonbury stages twice due to demand and performed to record breaking crowds at European gigs.