‘Truths and Rights’: Neneh Cherry names her favourite song of all time
Among the incredibly saturated pop scene of the 1980s, one of the most important and influential names was Neneh Cherry. The Swedish-born singer-songwriter came onto the mainstream radar with 1988’s ‘Buffalo Stance’, which reached number three in the singles charts, yet her early career and musical education were storied by punk rock, early hip-hop and reggae soundsystem culture.
The teenage years of Neneh Cherry seem to be awash with iconic figures from the world of punk and new wave. Moving to New York at the age of six, the future pop sensation shared an apartment building with none other than Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads fame. After dropping out of school at the age of 14 to relocate to London, Cherry struck up a friendship with Ari Up of the legendary punk group The Slits, who acted as a huge influence on the young Cherry.
The Slits were a truly unique group in the punk scene of the UK. Not only were they among the first all-female punk groups to establish themselves, their music was fearlessly original and at odds with the work being created by their contemporaries: groups like the Sex Pistols or The Damned who offered a fairly bog-standard rendition of the punk revolution. The Slits, and wonderfully wild frontwoman Ari Up in particular, was infatuated with ska and reggae music, which can be plainly heard in their sound.
Reggae music had a growing presence in the UK during the 1970s. As a result of the Windrush generation, immigrants arrived from the Caribbean in order to help rebuild the country in a post-war landscape, and areas like Brixton and Ladbroke Grove suddenly had a high population of Caribbean people. Hence, London was awash with the incredible grooves of artists like Dandy Livingstone, The Upsetters and Althea and Donna. Punk rock and reggae had a certain unifying power, which Ari Up of The Slits took note of.
Through her time living with Ari, Nenaeh Cherry soon took note of this blossoming reggae scene, finding it to blend quite well with the early hip-hop influences that she had picked up in New York. In fact, Cherry had such an appreciation for the national sound of Jamaica that her all-time favourite song harks back to that period.
Speaking to BBC Sounds, Cherry revealed her love for ‘Truths and Rights’ by the iconic reggae singer Johnny Osbourne. “I was living with Ari Up from The Slits, who introduced me to soundsystem culture, and this was one of the tunes we used to rock in our house”, she explained. A defining track of roots reggae, the track gave its name to Osbourne’s second studio album, released in 1980.
It was the love of reggae music imbued by Ari Up and Johnny Osbourne that set Neneh on her path to pop stardom, inspiring her to play with a variety of post-punk groups ranging from The Slits to Rip-Rig + Panic. Were it not for those early years learning the ropes within the vibrant punk and reggae scene of the late-1970s in London, she might have never reached the dizzying heights of ‘Buffalo Stance’.
