A Thousand Threads

October 21, 2024
In this likable if routine autobiography, singer-songwriter Cherry (born Neneh Karlsson) pays tribute to the music that shaped her. Shortly after Cherry was born in 1964 Sweden, her parents split up, and her mother, Moki, started dating jazz musician Don Cherry. The three moved to Vermont, then New York City, where a young Cherry met Don’s famous friends, including Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane, who inspired her to begin “properly listening to records.” Much of the account focuses on the music that soundtracked Cherry’s coming-of-age: Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life when her family moved to L.A. and she began to embrace her Blackness; Poly Styrene when she decamped for London and fell in love with punk. Other sections focus on the writing and recording of Cherry’s breakthrough album, Raw Like Sushi, and her marriages to drummer Bruce Smith and singer Cameron McVey. Throughout, Cherry remains a passionate, openhearted guide, though her insights into songwriting (“It’s an almost meditative space we can visit to release what needs to be released”) will be familiar to readers well versed in music memoirs. Still, Cherry’s admirers will enjoy this intimate dispatch. Photos. Agent: Claire Patterson Conrad, Janklow & Nesbit U.K.