9780857506849

Real Girl mutya buena

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Dedicated to my loved ones and my princess

I was the unexpected girl. Before I arrived in the world, my mum and dad only had boys – four in all. Now here I was, Rosa Isabel Buena –  born on 21 May 1985 and nicknamed ‘Mutya’, which means Princess Pearl in my dad’s native Filipino. The nickname stuck because I was my dad’s princess, and he never called me anything else. In school, everyone called me Rosa, but at home, it was always Mutya. Looking back, it’s funny to think of how embarrassed I’d get when my parents called me Mutya in front of my school friends. They’d screw up their faces, all confused, and say, ‘Who’s Mutya?’ and I’d have to explain, red-faced and mortified, not knowing that one day it would be the name the world knew me by. Eventually, I got over that embarrassment and when it came to choosing a stage name a few years later, I went with Mutya because it felt unusual and unique. Now, the only people who call me Rosa are the ones who have known me for a hundred years.

I was born into a rowdy household and quickly learned to fight back hard and hold my own. My brothers were those typical naughty boys, always out having fun and getting into mischief. I’m not going to lie; having four older brothers could be difficult at times. Being the only girl meant I had to grow up fast and stay strong if I wanted to keep up with them. I probably have the strength and personality I’ve got because of it.

They all had very different personalities. Charlie, the eldest, was always the toughest on me. He was the one that ruled the roost and whose permission I often had to ask to do anything –  especially when I got older and it came to boys and going out. I suppose it was his way of showing he cared.

We all had a lot of fun together, but that’s not to say that being the baby sister wasn’t painful at times. On one occasion, I got caught in the middle of a fight between my brothers Charlie and Danny. In a rare occurrence, my mum and dad had popped across the road to the pub with my auntie, so my older siblings were left in charge. During the scrap, I somehow got shoved into the ladder of their bunkbeds and cut my ear badly. The scar from it is still there, and mirrors a scar my dad has in the very same place on the same ear. My brothers fought so much that, in the end, my dad set up a little boxing ring in the smaller bedroom, so they could play fight and safely let off steam under his supervision.

The bunkbed incident wasn’t the only pain I suffered as a little sister either. Our family home had a big wooden door leading to the kitchen, which didn’t have a handle so was tricky to open. My brother Danny – who’s five years older than me –  often used my head as the door-opener, pushing it against the wood to shove it open. I guess you could say Danny and I had a classic love–hate sibling relationship. As mean as he was to me sometimes, I knew he cared about me, and I always tried to give as good as I got. Mostly I got away with it, and as much as we butted heads, sometimes literally, Danny would always be the one I sang duets with, performing in Filipino music shows as we got older.

Kris, closest to me in age, was the sweet-boy. He was a charmer, a heartbreaker, and everyone fancied him. Roberto,

the third oldest, was also very popular with the girls. Down the line, he was the one all my school friends would moon over when they came to visit. In fact, sometimes, they only came to visit so they could check out one of my brothers, which was a constant source of annoyance for me.

I think I learned a fair bit about boys growing up with so many around me. I figured out how their brains worked, and paid attention to how they acted around their girlfriends. They could be overbearing at times, but it was comforting knowing they were always there. I always felt safe and protected.

After me came three more girls, followed by another boy –  so there were nine of us altogether: from the top, Charlie, born in 1978; Danniello (Danny), born in 1980; Eustaquio Roberto, named after my dad and born in 1981; and Kris, born in 1983. Then, after me, Maya, born 1986; Mariatheresa Ligaya, born 1990; Dalisay Michelle, born 1992; and finally, Michael Bayani, born in 1994. He’s the baby, now aged thirty.

I did some research into ancestry and the Spanish element to our names, and found out it comes from the colonization of the Philippines by Spain in the 1800s. A lot of Filipinos have Spanish surnames because at one point the governor decreed that all inhabitants of the Philippines should adopt Spanish or Westernized last names. Turns out, my family is a mix of Spanish and Chinese –  my dad’s mum was from Spanish heritage, while his grandfather was Chinese.

My closest-in-age sister, Maya, passed away when she was a baby. She would have been about a year younger than me. I don’t know the exact details of what happened, just that my mum was very ill during her labour. In the end, Maya died just a few hours after she was born.

Despite her short time in the world, Maya has always been

very much seen as part of our family. Mum and Dad have always kept her ashes at home. When I was little, Mum would say, ‘Give your sister a kiss and say good morning’ each day when I got up, and I’d kiss the little box containing her ashes. It might sound weird to others, but it felt very natural to us. On her birthday and Christmas, we would bring her out and light candles for her.

Sometimes when my school friends came over, they would stare at the container on the kitchen table and ask, ‘What is that?’

‘Oh, that’s my sister Maya,’ I’d say, like it was no big deal having someone’s ashes where we ate our breakfast.

I always feel sad when I think about what it would’ve been like to grow up with a sister much closer in age to me. My next sister after Maya is five years younger than me, so there’s quite a gap. I always wonder what she would look like now and how alike we might be. Mum says when Maya was born, she looked exactly the same as I did as a newborn. Maybe she would’ve been a mini-me. Would we be extra close and inseparable, or competitive and tearing each other’s hair out? There are so many questions that I’ll never have an answer to. On the third Sugababes album, Three, I wrote a song called ‘Maya’, dedicated to my little sister. It was a soft, soulful lullaby set to the sound of a heartbeat.

Years later, after my grandad passed away, we had two sets of ashes sitting side by side. At one point, I had them set up in a corner by my front door, surrounded by candles. Friends who came over would take one look at it and wonder what the hell it was, my little shrine, but I didn’t care. The idea that my sister and grandfather were with me in my home felt comforting to me.

Our enormous, ever-expanding family all lived in a threebedroom flat in Kingsbury, north-west London. It was madness, and we were always in each other’s way, but somehow we made it work. There was a lot of noise, a lot of music, and even more food.

When I think of our family home back then, my mind goes straight to the food. Mum was quite a simple cook, so dinner would often be fish fingers, baked beans, fish and chips or burgers, but there was always rice cooking in the rice pot –  every day. My dad brought the Filipino flavours to the household, frying chicken adobo – or some other form of Filipino chicken or meat dish –  and filling the house with the smell of vinegar, soy sauce and garlic.

Sometimes, Mum and Dad would disappear in the middle of the night while we were all sleeping. I’d hear the door latch click and wonder where they were going, but they never told me. It was years before I found out, opening the fridge one morning to find a whole pig’s head staring back at me. It gave me a scare that first time, but that’s when I realized where they’d been sneaking off to in the early hours – the fresh meat market. Not that there was much I wanted to eat in there –  giblets? Offal? No, thank you very much! Dad may not have been living in the Philippines, but he’d certainly created his own little corner of it in our flat in north-west London.

For me that was only ever a good thing, knowing what my roots were and where our family had originated from. Having people from the Filipino community around me meant that I was always exposed to the culture, and I’m grateful for that.

That sense of family and culture is something I’ve held on to. I eat the food of the country and listen to the music because it grounds me. It’s something I’ve tried to pass on to my daughter.

I want her to know the importance of it too, because I feel like my best childhood moments were always the times when I was immersed in my culture. It’s beautiful to have grown up in a place like that.

As you can imagine, things tended to be chaotic in the Buena house. This only got worse as the family continued to expand and my older brothers started to bring their girlfriends round. On top of that, we also had so many animals on the go. Growing up, I had guinea pigs, hamsters, rabbits, cats and fish, and my brothers sometimes kept lizards and weird-coloured frogs.

It was madness, but I loved it, and special occasions like Christmas were always amazing. Mum would cover every available space in tinsel, and we’d always have a tree, even though there wasn’t really enough room for one. It always amazed me how many people we managed to get around a table for Christmas dinner, all crammed in like sardines.

Generally, it all worked because we are a loving family, but you would have often heard the cry of teenage Mutya telling my little sisters not to touch my stuff, and when my brothers got into an argument, there was no escape. That was the worst in a tiny flat: the screaming and shouting bouncing off every wall, with nowhere to hide from it.

Being the only girl for a while meant that I at least had my own bedroom when I was little, while my brothers shared the other. Eventually, as my younger sisters came along, I had to share with them, but by then, the boys were older and moving out with their various partners so it all balanced out. I remember seeing a lot of girlfriends come and go while I was growing up, including the women some of them are still with. This was

something we all got used to very quickly, with my sisters and I seeing them as part of the family.

At one point, Mum and Dad moved into the living room when my eldest brother moved back in with his girlfriend, and eventually, when they had kids of their own, we all lived together under one roof. And yes, sharing limited space sometimes meant fights and arguments, but generally, as crowded as it was, these were fun and happy times.

Our home always felt warm and welcoming, so there was a constant stream of visitors; friends who’d talk, laugh and eat together while my dad entertained. Mum would sit chatting and smoking, while Dad would have a whisky or two with his mates. I must have met and interacted with so many different people as a child, I guess it’s no surprise I’ve never really been a shy adult.

Mum was a chatterbox, so if we ever came into the house and didn’t see her straight away, we knew she’d be in the kitchen, puffing on a cigarette as always and nattering to someone, whether that be a neighbour, a friend or one of my brothers’ girlfriends. She loved to talk, so there’d often be four or five people crammed into our tiny kitchen while she held court. She was very sociable and always young in heart and mind. Dad, meanwhile, preferred heading out to the bookies for a flutter to get a break from all the noise.

‘I’m going to the office,’ he’d say, and we all knew what that meant.

There was a pub opposite our estate where the grown-ups would regularly hang out and play pool. Quite often, a gang of them would come back to the house with Mum and Dad after closing, and the place would be filled with singing, dancing and

joy. The lights were always on and there was always food and music.

Despite this rowdy existence, our house was always clean and well organized. Mum was extremely houseproud and had this crazy habit of cleaning at odd times of the night. She’d sometimes wake up at four a.m., get the mop and bucket out of the cupboard, and off she’d go. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she was just quietly mopping the floor while we all slept; it was the blasting soundtrack of Fleetwood Mac that went along with it that was the problem. If Mum was up doing her earlyhours housework, we were all awake! I’d sit up in bed, music blaring through the wall, the smell of bleach creeping under the door, and think, Oh my god, she’s at it again! She was always cleaning or rearranging something. We lived in a house where you never knew where to find a fucking teaspoon because they were never in the place you last saw them. The layout of the flat was constantly changing.

That’s the thing I’ve inherited from my mum: the ability to rearrange furniture at a moment’s notice. You could walk into my living room one day and things would be a certain way, and come back the next day and not know where the hell you were. It drives my daughter mad!

My dad first came to the UK in his teens but had returned to the Philippines to join the army. Eventually, he came back to England, and that’s when he met Mum, an east London girl born and bred in Whitechapel.

All of Dad’s family were military-based. His father was a high-ranking officer, and he and my grandma lived in a house that was right opposite the army base. His brothers had been in the Filipino army too, and Dad’s older brother was

tragically killed during military exercises in Manila –  he was shot in the eye.

Dad’s military background meant that he could sometimes be strict with us kids. I’ve even got photos of us all saluting him. He wasn’t mean, but he kept us all in line. In our house there was no such thing as crying. If I ever did cry, I’d better have a bloody good reason. Looking back, I realize that was just how he was brought up, but there were definitely times we wished he would loosen up a bit. On the flip side of that, I got to experience a much softer side of him than the others. I was his first baby girl and his princess, after all, so I definitely got away with a few things that my brothers didn’t!

My mum was different. She wasn’t as strict and was more likely than my dad to give in when we begged for sweets. I have vivid memories of hounding her at what we called the cake shops in my primary school. These were days when kids would bring in cakes baked by someone in the family, to sell to their friends.

I was always on at my mum on those days. ‘Mum, please can I have some money to buy a cake?’

Back then, they were selling for ten or twenty pence each, but with so many of us in the family, Mum couldn’t always afford to dole out cash to satisfy my sweet tooth. I was most appreciative of the days when she could.

Mum is a sweetheart, but she could be fiery if you got on her bad side. She was a pale-skinned redhead and proper cockney, even though her family were originally from Ireland. When I was little and out with my parents, Filipino people often thought Mum was my nanny or childminder. And everyone said I looked like my dad. It was quite unusual to see a white lady with a Filipino man; it was more common

the other way around, so people in the community assumed my dad hired her to look after me. Sometimes, people didn’t even acknowledge her when we stood side by side because we looked so different. Mum would always feel very hurt by this and was quite vocal when someone suggested that I wasn’t her daughter.

‘I’m not her fucking nanny, I’m her mum,’ she’d say.

Eventually, people got to know, accept and love her for who she was, but it took a while. She was most definitely a hot mamma back in the day too. She never left the house in anything other than a mini-skirt. It didn’t matter what the weather was; she’d be in a Lycra mini, with her make-up done and her hair perfectly styled –  straightened or permed, and, as the years went on, dyed. She’d never let her grey show if she could help it, and I say, good for her.

I will never forget the day when she finally started wearing leggings instead of the short skirts.

‘What is this?’ I said. ‘You must be getting older!’

Mum has such a beautiful, bubbly personality and is always fun. She’s always been one of the girls, and to this day if I’m going out for the night with my girlfriends, I’ll bring my mum along with me. She’s always been my saviour, the person I’ve been able to be most honest with. She knows everything about me, and if anyone ever thinks they have juicy information to spill to her, I’d never worry. Trust me, she already knows that shit.

My friends all love her too. In fact, there have been many times over the years when I wasn’t around but my girlfriends would still go hang out with Mum, enjoy a good chat with her, as well as a cup of tea and a fag. That’s how it was where we lived. People came and went like family. Our estate, Piper’s Green,

was a real little community, and on sunny summer days, all the mums would be outside with their cuppas, puffing on their ciggies, chatting about everything and everyone. Meanwhile, us kids would be running around or riding our bikes up and down the estate or around the block. The only thing that would stop us in our tracks was the familiar sound of the ice-cream van pulling up. The twinkly music echoing around the flats would have us all running towards it, pestering our mums for money to buy something. On the hottest days, someone would drag out a paddling pool to the grassy patch in the middle of the estate and fill it with water so we could all splash about in it. I sometimes think that kind of thing is missing these days; that close community where kids could go knock on a neighbour’s door and ask if their mates were allowed to come out to play, always in and out of one another’s houses, with a friend’s parent asking, ‘Do you want to stay for dinner?’

That’s how it was for us as children. We knew everybody on the estate, and all the mums and dads looked out for each other’s kids. I was always very proud of coming from Piper’s Green. In fact, for one Sugababes behind-the-scenes shoot back in the day, I took an entire camera crew there to show it off.

There were so many different types of music that filled our house when I was growing up. Mum loved to sing, and she listened to Fleetwood Mac, T. Rex and the Carpenters, while my dad was into Guns N’ Roses and Bon Jovi. Mum also loved reggae and Motown, and Dad even liked a bit of heavy metal, so I don’t think there was any genre of music I wasn’t exposed to in one way or another.

I was into classic nineties pop and R&B, and that has stayed with me. When I was very young, in the eighties, I was obsessed with New Kids On The Block. My brothers bought me my first concert videotape, which featured one of their major tours, and I had posters of them all over my bedroom. From New Kids, going into the next decade, I moved on to N-Sync, Backstreet Boys, Charles and Eddie, plus R&B acts like SWV, Xscape, Monica, Brandy and Aaliyah. On the other side of the coin, I loved Frank Sinatra, Bread and Barbra Streisand. My listening habits were broad because I’d been exposed to many different genres of music via my parents. I also loved garage because my brother Charlie was a DJ on a few of the pirate radio stations, and that’s what he liked to play. My other brother Danny was more into drum ’n’ bass and jungle, so I was exposed to that too, and there was also a lot of good American hip-hop around at that time. With such varying tastes, there was often

music of all sorts blaring out of every room at the same time, all fighting for a place. All of those musical vibes and influences were swirling around me at every moment of every day, and I soaked them all up. As different as it all was, it all made sense to me, and taste-wise, I’m still pretty much rooted in that era to this day. I can’t seem to move away from it. I guess some people would say I’m stuck in my ways, but it’s just what I love.

We didn’t just listen to music in our house; we played it too. As far back as I can remember, my dad always played guitar. As well as Mum’s noisy night-time cleaning, another soundtrack to the early hours would be Dad strumming away, singing at the top of his voice as we all tried to sleep. I can’t count the number of times I drifted off to the sound of my dad’s singing coming from the living room. To be honest, it’s a wonder we got any shut-eye at all. He also had a keyboard, and at one point he even brought a drumkit home.

He had this pile of music books like you wouldn’t believe –  thick notebooks full of songs, sheet music and lyrics. Most nights he’d flick through these, looking for songs for us to sing together. ‘Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree’ was one I remember well, plus classics by the Jackson 5 and Fleetwood Mac, for my mum. Dad would gather me and my older brothers around him, and we’d all sit down and sing together in the living room. I would sing ‘Crazy’ by Patsy Cline, ‘Evergreen’ by Barbra Streisand, and always a bit of Whitney to finish things off! We were all musical to certain degrees, and in truth, I think Dad secretly hoped we might end up becoming an entire family of performers – like the Jackson 5 or the Osmonds.

Looking back now, it seems like a weird thing to do, all sitting down to sing together like that family from The Sound of Music – it’s not what most families would do of an evening – but

there’s something warm and wonderful about the memory of it. I’m also very grateful to my dad for giving me that focus on music, making sure I sang every day and had new songs to learn after school and before bedtime, even though sometimes I’d have preferred to be running around outside with my friends. It’s almost as if he knew that was the road I should be taking, even before I did. I don’t think I’d necessarily have gone down the path towards music if Dad hadn’t steered me in that direction. There are so many things that might never have happened if he hadn’t. I had a happy childhood, and my dad bringing so much music into our lives was a big part of that. When I think back, I feel so much nostalgia for it – the record player was always spinning, and my dad would be strumming his guitar, while Mum sat and watched him adoringly. She always called him her Superman. They were so in love, and still are to this day.

With and without my brothers, I’d been singing with my dad for quite some time when he put me forward for the Little Miss Philippines pageant. It was a children’s beauty pageant which included a talent section, and he was sure I’d do well. The contest was held in Romney Marsh in Kent, and there I was, aged seven, wearing a big old frilly dress with ‘Miss Visayas’ written across my sash. Visayas is the name of a group of islands in the Philippines where my family came from. The dress was pretty horrendous, to be honest, with huge puffy shoulders and ruffles for days. Not my style at all, but that’s what everybody wore. I remember being very nervous that first time. I never thought of myself as the classic ‘pretty little girl’, so seeing all these cute olive-skinned girls lining up on stage put me on edge. A lot of them were full Filipino too, while I was only half and much

paler. I ended up making some very good friends from those kinds of competitions, but that first one, I didn’t know anyone and felt like I stuck out like a frilly sore thumb.

As well as looking pretty, all the contestants were expected to know certain facts about the Philippines, and be able to answer questions on the subject. I’d studied hard beforehand, so when we were asked how many islands there were in total, I knew the answer was 7,641, and I’ve never forgotten it. I also had to learn the country’s national anthem, which my dad had to sit me down and teach me to sing in his native language. Looking back, I wished I’d learned even more Tagalog. If my dad had taught us his native language, think of the fun my sisters and I could have had gossiping about people in a foreign tongue they couldn’t understand. These days, being around the community as long as I have, I know a fair bit of the lingo, but it’s more a case of me understanding rather than speaking it.

For the pageant, each contestant was expected to do something impressive for the talent section, so, of course, I sang for the judges. It was my first time singing for anyone other than my family. I can’t remember the song (it might have been Patsy Cline’s ‘Crazy’) but my voice was certainly the thing that made people sit up and take notice. I might not have been as cute and well turned out as some of the other girls, but I’d definitely earned my place in the competition. In the end, I got the runner-up prize, and afterwards word began to spread about my singing ability. Suddenly, at the grand old age of seven, I found myself in demand. People would call my dad and ask if I could perform at their parties and events –  weddings, birthdays, even funerals.  I had it all coming at me, and I mostly enjoyed it because I was never bored; I was always getting invited somewhere to do something. In any case, I was

too young to have a say in the matter anyway. I’d hear my dad talking on the phone in Tagalog or Bisayan, and if the word ‘Mutya’ jumped out of the conversation, I knew I’d booked a gig, whatever it was. I felt a bit like a human karaoke machine, but there were benefits. I remember one party, I was singing my heart out while watching three or four pint glasses being passed around, into which people were putting money. I don’t remember what the event was, but most of the time Filipinos don’t need an excuse to throw a party, anyway. We love a function, whether it’s celebrating someone recovering from an illness or getting a new job.

At the end of the night, after I’d finished my last song, the glasses, now heavy with coins and notes, were presented to me. I hadn’t gone there to get paid; I’d simply gone to perform, and get my fill of free food and juice, so this was a real bonus. Filipinos are always very generous, and after that night, I often found myself leaving these gigs with cash in my pocket. I thought I was the shit! I felt special.

In the early days, Dad would record instrumental backing tracks on to cassette tapes, and I would sing over those, or sometimes he would accompany me on the guitar. Eventually, as karaoke became more and more widespread, most people had a machine I could use, and if they didn’t, we would bring our own one along.

I remember moaning about doing it a few times, feeling overexposed as the regular party singer in our community. Surely people were getting tired of seeing my face? Strangely, that never seemed to be the case. Wherever I performed, I was fed well and made to feel very welcome. Because my dad knew so many people within the community, I always felt comfortable doing what I was doing. Everyone felt like family, even

though these were often celebrations that had nothing to do with me. Those events performing for my community really were the start of my career, and I loved it.

There is something about Filipino people and music. Music and singing are a huge and important part of the culture; it’s like we’re deeply connected to it somehow. If you ever visit the Philippines, you’ll see that almost every house has a karaoke machine. They’re almost as common as a fridge or washing machine. If you were to go to an electrical store to buy a TV, you’d see people there testing out the microphones and sound systems on the karaoke machines, and not just with a few words; we’re talking a full-out performance with crowds of people drifting in off the street to watch. It would be like walking into your local branch of Currys in the UK and seeing people belt out an entire set of full-blown ballads in the middle of the store, one after the other. It happens all the time, and these days you can see it all over TikTok. The funny thing is, looking at it on my phone, it seems crazy, watching people singing their hearts out surrounded by toasters and microwaves, but when I see it happen in real life, it feels perfectly normal.

I don’t know where this affinity with music comes from, but I think it’s because we’re such a happy community. Music has always been something that brings people together and that we can enjoy as a group. It’s not about making money or doing it professionally: people sing because they find joy in doing it. It’s not just singing, either. My dad plays six or seven different types of guitar, and most of his family, like many Filipinos, play an instrument of some sort.

And of course, where there’s music, there’s dancing. The people who organized the Little Miss Philippines pageant also ran a weekend stage school, Europhil, which had Filipino