How Neneh Cherry Reinvented a Finished Song To Score an Iconic 80s Hit

Neneh Cherry must have realized she’d done something special. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have returned to a song that she’d already released once. Perhaps she intuited that there was more meat left on the bone in terms of its potential.

With two new collaborators helping her out, Cherry transformed the original tale into something iconic in 1989. That’s how she ended up with “Buffalo Stance”, one of the 80s most unforgettable singles.

From B-Side to Smash

Neneh Cherry’s familial connections suggested her future career path. Her biological father, who was from Sierra Leone, was a musician, while her stepfather was Don Cherry, who gained renown as a trumpeter. Raised in Sweden, Cherry spent time in America growing up before decamping to England as a teenager in the 80s.

After bouncing around with several bands in that period, Cherry made a musical connection with her future husband Cameron McVey. McVey, with Jamie Morgan, released a 1987 single called “Looking Good Driving” as Morgan-McVey.

The song borrowed from the sophisti-pop trend made popular by other British acts like Scritti Politti. For the B-side, which was essentially a remix of the A-side, the duo let Cherry take the mic. She delivered a fanciful rap, full of asides and accents, on the track called “Driving With The Wild Bunch”. Those lyrics were repurposed a year later for the biggest hit of her career.

Buffalo Basics

Now armed with a solo deal, Cherry connected with Tim Simenon and Mark Saunders, a pair of musician/producers, to turn “Driving With The Wild Bunch” into “Buffalo Stance”. Simenon handled the scratching and the samples. Saunders helped construct the track, adding a subtle guitar part while also finding the synth preset that became the instrumental hook leading into the chorus.

On his website, Saunders remembered Cherry’s vocal performance:

“Witnessing Neneh on the mic for the first time was unforgettable.  From the get go, Tim and I were looking at each other in awe.  Neneh didn’t just sing the song with incredible attitude and sass up the wazoo, she spontaneously threw in all those superb ad libs throughout the track that we all know and love.  She did about three or four takes and we had more brilliant stuff than we could use. Her vocals were just full of her awesome personality and character.”

The result seemed to touch on everything from hip-hop to synth rock, from R&B to prog. “Buffalo Stance”, released in 1988, took the pop world by storm, landing at No. 3 on the pop charts. It also acted as the centerpiece to Cherry’s brilliant debut album, Raw Like Sushi.

Behind the Lyrics of “Buffalo Stance”

For those wondering, the title “Buffalo Stance” came not from the city in New York, but from Buffalo, a kind of art collective of which Cherry was a member. The lyrics to the song dress down a would-be “gigolo” for his poseur behavior. “But you had to have style, get a gold tooth smile,” Cherry raps. “Put a girl on the corner so you could make a pile.”

Cherry’s narrator has other priorities. “No moneyman can win my love,” she asserts. “It’s sweetness that I’m thinkin’ of.” Her admonition, “Don’t you get fresh with me,” put a striking punctuation mark on this feminist anthem.

Audiences who heard “Buffalo Stance” in the late 80s immediately understood that it was a one-of-a-kind thing compared to everything else around it on the radio. Good thing Neneh Cherry had the savvy to revisit her original performance and, with the help of her collaborators, take it to another level.

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