(pictured) produced and co-wrote "Flatline". In 2009, the line-up of the Sugababes featured
Keisha Buchanan,
Heidi Range and
Amelle Berrabah, who were gearing up for the release of their seventh album
Sweet 7 in early 2010. However, prior to the album's release, Buchanan left the group in September 2009, and she was subsequently replaced by
Jade Ewen. Shortly after original member
Mutya Buena won the legal rights to use the name Sugababes under Class 16 of the EU Trademark Act, both Buena and Buchanan individually
tweeted about recording in the studio. Buchanan said she was in the studio with "two other females" and British rapper
Professor Green, while Buena separately tweeted "Tunnnnnnnnne! What a banger. I could pee myself with excitment lol but I won't. " Both Buena and Buchanan denied that they were in the studio together and said that they were not working on music for the Sugababes, with Buena saying: "No track [with] keisha or professor G he was around tha studio. im jus workin on my stuff @ tha moment. "
The Lost Tapes is the second Sugababes album to feature the original lineup, after 2000's
One Touch. In April 2012, it was reported that the line-up had signed a £1 million record deal with
Polydor Records. In July 2012, it was officially confirmed that the group had reformed under the name Mutya Keisha Siobhan and were writing songs for a new album under Polydor. The group enlisted
Naughty Boy,
MNEK,
Sia and
Shaznay Lewis as collaborators for the album. Speaking of working with the group, MNEK said, "I'd just turned 17 when
Felix Howard messaged me to say that the original Sugababes are singing together again and I want you to write with them'. I wasn't gonna say no was I ". According to the singer-producer, the song "Today" was supposed to be the first single. MNEK also worked on "Drum" and the song "Boys" with
Richard "Biff" Stannard. The album's original title was reportedly
The Sacred Three, named after the group's comeback concert tour. A song originally recorded for the album, "Love in Stereo", went on to be recorded by
Bananarama for their album
In Stereo (2019). In June 2016,
Siobhán Donaghy stated that the album was expected to be released in 2017. In August 2017 Buchanan said in an interview that the group were working on new material after their previous work was leaked online. Amongst the first songs to leak was a version of the song "Back in the Day", which sampled the
song of the same name by
Ahmad in February 2015. A year later, in late 2016, eight several other songs from the album, which was in varying degrees of completion, were leaked, including: "Boys", "Love in Stereo", "Today", "No Regrets", "Summer of '99", "Too in Love", "I'm Alright" and "Drum". Another song, "Burn Out" also leaked, which was later reclaimed by its writer
Tom Aspaul. The group had also uploaded a song called "Lay Down in Swimming Pools", which sampled the
Kendrick Lamar song "
Swimming Pools (Drank)" to their
SoundCloud account at the end of a studio session with
Dev Hynes. This song would later be re-recorded with new vocals and new instrumental to become
The Lost Tapes song "I Lay Down". In January 2023, Buchanan posted a behind-the-scenes vlog from December 2022 onto her YouTube channel, which detailed a recording session in which she did the backing vocals to the song "Beat is Gone". During the vlog, she explained that while she was re-recording one of her verses, she discovered that many of the group's backing vocals were now missing from several tracks due to a partial loss of the original session files, prompting the group to begin re-recording the vocals in preparation for the album's release. In a video posted to her YouTube channel in March 2023, Buchanan said that the album originally did not have a title until Buchanan suggested
The Lost Tapes as a title. She also stated that the group were unable to include "Too in Love" on the album because it had already been purchased and subsequently used by another artist by the time the group were in a position to release
The Lost Tapes. ==Music and lyrics==