It sounds this, it sounds like that." But I had never really listened to the record. When I went into this process, I remember just thinking, "Oh, the vocals are too loud. Looking back, do you have any regrets about how you approached the making of this record? It was one of the last records that Q Division to be recorded on the 2-inch tape that still was edited in Pro Tools. I don't need you and your praise and your approval." I didn't need it the way I craved it when I was younger. By then, I was just like, "Fuck all, y'all. By the time I went on tour, I was pregnant with Henry, so I was touring pregnant, again. And even in Cleo, I never had a sense of how to market myself. I didn't really because I'd never made a solo record. Usually, the formula with Cleo is that I'd be really in a dark place, and I'd write all these very happy-sounding songs because that was how I coped - very happy-sounding songs with dark lyrics - and with Cherry Marmalade, I was able to really face a lot of that darkness and not be afraid of it.ĭid you care about how the record would be received at that time? I was pregnant with Zoe, and there was just this whole new sense of, "Whoa, the future." I felt fearless in a way that I hadn't, and I was able to write. One of the things that were most remarkable about the experience of making that record was that I felt such a deep sense of peace and hopefulness that I had never really felt in my life before. And he was like, "All right, we're going to make a record." I just kept writing, and we made a record together at Q Division. I wrote “Galapagos” and a couple of other songs and brought them to Mike Denneen from Q Division Studios, who had made all the Cleo records. What was the first song you wrote for the album?Īt that point, I started writing "Galapagos," which was a pretty dark song about the last Letters to Cleo tour, which felt like the end of Cleo for that period of time. We met as new people without ever expecting to. He'd been surfing and taking really good care of himself, and I had been taking really good care of myself, and walking and eating, drinking juices and eating vegetables. I quit doing all the drinking and the drugs, and I went to meet him in Maui four weeks later. I'm just going to go crazy." And literally 48 hours after he left, I found out I was pregnant. He was leaving for a couple of months, and I was partying my ass off, and I was like, "Oh, my God, my husband's going to be gone. Michael Eisenstein, my husband at the time, and now ex-husband, had just finished the tour for Letters to Cleo, and things had felt a little dark at the end of that last tour, for a variety of reasons. I hadn't really planned on writing a solo record. There's a line from one of the poems in the book called "Introducing Ed," and "Cherry Marmalade" is one of the lines from the poem in this book. It's from a book that I used to read to Zoe Mabel when she was a baby by this demented illustrator turned children's book writer, Calef Brown. Tell me the origin story of Cherry Marmalade. In an interview with AP, Hanley revisits the making of Cherry Marmalade, the Josie and the Pussycats vault songs that exist and what’s next for Cleo. Read more: This star-studded pro-choice album remains unreleased, but is more relevant than ever “At that time, I never really liked the sound of my voice, so I'd never listened to the record until I went to remaster it for vinyl ,” she explains over the phone from Los Angeles. For the album’s 20th anniversary, Hanley had an opportunity to revisit the record and release a new edition. It also allowed Hanley to find peace and stray from the darkness shrouded in the sunny-tinged Cleo songs. The catchy pop album never quite hit the mainstream but found a following over the years. Just two years later, Hanley would become the voice of Josie McCoy in the now-cult-classic film Josie and the Pussycats, helping solidify songs like “Spin Around” and “3 Small Words” as pop culture phenomena.īut during her tenure in Letters to Cleo, Hanley also released a solo record - Cherry Marmalade - back in 2002. But it was an appearance in the movie - and on the soundtrack - for 10 Things I Hate About You that helped the band go mainstream. The band’s 1993 single “Here & Now” helped them cultivate a national fanbase that led them to a series of placements in movies and TV throughout the decade. In the 1990s, Kay Hanley found fame as the bandleader of Boston alt-rock outfit Letters to Cleo.
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