How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - Neneh Cherry - ‘My mother’s death undid me.’

Episode Date: October 9, 2024

If you’d told the 12-year-old me, listening to Manchild and Buffalo Stance on repeat at school in Belfast, that I would one day be interviewing Neneh Cherry, I wouldn’t have believed you. This woman is so iconic and has shaped so much of our culture - it’s not just her monster hits such as Seven Seconds (with Youssou N’Dour) or the fact that Massive Attack recorded their seminal first album in her bedroom, or that she’s met everyone from James Baldwin to Chuck D, it’s also that all three of her children are musicians too, including her daughter, chart-topping popstar Mabel (and former How To Fail guest - you can listen to her episode here). Neneh joins me to talk about an unconventional and itinerant upbringing, surrounded by music, art and expression. We chat about creativity and self-doubt, about motherhood and sisterhood and about how she once spectacularly failed to make pizza for Ian Dury. Neneh’s beautiful memoir ‘A Thousand Threads’ is out now. Have something to share of your own? I'd love to hear from you! Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com Production & Post Production Manager: Lily Hambly Studio and Mix Engineer: Gulliver Tickell and Josh Gibbs Senior Producer: Selina Ream Executive Producer: Carly Maile Head of Marketing: Kieran Lancini How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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how to succeed better. Before we get to our guest today, I just wanted to mention our special subscriber bonus podcast, Failing With Friends. This is where my guest stays in the studio after our chat and answers your questions and offers advice on your failures too. Here's a bit of Nenachery to give you an idea. Amen to that. I feel like she summed it all up. Do join in by following the link in the podcast notes and you can send me an email or look at my Instagram call-outs once a month to ask your quickfire questions. Thank you so much. If you came of age in the 80s or 90s, you'll know Nena Cherry. You'll know her music,

the unique, unforgettable sounds of singles such as Man Child and Buffalo Stance, and the ground-breaking hip-hop pop crossover debut album, Raw Like Sushi. You might know the work of her brother and fellow musician Eagle Eye Cherry. You'll probably have heard her chart-topping daughter Mabel on the radio. And you'll undoubtedly have come across another band who were shaped both by Cherry's musical influence and financial backing. Massive attack seminal trip-hop album Blue Lines was produced in the back bedroom Cherry shared with her husband Cameron McVeigh, their producer. Her creativity has spanned the decades and continued a family legacy. The daughter of a Swedish artist's mother

and a Sierra Leonean musician father, her parents separated shortly after Cherry was born and she was raised by her stepfather, the legendary American jazz musician Don Cherry. It was an itinerant childhood with stints in Sweden, France, New York, Turkey and London. But the one constant was the importance placed on artistic expression. When Cherry told her parents she wanted a break from school at the age of fourteen, they agreed. As she jokes in her forthcoming memoir, A Thousand Threads, she's still on that break. Her autobiography makes for fascinating and often moving reading. Cherry has weathered personal and professional storms, toured with bands

including The Slips and Rip, Rig and Panic, appeared on Top of the Pops while seven months pregnant and met everyone from James Baldwin to Miles Davis and Chuck D. Now 60, she writes, the beauty of becoming an older woman is that you finally feel that you're enough. You recognize that the failures and the fights are part of life. Nenacherri, welcome to How to Fail. Hello. I'm so happy to meet you. I'm so happy to meet you. I want to thank you for your music that got me through really difficult times at school. And I want to thank you for the book, which is so beautifully written.

And one of the things that you say in A Thousand Threads is that you've always been a rebel. What is a rebel for you? I think when you're a rebel, you ask questions and I think you are just naturally going against the grain. I think being a rebel doesn't mean that you have to be out running around with placards. It means that you're in your daily life trying to change things and I think ask questions. For me, I think also it's been a thing of having a kind of an allergy towards things that are stereotypical.

Do you think that explains where your sound and your lyrics come from? It's just that you felt that there weren't rules that you needed to play by. I guess I have a sound, but I'm also going against my own grain constantly when it's time to write. I guess that's why I find it quite terrifying, like when it's time to start a new album or when it's time to work on something new.

If we look at Raw Like Sushi, the album, which was like obviously an amazing gift. And I never expected anything as big as that. I think when I got to the end of that project, I was also conscious of the fact that it's very easy that you become caught up in the essence of pleasing. Fascinating. Do you know what I mean?

And that you start thinking of like, rather than just making, you're thinking about where it's gonna end up. In fact, when Massive Attack then kind of came into our world and started making their album in our house, it was actually like a godsend and like very medicinal because hearing their process kind of carried me through to my next place. And then I made an album called Homebrew. And I think it's just like constantly needing

to evolve. Well, thank you for the Massive Attack album too, because that was seminal for me when I was a student. Well, I thank you to Massive Attack for the Massive Attack album too, because that was seminal for me when I was a student. Well, I thank you to Massive Attack for the Massive Attack album. That idea of pleasing is so interesting to me because as women, we are raised, if we are a certain age, to be pliable and to think of others and to place their needs first. And I can imagine that as a woman of colour, there's an additional layer, especially because, as I said in the introduction, you had an itinerant childhood, but your experiences

in Sweden as a child were not always positive. You stood out. We stood out. I mean, I stood out everywhere I went, you know, and I stood out for different reasons. I stood out because of my heritage. I stood out because my family were different. We moved to a really small community, which had like really great aspects to it. Like not all of it was terrible. But I think that being constantly aware that everyone is aware of you, the kind

of shields and the multiple layers of self-protection to survive, I know that I committed as a very young girl to being kind of indestructible, like nobody was going to eyeball me down, you know, but I felt those eyes because of, you know, obviously, or I wouldn't have responded. It's a lot to be with in your life all the time. And actually during COVID, when George Floyd died, I realized how much stuff had just happened on a daily basis throughout my life that you just brush it aside. Yes. And I had to go out on the canal some days and just cry.

But it kind of forced me to release some of the things that had just been sitting there. But sometimes you just have to get mad about things. I know that there were times when I was juggling a lot, that I didn't always sit with how I actually felt. It was just like, I've got to make this work. I think as women, there's something very powerful in that, but also we can very much be, you know,

we can take ourselves for granted and it is taken for granted. Well, it leads us on to talking about mothering, which is something I want to ask you about because I'm going to talk about your fathers as part of your failures, not that they were, but they weave into the themes. But one of the very important parts of your book is your relationship with your own mother and how you show up as a mother, not just to your children, but to sort of wider friendship group. That idea of nurture is very important.

And you're very honest in the book. And there's one particularly moving passage where you talk about your mother dying and how that almost undid you for a while. I mean, it did undo me for a while. It absolutely catapulted me out into a place. It wasn't just even a thing of crawling back, like I had to get help to come back.

I mean, it was, of course, hard probably for everyone around to see, but then also like my kids, you know, everyone also had their own pain. But I think it was really hard for my youngest daughter, Mabel, because she was the only one still living at home. She was 13 or 14 and, you know, I wasn't available. There are things about it that makes me feel really ashamed, but

I also have to own that part of my failure rather than just being like, oh my God, I'm such a terrible person. I went through all those emotions. But I think healing is also a thing of trying to understand it better and to let it make me a better person rather than a worse human being. And I think your honesty is very powerful in that respect as well, because the only way you can allow that to happen is if you're brutally honest with yourself. And then to bring that to the page is a real gift for the reader. There's one moment where you say you were going for dinner, a family dinner, and Mabel... Yeah, it was Mabel's birthday. Okay, it was Mabel's birthday. And she saw you.

I was outside, like someone had a bottle of red wine, and I was like drinking out of a bottle of red wine. I mean, I drank, it was like I had no bottom. Like after my mother died, my anxiety went so high. When she first died, we were all drinking, like all the adults, you know, because she was 66, my mother, and she was such a life force. So she was six years older than I am today, you know what I mean? You know, her parents got really old. I just assumed she's going to get really old. It's like, what are we going to do with her when she's like 90? But I didn't stop drinking. Everyone else kind of chilled out after the initial shock and wore off once the funeral

happened and stuff like that. I was thinking that it was sort of calming me down. It kind of did for a short period of time and then it comes back. So it was like dreadful really. Yeah, Mabel just said, I can't do this. We have some really great friends in Sweden and one of her school friends. And basically her mother, Ulrika,

just said she can come and live with us. And Mabel was there for a while and she loved you know, loved her like one of her own. Thank God for that. I always say this like several times a day, you know, it takes a village. It's kind of important that you put the right people

inside your village. But you know, even the worst shit in life brings some kind of weird gifts. You know, you can't see it when you're going through it, but it's also allowed us to be very close. That's exactly what I think. I know exactly what you mean. You might not understand the meaning when you're in it,

but in the fullness of time, any failure, any disaster will potentially teach you something meaningful. And it might just teach you that you survived it, but that's enough. Yeah. Of course, it matters. It depends on how you go with it. I mean, I know that I had to kind of surrender to my own madness and just be like,

okay, like, I need to sort this shit out. Well, that's not the last you'll hear of Mabel in this interview because she has been on How to Fail. I'm gradually collecting- And she loves you. I love her. She came to my house. She met my cat. Oh, wow. And your sister by another mister, Andy Oliver, who is a dear mutual friend.

My beautiful, blessed- I mean, such a beautiful person and threaded through your memoir in the most generous way. So you'll hear more about them, but let's get on to your failures. So your first failure is that you say you're not a disciplined person, which means that you failed your creativity at times. Tell me more about that. How does the lack of discipline manifest itself? Creativity and the magic of creativity, I've always felt that you don't own it, you open yourself up to it. Sometimes, of course, it just comes at you kind of coincidentally.

But I think that you can't be like, okay, if I have two glasses of wine and I relax and then I get up and jump around on the stage, I'm going to catch the Holy Ghost. I think it's like you have to earn it. The more you practice, the more maybe open you can be. I won't say that I haven't put in time, but I think also, and you can even go back to what we were just talking about, having a lot of things in life going on all at the same time and being a woman and a mother that actually at the end of the day finding the space to go into my space to just kind of sit there has not happened because of lots of other things going on. But I think sometimes, because of my sort of insecurity

that I have with my own ability, I have also avoided going into that space because it's hard. Right, right. You know? Yeah, you'd rather not take the risk that you're not enough. Yeah. So sometimes I've just gone to my pots and cooked something instead. I think sometimes I'm quite good at taking care of people, feeding people. Andy and I, my dear beloved Andy Oliver, we've done that so much, taken a lot of strength and build a lot of our own personal confidence in that world. Sometimes I understood that better. There is a process of work and unpeeling and concentration

and focus. And sometimes I've just felt like, okay, well, I'm just going to go around the corner and go to the shops instead of like having to go through all of that. You mentioned that sometimes you just want to go to the shops rather than sitting down and creating. But one of your most famous songs came about from a visit to the shops, didn't it? Actually, Buffalo Stance. When we were living in Edith Road, I was walking to the supermarket. Something in the tread and the crunch of the leaves under my shoe, I just started,

who's that jiggle-o on the street? Little chink, crack, crack, and then I just went into the store. And actually, Man Child, the the first verse happened on a bus. So sometimes I think as much as now to contradict what I'm saying about going into a room and writing or something, I'm also the kind of person that like, sometimes when I think too hard on something, it can't happen. So when I'm doing, when I think too hard on something, it can't happen. So when I'm doing, when I'm in action, in the shower, just like putting some conditioner

in my hair, sometimes a lost word or something that I have been able to kind of put my hand on will just come. And I think that if I think about all the times I've sat in the kitchen, you know, doing other stuff and then just working or having my cassette player that going at the same time. Do you have a cassette player? I did not anymore. Now I have a telephone. One time Bono walked past me.

Sorry, just a moment of applause for the start of that sentence. So one time Bono walked past you. Go ahead. He was doing a kind of warm up U2 gig. We were in this club in Paris and he said, I can feel the songs around your head and I nearly cried. It kind of summed it all up. What I've been guilty of doing is that I go into intense periods of making an album and of course I've done so much of that work together with Cameron, my husband.

And then sort of when an album's done and the promo's done and then I just sort of dither off and I don't necessarily sit and write and it's a bit more like I'm just out in life collecting songs. That's what I mean. That's what I would think is that you produce this gorgeous harvest of creativity and then the field needs to recover. It needs to lay fallow for a bit and you need to do your cooking and your being and your community. Otherwise, there's no well to draw from. Yeah, there's nothing to talk about and I agree with that. Like even today, after I've been here,

I'm going to do a rehearsal with Ezra Collective and I'm terrified. You know what I mean? I'm terrified that I'm gonna get on the mic and it's gonna sound terrible, you know? And I think I've struggled with that a lot. I wonder if that's because the creativity is so muse-like that you worry one day it might just not be there. Like you're not in control of it, but I want you to know that it's such a trite thing to say,

but you are enough, but you are enough. You are brilliant just being you. That you on what you consider to be a bad day is better than 98% of other people. Because you bring you to it. That's what the key is. That's all you can do, isn't it? Yes. You can only bring you to it. And I think that is maybe where my personal rebellion, just to keep going around in this conversation, has been this kind of responsibility to know that it's not going to work unless you're you, me.

Yes. It's like you're rebelling against... Nothing is going to work. Now you have to rebel against your own insecurity. Yeah. Yes. And how much of that do you think is related to addiction and fear of addiction? Because you saw your stepfather, Don, live with heroin addiction for a long time. And there's a thread there I feel about sort of chaos and creativity and maybe

the moulding of the two. Is there an associated fear in your head that if you go too far into creativity, it could undo you? I don't think so because I think that maybe I'm fundamentally a bit lazy, to be perfectly honest. You know what I mean? It's not quite as profound. It's not as profound, but I think that it's like, once I'm in, I would not let it go. Whatever it is I'm doing until I've expressed myself so much better than I'll ever be able to do with words.

I think also like my voice, do you know what I mean? Like if I'd put the time in, speaking of going back to the failure of like really working on my voice much more. Cause I think I'm a natural singer, but I'm not like a particularly amazing singer. Like I sing, I think with my heart, but and I, and you know,

I know that if I worked in my voice a lot more that it would make a huge difference. What's it like then seeing your daughter Mabel be in this industry of music and creativity? You must have been scared for her to begin with I imagine. to being scared for her to begin with, I imagine. Yeah, it's like a mixture. Like I'm obviously incredibly proud. What scares me is the kind of lion's den, the so-called industry and just how kind of throwaway it makes us all sort of replaceable. And this goes for all because all of my kids make music. I mean, Mabel is genius and I adore her, but Tyson also sings,

and he must makes music. But if we're talking about Mabel in particular, being in that part of the sort of pop world, that it's going to break her beauty because she is so incredibly gifted. And when I look at her, I love everything that she does, but I can also feel like she's only just starting. And then in the eyes of some places in the industry, they would say, oh, she's having a comeback. And I'm like, coming back from fucking what? I hate that expression. I feel like now she's just on a journey of discovery.

But I mean, it's like even if you're ultra famous, you've got to be allowed to grow. I think that pressure of having to get that everything has to be so fucking choreographed, choreographed, it's terrifying. It takes away the grains in something that make it put- Real and flawed and beautiful because of the flaws. Yeah. And will give you hairs, you know, make your hairs on your arms stand up. It's like,

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Alyssa, isn't it hard to stay sane when each week another Republican lawmaker launches an attack on our reproductive freedoms. Erin, it is. But luckily, we have a hack that will give you all the information you need to know without driving you crazy. Join me, Erin Ryan. And me, Alyssa Mastromonico.

Every week on Hysteria for opinionated conversations about the news stories you need to hear. With abortion on the ballot in so many states this November, we're bringing the laughs and just the right amount of petty to help you power through the rest of the week. And power through the fight for reproductive freedom. Tune in for new episodes every Thursday. Wherever you get your podcasts. So your next failure is about Ian Durie. Tell us this story.

I was more possibly one of the worst funniest things that I've ever served together with Andrea. So we'd been to Scotland with a friend and this friend, this really great friend of us, Jock, MacDonald Jock, Scottish Jock, took us to visit a friend of his and he made this pizza for us that was like amazing. So now he baked the bottom then then he seemed to have like, he put the sauce on it at the end as well. It was just like this really kind of creative, inventive, really great pizza. Andy and I were going to visit Ian. Jury, I knew him because my dad,

Don, played with him over a period of time and toured with him. They had a huge bromance. They loved each other so much. We'd seen Ian at a party, I think. Anyway, he said, come over. He lived down on the river side in these beautiful mansion houses, by Hammersmith, just by that beautiful bridge. So we went over there to make this pizza and it was like never ending.

The dough never rose. We just kind of gave up on it in the end, put it in the oven. I guess we put this sauce and basically made it into a pizza and baked it. But it was like basically like this tabletop. I mean, you couldn't cut it with a knife. It was like brick hard. And Ian, I mean, bless him, he had a really amazing sense of humor. So he was just like kind of laughing his head off. But Ian just like, never let us forget. And would always bring it up, you know, all that night with the bloody pizza.

Normally I ask people what they think their failures have taught them. I'm assuming this one has it taught you to be able to make pizza or? I think that it taught me to kind of sit back and have some respect for the art of making pizza and the science of dough. Like I baked before so I don't quite know, we both had. Also just, I think it's also taught me something about being better at accepting that some things fail and that it's like, okay.

We felt quite cut up that we were like putting something on the table. For Ian Jury. That was basically, for Ian Jury, that was basically inedible and it was quite cringy and terrible. But we did laugh a lot about it. It was really funny. We got the anecdote, here we are talking about this crazy event. And I think the other thing that that anecdote brings home to me again is how many incredible people you've met. Please tell us about James

Baldwin. I was very young when I met him, right? I was like four and a half coming up to five. We might have seen him a few other times in New York when I was growing up, but I remember him. And I don't remember him just because, oh, that was the time when you met James Baldwin. Wow. I remember him because of his spirit and his eyes and because he was obviously an amazing man and human being. Basically, we had traveled from Stockholm to Turkey. My Don was on a journey of, there were quite a few Turkish musicians living in Stockholm, and he had started learning and studying the music,

and the rhythm sequences. I think there was a concert in Ankara, and one of the musicians that he'd been working with in Stockholm took us, drove with us. It was quite a crazy journey. To me, it seemed like it took forever, but I think it was only like maybe five days or something. And then we went to Istanbul and there,

I think that my parents just kind of ran into James Baldwin on the street. Like, he was there, he was living there working on a play. And he would have been like, if so often was, hey, Don, hey, oh on a play. And he would have been like, if so often was, I, hey, Don, hey, oh, Moki. And we sat, I just really remember sitting in a, it was kind of a gray day and it was like not a hot day. Cause I think we went there in like the winter months. And yeah, just sitting at this table, they were talking, and I just remember his eyes actually more than anything. And then Don ended up doing music for

the play. And it's one of those things where I think that a recording has turned up quite recently. He might have played for one of the shows, but then I think the music was just used. But I also feel like I can remember being inside the theater where their rehearsals were going on. But then, so the memories so. Wow. Funny, but yeah, it's like, I think as a child, you know, you meet certain people that actually you remember them because they really talk to you rather than them speaking, you know, through your parents or, or just going through the motions. Oh, you know, I feel like I remember it because it was a very direct communication.

And you say in the book that you remember his kindness. Yeah, that's what I think I mean when I say that I remember his eyes, because his eyes were like a whole universe, you know. He was such a smart guy. I'm sitting here and you're writing songs. If Bono was right, your turn of phrase is so exquisite. Oh, I feel so stupid. Sorry to make you feel embarrassed. No, I'll take it.

Okay. We've spoken about Don. We haven't yet spoken about your biological father. Amadou. Who was also a musician. Amadou Jah. Yes. your biological father who was also a musician. And I think another thing that comes out loud and clear from the memoir is how much love you have for both. There's no bitterness there. I don't know how hard you had to work on that, but it's quite clear that you feel very at peace with the fact that these two men shaped you? They were two very different men and Don for sure was my dad. Like he was there unconditionally every day and I was a bit older when I found out that I had a

different father to Eagle Eye. So I was like seven, six, seven, when my mother told me. You were looking at a photo album and she said- She was just, no, I think it was just loose black and white pictures. And then there was this photograph of four people. And I think the other three people were white people. And then there was this guy, man, in a stripey, I think it was like a, I feel like it was a blue and white striped top. Anyway, and I was like, who's that? I didn't recognize him, so I was like, who is he? And I was sitting on my mother's lap and she just like, oh, he's someone I know. And then we kept going.

And then she went back and then she was like, I have to tell you something. And then she told me, actually that man is your father. Yeah, it was like a very surreal thing to have happen actually. Cause the foundations totally shifted. And I mean, I was only six and a half years old or something. There was also a part of me that grappled with what it really meant. Then I didn't meet him for a few years and we weren't like instantly close, but we were also obviously of each other.

So there was this kind of like intense kind of intimacy, which I think I found quite difficult at first, like just not really knowing how to handle it, you know, because I felt it and I also felt like his immense love. But he was so incredibly kind, but he was also quite remorseful, I think, of like that he'd let all that time go and that we hadn't known each other. So I started visiting, got to know, became really close with my sister to Tio

and my brother, Ciano. And then when I was 15, we went to, he took us to Sierra Leone for the first time. And that was like incredible. You know, I also felt like with Amadou that we had something special. And I think I felt very conscious of that from quite early on, which I think was really helpful because I was his firstborn. So there was something in that, in the row of siblings that I

had. Because I think we're nine now. So I just found out about another brother, just my father died like six years ago or something. I think it was 2017. So I met one of my brothers in Sierra Leone for the first time. So your family is ever expanding, which actually, given what we've been talking about, is somewhat beautiful, that expansiveness of this community and this love, this constant evolution. Yeah, but I like quite early on said to my father when one of my really good friends

was working in a nursery in Stockholm and a woman came in to pick up one of the kids and mentioned the name of the father and it it was my father, like, oh, this is something about Amadou Jass. So she told me, she was like, I think I'm looking after one of your siblings at my nursery. So I was like, to my father, like, yo, like, listen, I would like to know who my siblings are. Also, there's a kind of risk factor that like, what if one of my kids goes out and falls in love with

like someone who's her uncle actually at the end of the day. Like it's weirder things have happened you know but more than anything it was like look we exist like we need to know each other. I mean Don going back to your question like Don brought me up but like he was always very respectful of my father. So I think that was so important because it also meant that I could, the sort of a more complicated emotional aspect that was probably going on inside of me, it allowed it to kind of find its way. Yes. And then of course, you know, the trips that we took to Sierra Leone and meeting our family

and that incredible importance of knowing like that part of who we are, it changed my life. I'm Shankar Vedantam here to tell you about a great mystery. That mystery is you. I'm Shankar Vedantam, here to tell you about a great mystery. That mystery is you. As the host of a podcast called Hidden Brain, I explore big questions about what it means to be human. Questions like, where do our emotions come from?

Why do so many of us feel overwhelmed by modern life? How can we better understand the people around us? Discover your hidden brain. Find us wherever you get your podcasts. Life and death were two very realistic co-existing possibilities in my life. I didn't even think I'd make it to like my 16th birthday to be honest. I grew up being scared of who I was. Any one of us at any time can be affected by mental health and addictions. Just taking that first step makes a big difference.

It's the hardest step. But CAMH was there from the beginning. Everyone deserves better mental health care. To hear more stories of recovery, visit camh.ca. Your final failure is about a tribe called Quest. I mean, there's no seamless link, but this really does feel like a failure to you, doesn't it? Because you're disappointed. What happened? So, I went to a party for Young MC in New York. Delasol were there, loads of people were there. It was a big night.

At Delasol, we were on the dance floor together having the best time. I knew them a little bit. They introduced me to this guy, Q-Tip. Oh my God. I was like, great. I was like, oh great, Q. He was like, yeah, I'm making this record and we just had the best time. I just loved them so much.

Of course, I'd been listening to the De La Soul. Yeah, I knew De La Soul. I'd been listening to the album, it was like a complete lifesaver. Then Q-Tip was like, I'm making this record. Of course, it was the first Tribecore Quest record, which is a masterpiece. Will you come and sing on a track?

I was like, yeah, sure, come and sing on a track? I was like, yeah, sure, come and sing on a track. Then I took my number. I went back, we'd rented a house upstate New York. My phone rings one day and I have this black phone hanging on the wall with one of those long wires. I was probably in the kitchen walking around with the thing,

talking to holding the baby. He was like, we you, you know, we're ready to do that track. Will you come and do it? And I was like, oh God. I don't, I mean, I was like touched. Don't get me wrong, but I was like really tired. I was probably something else going on.

I probably had promo I was going to do. And probably going back to the first question, there was something in me that was terrified. Like what if I go there, I'm not able to, maybe I'm not what they think that I am. Do you know what I mean? One of those things. And that was also why I put that as one of my failures in there. Because I think there was something deeper in there than just feeling tired. There was something that was like, ah, and so it was easier to say no. And now I'm like, every time I listen to the record, I'm like, I could have been on that record. But also, I'm cool with it because

I can look at the thing and talk about it and know that, yeah, it was a bit of a mess up and I'm very disappointed in myself that I didn't do it. But also, I love the album so much. The actual, that body of music has carried me through a thousand other failures. Do you know what I mean? It's still so good. Maybe you just don't know.

Maybe you couldn't listen to it in the same way. Yeah. Then we had an interesting thing later where we were going to work on, make some music together. But his initial idea, and I was like, I love this guy, was to write a song called The 28th Day, about periods and the woman's cycle, and that was his idea. That's an amazing idea.

He's a good man. Then we just started doing all this kind of research. Then 3D for Massive Attack found some nutty comic that was about a 28 day cycle of people who I mean I guess ran with the moon maybe like a vampire type thing so we were just collecting all this kind of material but then somehow it just dissipated like things. I feel like this is the moment to bring it back into the universe and to make it happen. So we're talking about it. That's the good thing about talking about things, right?

Yes. Because you can then kind of materialize it again. Exactly. There's also a podcast called 28 Days, I Think, which is all about the cycle, which you should listen to. Okay. You are, although I can't believe it looking at you, you're 60.

If that opportunity, I know it can't, but if it were to come up again, would you now feel I'm enough, I can do this? Yes, it's not always about getting it right. That's not always the point of the story. The point of the story is sometimes that you just have to do it regardless, and then maybe it'll end up being something amazing.

Maybe not. So I think now I would probably just be like, yeah, let's just go for it and see what happens. Because collaborations are funny, aren't they? Even if you put two magical people or great people together, it doesn't mean that what they do together. And so my experience of collaborations is some of them have turned out really great. Yeah, you're soon to do. Yeah, Seven Seconds was definitely amazing.

I think so much of the music I've made is collaborative. But sometimes, I've been in the studio with someone and you think, oh, wow, this is, I have been wanting to make a track with Honey Dijon, but I'm also terrified of going in the studio with her. Would you make a track with Mabel? Maybe. I mean, we've been cross-collaborating. We just did a cover for a magazine, an L cover in Sweden together.

We've come to a place naturally where we can swim in the same stream in different lanes and it feels really great. But maybe I'm just destined to be your biggest fan. Oh, no, no, well, I can't wait to see what you do next. As Bono said, I can see the songs around your head. It has been an honor to meet you, but a joy to chat to you.

Honestly, I've loved it so much. Thank you. Thank you. It's been, yeah, it's been, I really enjoyed it. We took a fun journey. And you're staying, even better, you're staying to do Failing with Friends. Okay.

Where you get to answer, it's not about you, you're probably breathing a sigh of relief as the gorgeously generous, introverted person you are. It's about the listeners who've written in with their problems. Much more exciting and interesting. Thank you very much. Thank you. We would love you to follow us to get new episodes as they land on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Please tell all your friends and your enemies

I'm not fussy. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening.