The singer-songwriter’s atmospheric memoir reveals many musical adventures and doesn’t shy away from exploring her challenging times

When a heavily pregnant Neneh Cherry appeared on Top of the Pops in 1988 in a Lycra miniskirt, gold bra top and matching bomber jacket to perform Buffalo Stance, the nation’s jaws hit the floor. In her memoir, Cherry says she couldn’t see what the fuss was about at the time, though now “I can see that it was important to be able to appear on the show, pregnant and proud … Change comes about partly through our choices being seen.”

A Thousand Threads traces Cherry’s early life as the child of a Swedish mother, Moki, an artist and textile designer, who lived in a converted schoolhouse; a Sierra Leonian father, Ahmadu, from whom Moki split when their daughter was three months old; and stepfather Don Cherry, the African American jazz trumpeter and the man she called Dad. “I had three parents,” Cherry recalls. “I guess that’s what we call a gift.”