Swedish singer-songwriter Neneh Cherry, 58, has had a storied musical career since her teenage years, encompassing her evolution as a woman, an artist, a DJ, a feminist, a mother, and — now — an enthusiastic collaborator.
Released in June, her album The Versions is a reimagining of her 10 best-known tracks through creative musical partnerships with an impressive lineup, including Robyn, Greentea Peng, Anohni, and Australian singer-songwriter Sia.
Cherry’s artistry was a family affair. Born to a West African musician father and Swedish artist mother, she spent a peripatetic childhood between Sweden and the U.S. before heading to the U.K. as a teenager to find her own artistic identity. She enthusiastically embraced the punk rock scene in the early 1980s, encouraged by her stepfather since infancy, Don Cherry, and his association with the Slits and their singer, Ari Up. She’d later perform with the Slits, Rip Rig + Panic, and New Age Steppers in those early years before her evolution through punk to rock, R&B, and soul — collaborating with Michael Stipe of R.E.M. and Youssou N’Dour along the way.
The Versions will hopefully draw a new generation to discover “Buffalo Stance,” “Manchild,” and some of her other iconic hits, and will also provide a reminder to those who loved her in the ’80s and ’90s that she is still creating, still vital, and still exciting. In the last few years, Cherry has had one eye to the future, releasing the solo album Broken Politics in 2018, while also rummaging through her archives to release a deluxe version of her debut album, Raw Like Sushi, in 2019.
The Versions is her sixth solo album. Cherry’s 1989 debut, Raw Like Sushi, catapulted her into the charts and a decade later earned her a spot in editor Robert Dimery’s book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. The lead single, “Buffalo Stance,” was a punchy pop number that paid homage to the fashion house Buffalo’s clique of subversive, opportunistic creatives (photographers, musicians, models, and stylists). Listening to the original more than 30 years later, it sounds so typical of the 1980s, embracing a signature synth-heavy Roland keyboard hook, a rhythmic guitar line, and Cherry’s defiant rap verses that melt into smooth, melodic choruses, punctuated by the warning “Don’t you get fresh with me!”
Given a 2022 refresh, “Buffalo Stance” features Swedish electro-balladeer Robyn singing Cherry’s original vocal parts, produced by nostalgia-loving Devonté Hynes (best known for performing under the moniker Blood Orange). Their version emphasizes the trippy, almost melancholic edge that was overpowered by percussion on the original.
Swedish-American singer-songwriter Mapei guests on the rap parts, though she’s established — like Cherry — that she has melodic R&B chops in her solo work. As Cherry told The Guardian’s Laura Snapes, “I’m not really into nostalgia, but I think that the journey of history is really important, and so to be in this space where Robyn, who is one of the loves of my life, has put her voice to ‘Buffalo Stance’ and made it hers feels monumental.”
It only takes a glance at headlines of major newspapers to see that it is still, largely, the iconic men of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s who are celebrated for their longevity and extensive catalogues: Dylan, Bowie, Springsteen, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and Nirvana still get talked about with awestruck reverence. But it is women — who have battled their way through myopic, sexist attitudes seen in marketing, music-making, and media — who deserve to be praised equally, at the very least.
As groundbreaking as Ziggy Stardust’s gender-defying fluidity was, it was Neneh Cherry who appeared, heavily pregnant, on Top of the Pops to perform “Buffalo Stance” at a time when being an object of sexual desire and availability was demanded by industry executives as the key to popularity and album sales.
Faced with outright sexism and an undercurrent of racism, particularly in the U.K. and U.S. through the 1980s and 1990s, it was perhaps unsurprising that Cherry had an eagle eye for men with mediocre talent but oversized ambitions. It’s an observation she articulated on “Manchild” in 1989.
“You’d sell your soul for a tacky song
Like the one you hear on the radio
Turn around, ask yourself
Manchild, will you ever win?
Manchild, look at the state you’re in”
The “Manchild” video depicts Cherry dressed in bike shorts and high-top sneakers, cradling her baby daughter as she dances next to the freshly hung-out laundry (how many pop stars admit to, let alone make a point of, doing the laundry?)
On this album, Kelsey Lu’s version of “Manchild” sees the North Carolina-born experimental singer and cellist (who has proved adept at handling a loop pedal in her own compositions) add layers of distortion, turning the original into a chilled-out trip-hop version soaked in Lu’s sultriness. Lu was featured on Blood Orange’s (a.k.a. Devonté Hynes) Freetown Sound album in 2016. That Lu is featured on both production and vocals on The Versions is no coincidence. Underlying many of the collaborations is a shared respect for, and past collaborations among, the artists involved.
Another take on “Manchild,” featuring Australian electro-pop artist Sia — a single mom to two boys, incidentally — adds lush synths, reimagining the original as a sunnier, tropical house-style dance track. Her signature nasally soprano croon makes the song her own, with Cherry’s permission and encouragement, of course. Sia’s vocal style and her divisive 2021 film debut, Music, have drawn the savagery of critics, and it is perhaps this very brutal public criticism of the solo star that Cherry is drawn to. She likes outspoken outliers.
Another divisive talent interprets Cherry’s 1996 single “Woman.” English singer-songwriter and artist Anohni has given a gloomy, romantic gilding to the song, layering the original with melancholic, heartbreaking heft. Originally known as the singer Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons, the 50-year-old sounds particularly haunting as she croons, “It’s a woman’s world, this is my world.”
In America right now, the truth of this sentiment is a difficult, confrontational one to contemplate. But any resistance is washed away in Anohni’s falsetto atop a delicate piano arpeggio, “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, you’ve got to give it back now to me. … If you love me, you’ll give it back to me.” If this song wins you over (and how couldn’t it?), seek out Anohni’s 2016 album, Hopelessness, featuring producer du jour Oneohtrix Point Never.
At the other end of the sonic spectrum, Chicago-born Honey Dijon’s bass-rich house banger “Buddy X” demands your hips and heels get on a dance floor. There’s an immediacy and a squelchy hypnotic beat that’s reminiscent of Madonna’s “Ray of Light”-era electro. With bases in New York and Berlin, Dijon (born Honey Redmond) established her name performing DJ sets for the fashion and art gallery glitterati. She’s deejayed for Dior and Louis Vuitton runway shows, welding some dirty techno grit into her funky Chicago house genes. Equally as important as her dance music credentials is Dijon's activism as a Black trans woman DJ in an industry that is still struggling to acknowledge and apologize for alleged rampant abuse, harassment, and blatant misogyny over decades.
Dijon has led public conversations about the need for support, unity, and safety within the dance music world, and the role of creative expression in fostering that sense of having a voice and a place. It’s the work Cherry has been doing for decades too — amplifying voices where they’ve been ignored.
There are webs, subtle and not so subtle, connecting all the collaborative partnerships on this album, and while it’s not imperative that listeners put the jigsaw pieces together to appreciate the fullness and force of The Versions as a cultural landmark, it enriches the experience of hearing the songs. Likewise, listeners don’t need to have seen Cherry in her big gold hoop earrings and neon-hued bomber jacket to fall in love with the undeniable groove and grind of her rhythms remixed for today. It enriches the experience, though.
While Sia and Anohni have been featured in mainstream music media over the past two decades, Cherry’s also chose emerging artists whose styles and identities aren’t neatly fitted into genre pigeonholes. Greentea Peng exemplifies this. By the time Peng released her debut album, Man Made, last year, she’d already tantalized discerning soul and R&B listeners with the EPs Sensi and Rising, but she’d been performing and writing for a decade before the media recognized her talent.
She takes her version of “Buddy X” on a psychedelic soul trip. Woozy keyboards and a click-clack beat provide the momentum, while Peng’s smoky, singular vocals seduce in layered harmonies.
On that same modern soul vibe, Jamila Woods — poet, singer, and songwriter — infuses “Kootchi” with her rich, smooth falsetto, doo wop harmonies, and spectral synths. Woods, like Cherry, has proudly spoken about the legendary artists who shaped her sound, and the legacy of Black women who paved a path for her personally, professionally, and spiritually.
Legacy is, after all, at the core of The Versions. Befittingly, Tyson performs “Sassy” with all the necessary self-assuredness the title implies. How could she not be sassy as Cherry’s daughter? “My mother is the blueprint to my personhood, my womanhood, my music,” Tyson posted to her social media last month.
Elsewhere, Seinabo Sey delivers a gospel-influenced, bluesy vocal on a darkly beautiful ode to memories in “Kisses on the Wind.” She’s a magnificent combination of Erykah Badu, Prince, and Nina Simone all in one dynamo vocal force. With a flavor all her own, Sudan Archives takes “Heart” into industrial synth territory, adding sweeping, brassy distortion and layers of strings. Atop it, her voice weaves into yearning shapes: sexy, sweet, and soulful. The L.A.-based violinist, singer, and producer releases her album Natural Brown Prom Queen in September, and if “Heart” is any indication, it’s going to be unmissable.
In The Versions, legendary Neneh Cherry has gifted us with a legacy in the making, and her discerning ear and eye for exemplary collaborators prove she recognizes future legends. This is an education, Cherry on top.
Cat Woods is a writer based in Melbourne, Australia. She has written for national and international news sites, and regularly writes on music and arts.
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