We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Miss Cherry Delight. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Miss Cherry Delight below.
Miss Cherry Delight, appreciate you joining us today. Do you feel you or your work has ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized? If so, tell us the story and how/why it happened and if there are any interesting learnings or insights you took from the experience?
There’s a reason I have a portrait of Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster on my handshaking/microphone arm. I’ve always known I was “weird” and I’ve always felt misunderstood. All the monsters want to be scary except for Frankenstein’s “monster”; he just wants to be treated with dignity and respect. He doesn’t get what he needs because he’s not finished and never will be. I’m never going to be finished. Are any of us? Even now as an adult it’s something that I struggle with all of the time, and I think that my music is for people who grapple with that too, because I think at the end of the day for every one person who misunderstands, you there are at least ten people who will get you. I want my music to be a lighthouse for all the people lost at sea to come home to. People who are close to me have seen so many situations where people don’t understand me, because I’m either too enthusiastic or too passionate or larger than life. And people feel threatened by that, I think. With everything that I’ve been through, I wear my pain on the outside like a walking art installation. I hope that when people find my songs, they’ll give them the strength they need to believe in themselves. We all make mistakes and we all have to learn from them and its tough when you want to be perfect. All we can do is try to be better than the person we were yesterday. And we can all scream about it together.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
I’m Miss Cherry Delight, a singer songwriter from New York City who started off in childhood on a path to Broadway, then on to singing jazz, becoming a burlesque pageant queen, and then finally embracing my real dream, creating and performing loud, primal rock ‘n roll.
When I was nine years old I saw the regional production of Sweeney Todd at Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut, and it forever changed my life. It was my gateway into horror and theater. (And also into theatrical blood; that show was so drenched in fake blood it was insane.)
The exploration of “Miss Cherry Delight” as a persona began as a vessel in my burlesque acts through which to channel my creativity. My signature act was a hypersexual, blood-soaked portrayal of the Evil Queen from Snow White to “The Most Wonderful Girl” by Lords Of Acid. The other act I performed most often for more than a decade was a fan dance as the reanimated corpse of The Black Dahlia to “Culling Of The Fold” by The Decemberists.
As I developed my skill sets over the years, testing the waters in front of audiences and learning just how much I could get away with, I found that my real flavor was something dark. Just knowing that there were freaks out there, especially at venues such as Coney Island USA and Bizarre Bushwick, who were enthusiastically onboard with any kind of shocking storytelling I would bring to the stage, gave me the freedom to explore, and paved the way for the emerging new version of Miss Cherry Delight. The name itself ended up working out perfectly; it evolved from something sincerely sweet, into a lure, like a scary van that says “free candy” on the outside. The burlesque era of my life came to an end but I’ve brought along everything I learned from those years to my music.
My work is heavily informed by the juxtaposition of the sweet and the horrifying. My lyrics are often tongue in cheek, with many Easter eggs. On-stage Cherry is an unapologetic monster, a slasher-babe anti-hero. She’s a shock-rock underdog who’s as strong as she is vulnerable, with layers upon layers of confidence and pain, playfulness and blood-lust. The line between right and wrong is something she’s never quite figured out. She’s the living embodiment of Halloween and Valentine’s Day, of the things that make them saccharine and the things that make them sexual. The most pertinent facts about this character are her loneliness, and her overwhelming urge to consume the lovers who’ve shown her kindness. She can’t bear the thought of their abandoning her, so she makes them stay. Permanently. Let’s just say she’s got issues…
… but somehow, doggonit, she’s always a good time.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
Being able to satisfy my creative impulse, being able to connect with people who didn’t know they needed to hear what I’m saying. So many times throughout my life, when I’ve needed music for inspiration or comfort, it’s come through for me, and I want to give that back for someone else. There were times when I was a teenager when I felt lost and alone and searching for a voice that understood me. Now I hope that I can be that voice for someone else. If I can be that for even one person then I’ll have achieved my goal on this mudball planet.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
Really everything I do is about bodily autonomy and self-ownership. It took me so long to actually own my body because I was taught from a young age that it belonged to everyone but me. It’s also one of the reasons I delight in getting large, colorful tattoos, which my mother never, ever wanted me to have. I think that I’m coming from a place of power when I sing about this subject, which is a recurring theme in both subtle and obvious ways throughout my work. My most significant effort on this topic is my song “Mine” which leaves no room to the imagination. It’s a really intense song but ultimately a song of triumph, There’s a battle cry at the end in which I scream that “my body is mine!” I’ve had strangers come up to me after shows who hugged me and thanked me for performing that song . We can mourn the things that we’ve lost but there’s no reason that we can’t rebuild. We can’t let the people who’ve tried to destroy us win. That’s not an option,
Contact Info:
- Website: http://misscherrydelight.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/misscherrydelight
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/misscherrydelight
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/MsCherryDelight
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/MissCherryDelightOfficial
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5lesbEwQ2NN151pbqCjOZ8 https://music.apple.com/us/artist/miss-cherry-delight/1439090764 https://www.amazon.com/music/player/artists/B07JFRM815/miss-cherry-delight https://www.tiktok.com/@misscherrydelight https://www.patreon.com/misscherrydelightofficial https://www.cameo.com/misscherrydelight https://www.misscherrydelight.com/shop
Image Credits
1st image- Imogen Harwood-Matthews 2nd image- Harley Jade Walker 3rd image- Dylan Mars Greenberg 4th image- Doug Ross 5th image- Dylan Mars Greenberg