The Guide #245: UK garage means summer, and a surprise Mis-Teeq reunion is bringing the heat

Hello everyone. I’m Coco Khan, covering for Gwilym this week, and I’m officially calling it. Summer is here. No, I’m not a meteorologist or an astronomer – rather, I rely on a measure I’ve developed over many summers: the UKG Index. The more UK garage you hear – through passing car windows, pumping out of festivals, or floating on the breeze from a nearby barbecue – the more likely the mercury is climbing. And this year the sound of summer has arrived early, and with some exciting news: a Mis-Teeq reunion. For the uninitiated, Mis-Teeq (Sabrina Washington, Su-Elise Nash, Alesha Dixon) broke into the mainstream in 2001 with their debut album Lickin’ on Both Sides. Some of garage’s most visible ambassadors, they took the sound from underground raves and pirate radio into the charts and on to Saturday morning TV, with hits such as All I Want, Why? and One Night Stand. A second album followed featuring the global hit Scandalous, before their meteoric rise abruptly ended when their label, Telstar, collapsed into bankruptcy in 2004, and the band broke up the following year. Dixon, of course, went on to become a national treasure via Strictly and Britain’s Got Talent. Yet despite two major revivals of UK garage – first in the 2010s, when producers such as Disclosure and Jamie xx folded the two-step of their youth into indie and electronica, and now via TikTok-fuelled Y2K nostalgia – Mis-Teeq never performed together again. Then, last month, fans noticed a brand-new Mis-Teeq Instagram account, featuring nostalgic footage of the group in their heyday and quickly gaining thousands of followers (given I saw it the day it went live, I can only assume that “ageing millennial” was the group it was targeting). Rumours swirled. And then, last week, it was confirmed: for one night only, the group would perform at Wembley Arena to celebrate 25 years of Lickin’ on Both Sides. Naturally, they’re calling it One Night Stand. Some might call this cynical nostalgia capitalism – the music …