Day: July 20, 2023

Chart Week: July 15, 1989
Song: “Buffalo Stance” – Neneh Cherry
Chart Position: #20, 16th week on the chart. Peaked at #3 the week of June 24.

I have always been fascinated by the details of how songs are made. There’s the initial inspiration. The writing and recording process. How a song is mixed and produced. Whether it goes on an album or not, and if it does, how it is sequenced. And then whether it is released as a single. Dozens of steps that can make or break a track’s commercial success.

A subset of that fascination is how small ideas can transfer from song-to-song and artist-to-artist. It might take a few years, but an innocent nugget from an obscure, forgotten tune can be the building block for something legendary.

In 1986 the British act Morgan McVey recorded a single called “Looking Good Diving.” It’s not a great song. It’s not a good song. It might be awful. To my ears it is cartoony, silly in a bad way, and does nothing to hold my attention. The duo released a truly terrible video to promote the track.

Legend has it that Cameron McVey was so embarrassed by the video that he abandoned performing and transitioned to producing, eventually working with UK giants Massive Attack and Portishead.

You should not be shocked that “Looking Good Diving” did not chart in either the UK or US.

Did you notice two familiar faces in the video? That is soon-to-become supermodel Naomi Campbell “playing” the keyboards. And on guitar, McVey’s then girlfriend and future wife, Neneh Cherry.[1]

Neneh Cherry was born in Stockholm in 1964. Her mother was Swedish, her father a Sierra Leonian studying in Sweden. Their relationship did not last. Shortly after Neneh was born, her mother met and quickly married American jazz musician Don Cherry, who raised Neneh as his own daughter. The family remained in Stockholm until the early 1970s, when they moved to New York. Just after she turned 15 Neneh dropped out of school and departed for London, where she immersed herself in the growing punk scene.

There should be something else familiar in the video. Surely your ears picked up on that ascending synthesizer line. That, my friends, is the point of inspiration that takes us from trash to gold.

Almost no one bought the “Looking Good Diving” single. Those few who did and bothered to flip it over found something very different. That B-side was called “Looking Good Diving with the Wild Bunch.” It had promise.

There’s that same synth line as on the A-side. Cherry jumps on the mic, rapping with a decent flow for 1986. Her delivery was fresh and exciting, if slightly stilted. Obviously the lyrics almost completely match those for “Buffalo Stance.” The track has a twitchy, 80s dance pop vibe. There is some light scratching and sampling, hinting at hip hop. It does seem clunky, though, as if the group wasn’t sure how to make all the different parts work together. It reminded me of the live mixes I listened to on Bay Area radio when I lived there, the transitions rough and awkward. In short, it very much sounds like a demo rather than a fully formed song.

When Cherry began working on her debut solo album two years later, she brought in outside talent to assist in making those disparate parts fit together better. DJ Tim Simenon provided samples, scratches, and a final mix that took the track from the dance clubs to the streets. Producer Mark Saunders made several contributions, including a keyboard line that mimicked the guitar sound of The Smith’s Johnny Marr. He also elevated the chorus into something glorious and unforgettable. Cherry sharpened her own attack, bringing a sense of urgency not present in the original version. She is as hard as Chuck D or KRS-ONE when she raps, and as sweet and light as Janet Jackson on the chorus. She sounds more Brooklyn than London in those rapped verses. And that synth line? It is now played on a Roland Super JX–10, adjusting its tone to give it more of an edge than it had on “Looking Good Diving.”

Cherry, Saunders, and Simenon took elements of various genres and morphed them together into something that was totally new, unique, and forward looking. “Buffalo Stance” is fierce yet sleek. Defiant yet tender. It is irresistible; I challenge you to not sing along when you hear it. Most of all, there is some undefinable magic deep in its core. Who knows how many hundreds of times I’ve heard it over the years. Yet every single time it completely delights me.

Those years of effort and incremental progress were totally worth it. “Buffalo Stance” is an all-time classic. A first ballot Hall of Famer. An electoral landslide. It is incredible that it grew from a tiny keyboard run in a cheeseball song that no one was interested in.

It’s looking good today, looking good in every way. And has been for 34 years. 10/10

By the way, the two songs that kept this from topping the US pop chart? Richard Marx’s “Satisfied” and New Kids on the Block’s “I’ll Be Loving You (Forever).” Sometimes America really sucks.