A Thousand Threads
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By Neneh Cherry
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Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction 2025
The joyous and electric memoir from beloved music icon Neneh Cherry
A SUNDAY TIMES, GUARDIAN, NEW STATESMAN, EVENING STANDARD, UNCUT AND ROUGH TRADE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024
‘Intoxicating . . . Seductive’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘Fabulous’ VOGUE
Top of the Pops, December 1988. The world sat up as a young woman made her debut: gold bra, gold bomber jacket, and proudly, gloriously, seven months pregnant. This was no ordinary artist. This was Neneh Cherry.
But navigating fame and family wasn’t always simple. In this beautiful and deeply personal memoir, Cherry remembers the collaborations, the highs and lows, the friendships and loves, and the addictions and traumas that have shaped her as a woman and an artist. At the heart of it, always, is family: the extraordinary three generations of artists and musicians that are her inheritance and her legacy.
Musician. Songwriter. Collaborator. Activist. Mother. Daughter. Lover. Friend. Icon. This is her story.
‘I loved it’ ZADIE SMITH
‘Enthralling’ BERNARDINE EVARISTO
‘Thrums with life’ GUARDIAN
‘A living testament to artistic invention’ OBSERVER
Reviews
I could see why the book was called A Thousand Threads, as she really has lived a life of many threads. I don’t read much non-fiction, so this was a welcome change for me. I felt the book was very much separated into the three sections and each one felt very different in style and tone. The first section Neneh bounced around a lot and this felt very busy and disorganised. Although perhaps that is how she felt too. I most enjoyed the section where she talked about the run up to her first appearance on TOTP. There was a lot of references to popular culture personalities of the time, many of whom I didn’t know. So I did struggle to connect with a lot of the book. Overall an interesting read, but really would be appreciated more by big fans of her and her work.
