State of mind, don't look behind you

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce the high hat

And now the tambourine - right now!

Neneh Cherry (or “Mabel’s Mum” as she’s known in our house) has, without doubt, lived a full life.  At the age of 14, she dropped out of school in Sweden and moved to London to take up with various prominent female members of the punk scene who she’d met touring with her stepdad.  I can’t believe more people haven’t done this – I’m certainly expecting Emily to move out any day now.  And from then until the present day, she has worked with a fantastic array of people on a huge range of work.  So, obviously, it would be totally unfair to concentrate on her first album, wouldn’t it?!?

Ah well, I’m guessing she’ll get over it.

Having said that, I’m not entirely sure how much I have to say about “Raw Like Sushi”.  I couldn’t for the life of me say when I was first aware of her – it could well have been the totally outrageous time she went on Top Of The Pops.  WHEN SHE WAS PREGNANT!!  HOW COULD SHE?!?  It’s weird to think of the fuss that this caused back in the heady days of 1988 – I’m glad that the world has moved on so much and there’d never be a massive fuss about something so trivial these days.  Oh, hang on….

The album was released in 1989 and it sounded fresh then and it still sounds fresh to this day.  “Buffalo Stance” is probably the highlight being the opening track, the lead single and THAT appearance on TOTP but most of the other tracks stand up well to further inspection with an excellent mix of styles, social comment and just general fun.  I’ve tried picking out other highlights and it’s a struggle – “Manchild” probably gets my vote, but “Outre Risque Locomotive” gets bonus points for the title.  It's also worth mentioning the classy album cover which has attitude in spades - these things were important back in the day.

Another reason the album holds special memories for me is that although it was released in 1989, I didn’t buy it until late summer of 1990 and this was also the time another multi-talented woman entered my life.  It’s one of the few CDs we both bought (for some reason I never got round to buying the Wilson Phillips CD for myself) so there are many happy memories associated with it.

I can’t claim to have any hard evidence, but there’s certainly a view that “Raw Like Sushi” opened many doors for other artists.  NME put “Buffalo Stance” at #12 in The Greatest Pop Songs in History and makes the very reasonable argument that “At a point when most rap tracks that charted were brilliant (yet rather novelty) hits (‘Push It’, ‘Funky Cold Medina’, ‘Walk This Way’ for example), ‘Buffalo Stance’ pushed things a bit further. Although unmistakably fun and fresh, by rapping about real life situations and people, Cherry was making the genre a bit more approachable for Top 40 music fans” (link here).  And whilst NME can be super annoying, they do have some experience in these matters.  So there..

Having focussed on “Raw Like Sushi”, it feels only reasonable to also mention a couple of other Neneh Cherry highlights that I’m aware of – “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” from the “Red Hot + Blue” which is a surprisingly good collection of Cole Porter songs covered by contemporary (at the time, anyway) artists.  “Miss Otis Regrets” may be the second best track by Kirsty MacColl and The Pogues, but it’s surprisingly close in quality to their more well known collaboration - and darker.  Going back to Neneh, I also have to mention “7 Seconds” with Youssou N’dour which, if you don’t know it – go check it out.  NOW!

If you need any further proof of how cool she is, just check out her Wikipedia page which includes the statement “In the late 1980s, Cherry helped to bankroll the band Massive Attack”.  Because, why wouldn’t you, eh?!?  

Right, I’m off to help Emily pack her suitcase for when she moves out…