Neneh Cherry vs Portishead
Take Portishead’s Glory Box (with its wonderful Isaac Hayes sample and the characteristic vinyl crackles) from the ninetees and let Neneh Cherry’s marvelous voice be heard. This is my world!
“Woman” and “Glory Box” approach the same subject from opposite directions. Neneh Cherry’s “Woman” is declarative — this is what I am, take it or leave it. Portishead’s “Glory Box” is raw and pleading — give me a reason, see me for what I am. One song stands its ground; the other reaches for something just out of grasp. Both are powered by the same trip-hop atmosphere: slow beats, deep bass, and a sense of something heavy moving underneath. Put them together and the two sides of the same coin finally face each other.
Ingredients
This mashup / mix is a blend of these tunes:
Neneh Cherry
Woman
Year: 1996
Album: Man
Genre: Soul / trip hop
About Woman
Neneh Cherry released “Woman” in 1996 as part of her third album Man — an album title that was itself a statement. The Stockholm-born, London-raised singer had broken through in 1988 with “Buffalo Stance,” one of the most distinctive debuts of the decade. By 1996 she had moved deeper into the atmospherics of trip-hop and soul, and “Woman” landed as a full-throated feminist anthem: grounded, unhurried, impossible to ignore. Cherry is the stepdaughter of jazz trumpeter Don Cherry and half-sister of Eagle-Eye Cherry — a musical lineage that runs through everything she makes.
Portishead
Glory Box
Year: 1994
Album: Dummy
Genre: Trip hop
About Glory Box
Portishead’s “Glory Box” appeared on Dummy in 1994, the debut album that defined the Bristol trip-hop sound alongside Massive Attack and Tricky. The track samples Isaac Hayes’ “Ike’s Rap II” and builds Beth Gibbons’ vocal around it like smoke around a bare bulb. Dummy won the Mercury Prize in 1995. “Glory Box” opens with “give me a reason to love you / give me a reason to be a woman” — lines that sound simple and carry everything. Gibbons’ delivery is one of the most haunting in British music: always on the edge of breaking, never quite breaking.
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