Swedish singer-songwriter Neneh Cherry owns the fourth most underrated 80s song with ‘Buffalo Stance,’ her biggest hit. The 1988 single went to #1 in her native Sweden and peaked at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Of the ten songs on Chris Dalla Riva’s “underrated” chart, this one has the fewest Spotify streams. Cherry had a decent run in the late 80s and early 90s but has pretty much fallen off the map (despite releasing an album as recently as 2022).
Listening to Neneh Cherry’s 1992 album Homebrew 26 years after its release, I’m even more impressed than I was back then.
In 1992, Homebrew felt ahead of its time, a fusion of rap, jazz, pop, electronic and rock unlike pretty much anything I’d heard before. But somehow, it still feels ahead of its time today. What artists, male or female, are working in this space today?
The end of this week has turned into an unofficial theme week, focusing on women who made a momentary splash and then fell off the face of the earth.
Next on the list is Neneh Cherry, who came to my attention in 1992 with the released of her second album, Homebrew. Cherry actually reached a bigger audience with her first album, 1989’s Raw Like Sushi, which spawned the hit single ‘Buffalo Stance,’ but I’d never heard of her before Homebrew.
This album is a mix of hip-hop, R&B and pop that may well have been too ahead of its time. You look at a group like the Black-Eyed Peas scoring hit after hit these days and wonder if Cherry might have found her niche too soon.
Now here’s a song that takes me back.
When I worked in a movie theater during college, we used to play these MovieTunes CDs on repeat all day. They still use them today, at least until ‘The Twenty’ starts. The CDs are about 45 minutes long and feature a dozen or so songs from new and upcoming releases, as well as some promotional banter between tracks.
They are harmless enough for patrons of the theater, who likely hear each song once, if that. But working an 8 hour shift means hearing each of those songs about a dozen times per day, four or five days per week. Lots of potential for hair-pulling.
Meet Me In Montauk 