Neneh Cherry

Published Jul 19, 2022, 9:00 AM

Swedish-born singer Neneh Cherry’s four-decade-long career has ricocheted between a number of genres including hip-hop, jazz, and trip-hop. Her first single in 1988, “Buffalo Stance,” cemented her standing as a no-nonsense Black feminist voice in contemporary urban music. This year Neneh released her sixth album, “The Versions.” It’s a collection of cover songs of some of Cherry’s biggest hits, and is performed exclusively by female artists including Robyn, Sia, and Neneh’s daughter Tyson.

On today’s episode Bruce Headlam talks to Neneh Cherry about her bohemian upbringing in Sweden, New York and London with stepdad Don Cherry, the famous jazz trumpet player. Neneh also recalls how she first met The Slits, the legendary all-girl punk group. And why despite scoring her first big hit with a cheeky rap verse, she never considered herself a real MC.

Hear a playlist of all of our favorite Neneh Cherry songs HERE.

Pushkin. Hey y'all, today we are welcoming the Swedish born singer Nana Cherry to the show. Nana's four decade long career has ricocheted between a number of genres, including hip hop, jazz, trip pop, and punk. Her first single in eighty eight, Buffalo Stance, cemented her standing as a no nonsense black feminist voice in contemporary urban music. Cherry was living in London when her debut album Raw Like Sushi was released. At the time, she was collaborating with genre defining nineties electro dance acts like sold A Soul and Massive Attack. This year, Non released her sixth album, The Versions. It's a collection of cover songs of some of Cherry's biggest hits and is performed exclusively by female artists, including Robin Sia and Nana's daughter Tyson. On today's episode, Bruce Hellam talks to Nana Cherry about her bohemian upbringing in Sweden, New York and London. Was stepdad Don Cherry, the famous jazz trumpetist. Nana also recalls how she first met the legendary all girl punk group The Slits and why despite scoring her first big hit with a cheeky rat verse. She never considered herself a real MC. This is broken record liner notes for the digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Bruce Hudlam with Nana Cherry. So we're here to talk about the new album, which is The Versions, Yes, which is your first in four or five years, right, yeah, And it's a kind of new style of album because I'm not really on it so m which has been kind of an incredible experience. Is your voice snuck in here or there? I thought I heard it. I don't know whether it's someone has sampled it or but you know, it's really an idea that was hatched after the reissue of Rolling Sus she came out. Honey Dijon, my beloved Honey Dijon made a remix of Buddy X, which kind of came out at the same time, and that kind of then hatched an idea to well, to ask other people to cover the songs. Initially it was going to be just the songs on Roll Like Sushi. We were like, well, let's reach out to like, for instance, Robin, who's a great friend and my sister and someone I really consider to be a great inspiration. But like I also know that she kind of grew up with role like sushi, so in a way, it was a kind of no brainer. So she was maybe one of the first people that we asked, and then saying Abousset, who is also a Swedish artist with Gambian background, She's amazing, and then it just again it was like a funny little domino effect, and it was just kind of a joy because I was like just reaching out like the artists that I was listening to that seemed to be out there being very much themselves and kind of breaking new molds, you know, so females. I mean, it's a female led project. You know, just looking over your career, you don't seem like someone who likes revisiting things. Every album is something new. Broken Politics is different than the album before. The album before that was the Jazz record. What's it like to go back and revisit things. I think there is something quite important about revisiting things. And You're right, I have always been slightly allergic to relying on the past. I've always felt like I want to move forward because I feel so unfinished and I feel like I'm always battling with my own insecurity and demons, as in, like the things around me that question whether not necessarily whether I'm doing things good enough, but whether I'm reaching the things that I feel that I need, that I want to tap into or express or to be open enough for those things to flow out. Yeah, and also like being a bit scared of getting caught in some sort of like a karaoke hell hole, you know, where you're just relying on and rehatching things that have already been done because that's what people maybe recognize or know the best. Or I mean, I'm fifty eight and maybe in that movement of looking forward, always kind of pushed through and pushed ahead. Hopefully maybe if I'm lucky, I'm just like a little bit over halfway through my life. I think it's important to kind of take stop so revisiting these songs because I think that's kind of what you were asking has become a very beautiful thing, especially as it's through the eyes of other people. And and a lot of the artists are kind of another generation to me, a younger generation. I mean, Okay, we try not to over obsess, but you know, you hope that when you have a good song, that that song has its own legs that other people can use to walk or run with, you know. And so it's been like a very cathartic but beautiful journey, and I feel very connected to all of the different artists that have Sudan archives. Kelsey Loon, Green, Tea Pang, My daughter Tyson did a song, your daughter who was a famous history with Buffalo Stance. Yeah, she was in utero, she was. She was in utero throughout most of the the journey of making the album, and you know, Top of the Pops and the kind of early days you get criticized from being pregnant on the people wrote about it like you were it was child abuse, or you'd thrown yourself down the stairs in a Victorian novel or something, yeah, or like you know, I was going to hurt the child dancing around and you know that I should be draped in a big black cape or something. And definitely not on Top of the Pops, which was like the biggest thing that happened on a once a week on television, you know. I mean, I wasn't trying to be some kind of a game changer, do you know what I mean? Like a lot of people are like, oh wow, that was so like amazing. I was just pregnant and and I didn't want to hide it and also like wanting to do things in a different way. And I think before I put out Buffalo Stance and before I started working on role like Sushi, I had always been in bands and I'd always in and like that family, you know, And it was so it was the first time that I kind of stepped out by myself and I felt very well in a kind of fighting spirit of like, yes, I am here, I am a young woman, but I'm going to step over the loop holes. He was like, we're going to kick the door down instead of strutting out uncomfortably in a pair of uncomfortable heels. I want to get back to that album and of course the new album. But we should talk a bit about your background. You grew up in this bohemian family. Your stepfather was famous jazz trumpet player Don Cherry, who played with Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane. And tell us about your mother as well. My mother's name was Moki Cherry, and she was an incredible woman. She was an artist. She was a very creative person. I think when Don came the first time he came to Sweden. He was playing with Archie Shepp in the concert who setting stock on the concert house, and it was the famous night at the concert house when the basement caught on fire, you know, and everyone or anyone that was there will refer to it as the night the stage caught on fire and no one moved, you know, because the music was hotter then the flames were going to be. There was smoke coming up through the stage, and you know, people were just sitting there and I don't know whether they just kind of put the fire out downstairs or whether they took a break, but I think they just kept playing. And I know that when Don saw my mother and he said, oh he was. She was wearing this bamboo glasses and this kind of leather skirt thing that she'd made, and she she was MOOKI was always ahead of her time, and so he definitely saw her. And then he came back a few months later, and that's kind of when they got together. My mother was someone who I think, from like a really young age, knew that she wanted to, you know, in her own way and through her own voice, be a part of making the world a more beautiful place and they collaborated on things. They collaborated, you know, for many years. I mean, their life story until they couldn't live together anymore, was was a collaboration, you know. And I think the thing that's very important to to recognize, but I think that anyone that knew Moki and knew down would say that she made it possible, like she helped him find his wings, you know. And there's a cute story where the first time they had slept together, you know, spend a night together, Don had fallen asleep and when he woke up, she had died his long underwear pink and it was like she'd probably done that in a in a pot on the stove. You know. We didn't have a washing machine in those days. So and they were just probably hanging on a line in the in the room. Well that's when you know you've overslept, Yeah, die were you just waking up just at the right time. But um, so you know they had a very creative relationship. So what was that like growing up in that household? I mean, that's quite a difficult question to answer. In a way, I feel such a great sense of kind of privilege that I grew up in the world that I grew up in, you know, like it's such a it's such a blessing. I mean, I guess I heard music before I was born, right, And I think that like the world that was within our house, it didn't look like anywhere else around in the neighborhoo, you know, which was kind of sort of stressful for me sometimes because I wanted to a certain degree, even though I was very much at home in my home, but for it to be like everybody else's homes, you know, and we had like we would sit on the floor, you know what I mean. We didn't have a couch. We had a low cut table. Then eventually we did have a couch, but you know, we ate lentils and brown rice and we didn't eat mashed potatoes. And you know, I would also like to stress because I think that something that I fight with is this sort of people's opinions of like, oh, it was all very I mean, the word bohemian, I think is more respectful than oh, you guys were just a bunch of hippies, and you know, everyone just sort of laid around and smoked a lot of weed, and you know, and yeah, okay, people smoke some weed. But I think that sometimes it overrides the incredible process that people like my parents and a lot of their peers put into the work that they did, which was very serious. You know, there was an absolute commitment to the journey the work. You know, on a social, political, family, life, sonic level. Do you have the same work habits as your parents? No? You know, Don played all day every day he was with his instruments, walking down the street. He would play the flute or his Hunter's guitar from Molly the Dzunguni. I mean, it was just a part of the movement, his movement. You know, I can hand on heart say that I wish, if I had any regrets in my life, that I had worked harder, been more disciplined with my songwriting and making music all the time. I think sometimes I've finished an album and then I've kind of closed the door and kind of gone out into life and not stayed with it. And I think my mother's process, I mean, being a woman and running a house and a family that consumed I mean the same as for me, consumed a lot of her time, and for her it was also a schlep sometimes but also a part of her creative process in a way. But it also took her away from her art, and I know that she really struggled with that. But when she worked, she really worked incredibly hard. It's something I've heard, you know, from a lot of female artistside, yeah, interviewed if they're a bit older, and I'll say, oh, you took some time off. They're like, well, yeah, I had a family. Yeah. You know, Mick Jagger doesn't take time off when he is a family. No, he doesn't ask to. So what kind of kid were you then growing up? I mean, I think I've always been quite independent. We lived on Ninth Street and Second Avenue when I was about eight, and we'd been before we moved into that place. We'd been staying at the Chelsea Hotel where I've just come from today, and I had a friend there who was the daughter of a painter called Our Loving I believe, and she was living in the Chelsea too. We'd moved to nine Street and when we got down to ninth Street after a couple of days, I was like, oh, I want to see Anne, and my mother went, okay, well you can walk there. So if you go all the way on Second Avenue to twenty third Street, and then you go all the way up on twenty third Street to whatever eighth and between seventh and eighth and eighth and ninth, you'll get there. And you know, I did that, and I think now like I would never have set out well on one of those walks. So I think I was quite independent and very sensitive, but also determined to be okay. And I think sometimes that determination has meant that I have also shut down certain things to kind of feel all right, which I've dealt with later in life, stress or difficult things for everything to kind of to be fine. And you know, there was a big contrast, of course between like being in the forest in Sweden where my parents bought a house in nineteen seventy an old schoolhouse, and then on a regular basis coming to live in New York, which I'm so thankful for because I think I would have been a very different person if I had just spent the first sixteen years of my life in Sweden. We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more from Bruce Heedlam and Nana Cherry. We're back with more of Bruce Helam's conversation with Nana Cherry. Do you remember forming your own musical taste. I mean your stepdad was playing trumpet all the time, because that's what professional jazz musicians have to do. Was there a point you were listening to something else and saying, well, this is what I wanted with the Beatles, whatever it was. I mean, the problem is it's a problem is that if you look into the record collection that we still have, which was like the record collection that I grew up with, obviously things have been added to it over the years. It was such a mixture of stuff. So like my parents listened to everything from like recording made in the rainforest in in Zaire to the Commodores or the Rolling Stones or you know, so within that music I found my own shit. You know, like don bought and he was always like buying whatever was coming out. So I can remember being like six and listening to the Jackson five, the first Diana Ross Presents to Jackson five or Sly in the Family Stone and having favorites. I mean growing up in Sweden in the seventies, I mean all my friends were listening to like English music like the Sweet and a lot of my friends at school were like into Donnie Osmond and stuff, and I was, you know, it was like kind of surreal. And of course some of those classic like Sparks records and some of those you know, British kind of glam pop tunes. Abba. Yeah, you know. I spent a whole summer like miming to Abba songs with my friend. We did a whole show. And then I, like I was eleven, I went to LA to stay with my family there and I discovered like songs in the Key of Life Stevie Wonder and Johnny Guitar Watson and so it's all these parallels. And then at like fifteen fourteen fifteen, I got into punk. It was punk. Was that what told you that you wanted to do this for a living? Yeah? I think so it was there a song or an album that just grabbed you. X rayspects poly Styrene for sure. I think also her being like one of the only other women of color like on the punk scene there really wasn't that that many was obviously a thing. And then just her vibe but like she had braces on her teeth, she just made it looked so amazing, and her voice has this resonance and then this kind of bridge sonically that she made between almost like a kind of folky kind of tonality to then also being her music being very soulful. And I think I definitely found my voice singing along. Now, had you had you done formal music lessons, because no, not really. I mean, because you know something particularly, and I want to talk about man Child later. You know, that's it's a beautiful melody, and it's very sophisticated chords. It's it's a very unusual song. It's very complex, it's got different modes in it. Were those just things you were sensitive to? It was not something Yeah, I was just following. I was working with an autochord, a cassio keyboard that had an autochord settings on the left hand side, and I had one or two kind of melodies which were the you know, is it the pain of the drinking or the Sunday sinking feeling, which were the two first lines in the first verse, and then I just think I I sat with the auto chord, and I remember particularly in the second verse, and it just took the melodies into another place and I just kind of went went with it, and I just kind of kept my little tape recorder going so again, it was this kind of weird instinctual thing. So when someone comes in and says there's an e flat Dorian, You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, And I'm in fact my dad was like, you know, you had seven chords in the verse. That's pretty okay, cool, yeah whatever. So, Punkers, what took you back to England? Right? Punkers? What took me to England in the first place? Really we didn't really It was not a place that I had really spent any time and growing up. And you went pretty young, but I went young. I mean I was sixteen and when I went there were your parents like, good luck, try and try and make a career in music. No, I mean it didn't really happen like that. It's funny. I was just on a journey, I guess, you know, I'd been I'd met the Slits, Arie and vivin Tessa. When my you know, when this is another thing, like so many of the threads of my things that have led from one thing to another, it's all kind of connected to my family, you know. Um So Don had toured with the Slits. They were like discovering jazz and they they was a great British punk band. We should yeah, all women, fantastic group. So he brought me on the tour so I and then towards the end of that tour, I met Ari. I mean Ari was we found each other kind of thing. We were became friends, and then she invited me to come and visit her. So I kind of came on, like you know, it was like summertime. I just came to hang out, ended up staying at her house. She was still living at her mom's house. And then we just kind of became inseparable, like really really close friends, and she sort of took me under her wing. And then I got a job working at this place called Better Badgers in Portobell Road, and I just kind of stayed and and then that led into the guys from the pop group forming a new band called Ripbrig and Panic and asking me to sing. So that's kind of how making music kind of happened really, So then lead us up to the making of the first album, Raw Like Sushi. How did that come about? So I'd been in Riprig and Panic, then Float Up CP, and then I'd made a sort of independent thing that came out on Island Records called Ross Eggs Pure energy, and and then I met Cameron, who I'm still married too, and who's been my kind of, you know, lifelong travel friend collaborator, and he just kind of said to me at some point like why don't you Why are you not writing songs like you should write? And I wrote a song called looking in the Eyes of Love and I sang it. I mean, I just wrote it in my head and I sang it in on a cassette and put it through his letterbox, his mailbox, and then like a few hours later he called me up and he had put chords to it and it was a song. I was like, oh shit, that's amazing. And Buffalo Stance was a kind of weird coincidence, right, which is what kind of then led the album, because it had been on the B side of this record called Looking Good Diving by Morgan mcvagh, one of those people being my husband Cameron, and they had this idea of like doing almost like a remix of their tune, which was very pop pop so to do like a dare I say, cooler B side, so so no disrespect. So we kind of spent an afternoon just in mining Cameron's flat, as we say on it you know, using some of the elements of the original and just rewriting the lyrics. I wrote the raps, we wrote the chorus and the bridge together. And then Nellie Hooper, who like produced, sold to Soul and DJ Milo. They were kind of part of the Wild Bunch, which then became Massive Attack, so they produced that and then that just kind of disappeared a little bit. And then my friend Tim Simonon, who was part of Bomb the Bass, he sort of led Bomb the Bass, heard it, he really liked it, and so he wanted to recut it. So that's how Buffalo Stance happened because without him, I mean talk about looking forward, well, I mean we were like already passed it, do you know what I mean? I guess first of all, I should ask you, did this success surprise you? Then when it became a big hit, we were on a small tour around England or maybe a little bit in Europe with Bomb the Bass, and I was just I mean, I was pregnant. I had a MC with me called Gilly Gee. I guess we were just kind of playing off backing tracks and we did three songs and Buffalo Dance was the last song in the set. And we noticed as we were kind of going around the country that people were starting to recognize it. And I remember one night sitting on my bed in our house in West London and there was this kind of late night American Top ten with Casey Cason that you know, and every week he would show a kind of something climbing up the chart, something that's drawing a bit of attention to it, and lo and behold there was a little clip of Buffalo Stance and I was just like, oh my god, this is because at that point it was still very kind of European and it had just started to spill into to hear. What's amazing about that song to me is how different it is from a lot of music that was coming out in England at that point, which was like massive attack on those bands. You know, they would try and get a groove going. It was often a pretty simple melodic idea. Buffalo Stance has so many different voices in it. I know they're all your voice, but you know it's like if you count them. It starts with you saying you want to beat You're throwing a little expletive there. Then you have that very English accent introducing the high hat, the high hat, then you have so that's two. Then you start rapping. Now, had you wrapped a lot by that point? Yeah, definitely a bit like I think that my as I was kind of doing my own thing, being such a part of that era and it being such a kind of important part of what was going on and inspiring and influential. Yeah, like you were kind of it was kind of a no brainer, and it became a really interesting way of telling stories. So you know, you can just like be a bit more blatant in a rap. So you wrap the verses and then you've got the jiggalo sucker or that little scratch break, and then you've got your singing voice for the pre chorus and the chorus, So that's your singing voice, but it doesn't stop that. Then you've got that spoken break though. What's he like? Now? Was that a real conversation? How did you? How did that come up? I mean that kind of comes from a friend of mine whose name is fat Tony, who's a DJ and just a really close friend. I've known him for millions of years and we spent a lot of time out dancing together and out and he would look at people and go, Oh my god, what's he like? What's she liked? Oh God, look at her? And so it was like just it just came into my head when right there when we were kind of doing ad libs. But then you you go back to the chorus, but then you've got that whole different part that it's a wind in my face. Oh yeah, the kind of little poem at the end. So I'm just that's like seven or eight kind of different voices in one song. It's all it reminds me of maybe it's a schizophrenic tune. I've never thought, well, no, no, it reminds me of all like Beatles songs like Day in the Life for you Never Give Me Your Money, like Paul McCartney will use like three different voices. Yeah, it's such a full song. It was just it's what makes it so different to me kind of quirky. I think, like I find it hard to kind of be very analytical and to intellectualize about it, but I think it was just like one of them. Well I don't know if I'm very good at that, especially not with jet lag, but I think like a very important element of maybe that time was this kind of like fighting against the kind of any kind of restrictions, do you know what I mean. It was like, well, we don't have to like we can refer to stuff without it restricting us, you know. So yeah, I'm gonna rap, and then you know we're sort of ultimately in a way without wanting to sell out, still making pop records, you know what I mean, and over heroes. It was sold as a rap record, you know, as you probably know, I'm like rap and hip hop is like really an important part of like my upbringing and my identity. Like I was so in awe and loved MC light and you know, Queen Latifa, and you know, there were all these amazing women actually on the Roxanne Chantey. I have to be honest and say, of course, help me find my voice. But you know, in my eyes, I was never as cool as them. They were like an inspiration to me. But you know what I was doing, I would say, it's not that it wasn't authentic, but you know what I mean, it was something else. So I would never really have been comfortable and saying like, yo, I'm a I'm like I can kind of rap, but I'm not a rapper, like in the sense that give me a mic and I'll freestyle for half an hour now. Unfortunately I wish, okay, no, we're going to do that right here. Yeah, no, I wish. I mean in my dreams. We'll be right back with more from Nana Cherry after the break, we're back with the rest of Bruce Headland's conversation with Nana Cherry. You talked a bit about writing Manchild, and you talked about how you wrote that the melody in the chords. You know, it's also a song that's full of great lines that reminds me of some of your later stuff, like on the Blank Project or Fallen Leaves, which was on your last album, which was just such a beautiful song. It's got that great line, you know, through the speaker boxes louds my diagnosis I believe in miracles and words and heavy doses, which I thought was just great, great line. Who are your lyrical influences then? Actually a big inspiration for me lyrically. I mean, I love Mini Ripperton. I was just talking about her in the car on the way here, but also Gareth Sager, who was in the pop group and then in Ripberg and Panic. He wrote the songs and a lot of you know, I sang his lyrics kind of. I mean I was like really young and sometimes I didn't really understand what I was but playing with words, and I think reggae music like moving to England and living there in the early eighties. I mean, all those Gregory Isaacs and Dennis Brown and going to sound systems were also like a huge influence. But I think lyrically, I mean it's it's like a combination of things. You know. Are you the kind that has to sit down every day to do some writing? No, I don't. I should do, but I don't. I think it would be quite good for me if I did. But when you've got an album coming up, then you just make yourself. Yeah, I mean I definitely have a kind of getting inside, and there's a waiting room and the battle is to kind of get inside. There's a zone, you know. I quite often maybe get slightly obsessed when I'm writing lyrics and looking for things and waiting for the to get the kind of click in my head, you know. I mean you have to use for me life experiences, you know, to me, they are like stories, you know, telling a story. And when I start a song, it's like I need to find the grain, Like, what is this song about? Where am I? Can I give you an example from Fallen Leaves? Yeah, just because I'm down, don't stop all over me? Yeah, just as an example that's at the end of a long of course. But what was that about? How did you? How did you get there? I started writing that song I lived quite near to the canal in London, and I know I was walking on the canal and it was literally like probably a quite autumnal thing going on, and and I just had this sense of you know, when you're just like hearing traffic and the world going on around and I think I was thinking about most people that would like to indulge in your story when you're on the ground and aren't that interested. M were you? Did you go through something like that at that point? There? Something? I mean, I'm I'm a human in life. I've gone through all kinds of shit, you know, as we do. But I just think that I it's it's pretty hard to not be aware of that kind of the vultures come and sit by you when you're actually down on the ground, when you're up running along. I think so ultimately, I guess it's maybe a song about survival. Actually, well, we haven't talked enough about the new album. Yeah, And one of the great treats on this album for me and I think it's going to be for a lot of people, is the version of woman yes by you know, who brings a complete, huge set of experiences to the song. So tell me first about writing the original that was on your third album, It was on Man Yep. What inspired that song? I mean womanhood, being a woman shamelessly wanting to write a song about what that means, not having to make any excuses, you know, like, Okay, this is a woman. I think also, like Dawn, my dad was there. I was I might have been pregnant with Mabel, and he was kind of dying, not kind of, And I think there was also maybe a more complex thing going on where you know, I was creating a child, you know, Mabel was in utero. I was also a daughter to my dad who was dying, And there were so many reflections of my own womanhood going on around me, and being thirty three or something and having had a just kind of coming over a threshold of coming out of the twenties into the thirties, and you know, you're trying to find your so called authentic self or something like that. Anyway, it's a song, and it's a song that sometimes has also annoyed me because I found it sometimes that like I've found it sometimes a bit restricting and sometimes in later years, I found the production a bit like pompous with strings and you know, this is a woman's world, you know, Like I was like, oh my god, I don't I kind of wanted to take it out of the box. And I think that's what I know. And he's done. She's just made it bleed more in a way that I think is really like it really needed to happen. Now, the original I assumed was a bit of the strings and everything you were trying to evoke the James Brown It's a man's world. Was that deliberate? I wouldn't say that. I would dare to say that it was an answer, but it was a part of the discussion. There's two other projects I want to ask you, but briefly, the first was the Cherry Thing, which is when you did free form jazz much closer to the stuff, Yeah, stepfather did. What was that like? To tell you the truth, I think that Cherry Thing record kind of saved my life, and it kind of brought me back into being able to make records because I hadn't made a record for seventeen years or something when I made that, And I guess it was just like kind of stepping into a zone and music that was kind of like in my very much in my DNA, and there was a kind of freedom, and I felt so harnessed by the musicians, and we did more or less most of the records. Songs on that record are cover versions, So we chose three songs and we did one take of each, you know, and a lot of things had happened. My mother had died, you know, not four years or three years before that, and I had been totally traumatized by that, and I'd of course been collaborating and doing music along the way and bringing up the family and then but just yeah, just getting to that place where it was like I knew that if I didn't do something soon, I was going to kind of crack up, do you know what I mean. It was like I was way down, I think, with too much stuff. It was part of the just expectations that if you come out with the solo album years after your last one was man, I guess yeah, and like not quite knowing where I wanted to go, even though I had a very strong sense in a way of where I wanted to go. But there was something in that Cherry Thing experience where I could fly. And it was very amazing to just work with the musicians, to feel that we were so connected, and to improvise a lot of the time, well, you were going to a place that would terrify most people, just pure improvisation. I think it was really important. I mean, we had structure, but there was a kind of I felt like harnessed and like they were pushing me at the same time, but kind of the music was there holding me up. And I think that that departure away from that kind of thing in pop music that can be slightly self conscious and kind of wrapped up in itself was so great. And then I kind of came back in So I made the Cherry Thing record, and then Karen Hebden Fortet remixed the suicide song Dream Baby Dream that we did a version of on that record, and then we then made two records together after And I'll finish on this because it interests me, you know. We we've talked about Buffalo Stance, which was such a great song, such a huge song, and then you had money Love after that, and a couple other big hits. Seven Seconds, I guess seven seconds might have been the biggest hit of all of them actually in Europe, not so much here, But but if you were, if you were American artist, you might be. You wouldn't be a one hit wonder because you had more than one hit, but you would be. The gravitational pull of those songs would be very heavy. You'd be, yeah, performing them on cruises or in casinos or something like that. So that's my absolute nightmares. But you've you've managed to keep this start with this hugely popular record, and you keep doing very experimental work. Is being in Europe, is living in England? Is that more conducive to that kind of work? I don't think it's so much about where you are. It's about what you do, you know. And I think that there was a part of me that found that, like fine, I could go and do the whole pop thing and turn up at the Smash Hits Awards. And we had our little crew and our family of people, and you know, sure made some mistakes along the way, but we tried to do things new way, in our way, and to kind of keep it as close to our hearts as we could. But but I just found that there I just couldn't stay in the straight line inside, you know, on that treadmill where it was like, okay, you make more records that sound like Buffalo's Stance, or make more And I'm sure, of course I could have maybe have had more success and made more money and sold more records, but it just wasn't really so much where I belonged, you know. And I found that I worked really hard and I learned a lot, and I'm really thankful, but there were also elements of it that I was like, it's not really what I'm living my life for. Yeah, I you know, made some conscious decisions to absolutely keep varying to the left. So what's next, you know, Yeah, I'm just about to go into writing some new music. I haven't made any new music for a while, maybe not to make an album. Maybe it will be more in the shape of like an EP or something like that to start with, Okay, we'll come back when you're done. Well, I will certainly try to do so. Okay, thank you very much. Thanks, It's been a complete delight and people should Everybody should be going out listening to this and all your other albums too. It's all there to be had, Go and listen. Thanks Nina Cherry for sharing stories from her and her family's supremely creative life. To hear a new album the versions as well as our favorite Nina Cherry songs. Check out the playlist at broken record podcast dot com. You should have subscribed to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast, where we can find all of our new other starts. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced help from Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Ben Holiday, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chaffey. Our executive produce sir is Mia Label. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content an uninterrupted ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcasts subscriptions, and if you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review us on your podcast app or theme music spect Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond,

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