When girl bands go solo, it’s always a bit cringe-worthy and embarrassing, I mean, we expect them to fall flat on their faces and drop straight off of the pedal stool they’re swinging on into a crumbling mess on the floor. So when the British Garage/R&B crew Mis-Teeq (who were undoubtedly the coolest trio of 1999) broke up in 2005 and Alesha Dixon went solo… I for one was expecting to never hear from Su-Elise Nash and Sabrina Washington again.

Now, five years after the break up Sabrina Washington is back and this time she’s doing it solo. Every girl band has their bitch fights, their power struggles and their personal problems, if you want the fame you’ve got to play the game but did the media over exaggerate the reasons for the split, or were there genuinely problems within the three?

“Mis-Teeq were constantly busy and on the roads and after seven years, when it boiled down to it and we all sat down and decided what direction we wanted to go in, I was happy for us to split up because to be honest I was just knackered and tired of always living out of a suitcase” says Sabrina, and rightly so. If I were a teenager with three successful albums under my belt yet never solo in the spotlight I would have packed up my suitcase too! “I understood compromise you know, being in a group of three girls you always have to compromise and I needed to find time to be me and work out what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go. I didn’t have a chance to spread my wings at the time but being in a girl group was something I’d wanted to do since I was a little girl. As I got older our musical directions had changed, so it was just the natural progression” she humbly claims.

Even from the offset of the conversation I’m having with Sabrina I can sense the excitement she’s experiencing and the drive within her about her new project. Her attitude towards the break-up isn’t bitter, as I’d expected. I wondered where this new rush of hope had come from after such a long break and whether fame had taken its toll on her on such a young age. “I loved everything that came with the fame but I needed to get out of the industry and do nothing. I sat on the sofa for the first couple of weeks, just being with family and getting used to everyday life, watching Eastenders and just pigging out” she reminisces. This is where my jealousy is allowed to kick in. Being able to sit comfortably on enough money to be a couch potato for a while has got be the best feeling EVAH (no typo)! “I brought property actually and rented some flats” she laughs, “I’ve got ten god children and I missed them so much. I had a boyfriend at the time as well”.  I add my little two pence there, asking whether boyfriends had anything to do with the Mis-Teeq split: “My boyfriend didn’t have much to do with it honestly” she laughs, “I’m not with him anymore but it was more just for myself than anyone else.” Yeah yeah Sab… that’s what they all say…

We talk for a while about general things, her want for a big family of her own, five children to be exact, lord help her when she’s trying to push them out (adoption is going to be my best friend when I’m ready for kids. The thought of labour is ewwww). I think to myself how hard and scary it must be to completely start again relationship wise let alone career wise. Evidently the day I split with my boyfriend Ice-cream, pizza, movies and calling-into-work-sick became a regular occurrence. She seems positive about having kids later in life but is focusing on her career for now, describing her way forward as a ‘clean palette’.

With all this said, I’m not entirely convinced. What’s the difference between her life as an artist then and what her life is going to be like now that she’s solo? Being the investigator that I am, I begin to think there’s more to the story than she’s letting on. I dig a tiny bit further into Sabs life now and how she feels about being in competition with Alesha Dixon who appears to be in a constant battle with the media and the UK charts. Her view is that everyone is competition but I don’t want to know about everyone, I want a bit of dirt on her versus Alesha… “It’s so easy for people to say it’s competition, but it’s not competition between us personally cause the three of us [Mis-Teeq] have shared something that no one else can ever share or experience. We’re always going to have a tight bond, no one can break that”.

This was like a ‘get the violins out’ moment, but I knew she was being genuine with this. I couldn’t help but ask if there was going to be a collab with Alesha though. Humbly and with little hesitation she replies that she’s happy to do her own thing for the time being, “but you never know”. No, we don’t Sabrina, sorry guys you’re not about to see these two lovely ladies shaking their thang together on your TV screens any time soon!

I delve into her relationship with music. “It’s weird when you’re a musician, you kind of have a love hate relationship with music”. She explains the feeling of not wanting to be anywhere near music the day she left Mis-Teeq, removing stereos and CDs from her house and falling out of love with music. This is where I see a different side to Sabrina, the human side of every artist who becomes a brand. “I didn’t want to hear music for a while. I had to let it go first to get my love for it back”. She laughs when remembering the day she made the decision to start listening to music again. “I started playing music over and over again. I was constantly experimenting and then I made a sound that I knew was exactly what I wanted to make”.

I’m totally hyperventilating at this point. A life without music. Meh? And I’m not even an artist. Mis-Teeq had everyone hooked, and not only to their sound. Every girl wanted to be like them, sing like them, have attitude like them and dress like them. Well, When I say “every girl” I obviously mean me and my primary school ‘crew’ who used to dress in belly tops and re-make the dance in the ‘Why” video. It dawns on me how much Sabrina wanted to break out of the industry and how needed the break she took was. She explains that she wants people to realise that she’s not a little girl anymore, that she’s grown up (think Britney Spears) and that she shouldn’t be compared to how she was in Mis-Teeq. I find it hard to believe that people won’t compare her and I ask her what she’s done to ensure she’ll not be tarnished with the memory of the outfits she wore in 1999. “Hopefully cause I’ve been out of the scene for so long people will look at me differently. It’s taken time for me to grow and I want people to appreciate that. I’m scared about being solo of course I am, I always had the girls around me. But as scared as I am I’m equally excited and my sound now isn’t like what it was back then so people should see that this is the grown and fresh Sabrina”.

Admittedly her new single “Oh My Gosh (OMG)” resembles a Lady Gaga type sound with an urban attitude and an electro chart vibe. At such a healthy time for UK music is her return anything to do with wanting to chart? She explains what she went through in the studio trying to create the right sound experimenting day after day and I’m satisfied that she’s comfortable with the sound of the new single.

As the conversation draws to a close we chat about her time on the ITV show “I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here”. She speaks excitedly about confronting some of her biggest fears whilst being on the show: “I was terrified of flying on an aeroplane; I’d make sure I didn’t sleep the night before just so I can sleep on the journey”. I laugh at this, thinking about the amount of times she’s had to fly overseas on tour in her earlier life. “It’s not funny” she laughs, “I was so terrified and then on I’m A Celeb they made me jump out of a plane with a parachute! Looking back on it now it was the best experience and it fought my fear of flying.” Rather her than me mate. You’d have to pay me a mill a day to get me to fling myself out a plane! Mamma didn’t raise no fool!

I felt as though I’d really gotten to know the real Sabrina Washington and I was surprised at how open and lovely she is. The media portrayed her to me as a bit stuck up and a bit of a diva but other then asking for cushions on a plane to make her comfortable enough to travel I can’t imagine her being a diva in any other way. I finish the call excited for her journey. The determination surrounding her is refreshing and fun and I wish her all the best for her first solo single out 22^nd March. She told me the album isn’t anything too serious and it’s just her having fun being Sabrina, which after a 20 minute natter with her, is exactly what I want to hear when I get my always manicured hands on it… Sabrina Washing, being Sabrina Washington.

Her single “OMG” is released on 15th March on her own label sWash. Not Ca$h Money as the recent net hype would have you believe…!

Toodles.
Sian x