When we work our way through the deluge of press releases that hit our inboxes every day, we see just about every category of biography from bands and artists. Sometimes they're boring and predictable; sometimes they're fascinating and unprecedented. The latter of which genuinely applies to the biography that accompanied Seraphina Simone's new single 'Cherry'.
As biographer Ed Cummings writes, "Seraphina Simone is a beguiling mix. On the one hand she’s a hard-working London nerd, who studied at Oxford and has done every crap job under the sun to support her music. On the other she is musical aristocracy, although the term makes her cringe." That opening line alone had us hooked, as so we read on to discover that "Her father is the musician Terence Trent D’Arby aka Sananda Maitreya. Holidays when she was a girl meant long trips through California, brushing shoulders with everyone from George Harrison to Billy Idol, or being babysat by Pamela Des Barres. Some artists might claim their ‘godparents’ were Prince, Miles Davis, Christie Hynde, Pete Townsend and Mary Greenwell. Seraphina’s actually were."
For some, this background would make them unbearably self-entitled, regardless of whether that had talent or not. This certainly isn't the case with Seraphina Simone. She continues to work in London to support her music career and she has creativity in abundance. There are so few tracks that sound like 'Cherry' right now. It's peppered with alternative twists on pop and rock, as well as samples from old school American adverts to set the context for Simone's anti-consumerist message.
“‘Cherry’ is the voice in our heads telling us we don't have enough, telling us to want more, buy more, be richer, be thinner, be prettier, be better than everyone else. It's that sarky bitch who's really mean to you and you hate her but you also kind of want to be her best friend because she's perfect and you're a mess. It's the voice fuelled by consumer culture and jealousy and insecurity and myths like the American Dream. It seems harmless enough even though it fucks up the planet and makes us miserable no matter how much we have. Maybe in a weird way Covid will make us realise we don't need so much shit to be happy.”
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