Back in the days when Ears To The House was a one-man band – indeed, before this site was even called Ears To The House – we published an article about how Mutya Buena of Sugababes fame was seemingly being kept a distance away from a release she was involved with. Buena herself subsequently got in touch, and she wasn’t happy with our cantankerous editor.

With this site’s offer of a right of reply declined, we considered the matter closed – but it might not be for much longer. Last week, Mixmag published a feature as gushing as it was long, whilst also managing to say very little of any value – a talent lots of writers in the music business possess in abundance.

In it, we’re told all kinds of things about how the Sugababes are “dominating dancefloors” and “asserting their credentials in the contemporary club scene”. And in a scene that’s far too keen to look backwards than it ever has been forwards, this nostalgia trip for a fairly mediocre early 2000s girl group is easily explained.

What isn’t so successfully explained in the puff piece is exactly why “dance music has always been a part of the Sugababes”. They also don’t get around to clearing up why a supposedly underground dance music publication like Mixmag are writing about the group – but our expectations are never high when it comes to the dance music press.

So allow us to fill in the gap in their starstruck absence. Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, getting tracks as high up as possible in the charts mattered to the majors – and they used every tactic they could to do it. One such strategy was to create club-friendly remixes of pop songs, with the vinyl sales of these versions also being counted towards the overall final position each week.

Many of the names we know well in the dance music world rose through the ranks reworking such material – David Morales, Full Intention, and Armand Van Helden, to name but three. Indeed, the aforementioned Full Intention contributed a vocal version and dub to “Hole In The Head”, a release by the Sugababes themselves towards the end of 2003.

There are several other examples – London duo Different Gear provided a darker take on their 2002 cover of “Freak Like Me”, whilst Dave Lee used his old Joey Negro moniker for a remix of “Soul Sound” the previous year. Elsewhere, “Too Lost In You” made the clubs due to a quartet of producers called Kujay Dada turning it into this…

It’s a bit strange when Ears To The House has to fill in the gaps left by puff pieces elsewhere, isn’t it?