Eagle-Eye Cherry

Eagle-Eye Cherry broke through with a bang in 1997 with the hit song Save Tonight. 25 years later, he releases his sixth studio album Back on Track. The music is inspired by the idols of his teenage years, and shows Eagle-Eye standing firmly and confidently again after going through times of doubt.

Eagle-Eye Cherry was born in Stockholm in 1968. His mom was the artist Moki Cherry (née Karlsson), and his dad was the American jazz musician Don Cherry. Eagle-Eye grew up in the Scanian countryside with his sister Neneh. When he was a teenager, Eagle-Eye and his family moved to New York, where they became neighbors of the band Talking Heads. Eagle-Eye attended the School of Performing Arts, playing the drums in several bands and trying to support himself as an actor. In 1995, his dad passed away, and Eagle-Eye, who had grown weary of acting, moved back to Sweden and changed course for a career in music.
The album Desireless was released in 1997, and the single Save Tonight rapidly climbed up the single charts – first in Sweden and Scandinavia, and soon thereafter all over Europe and eventually in the US, where it was awarded a platinum record and reached the 5th spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Eagle-Eye Cherry released two more albums, Living in the Present Future (2000), with the single Long Way Around featuring his sister Neneh Cherry, and Sub Rosa (2003), and toured nearly non-stop the following six years.

After that, things got quiet around Eagle-Eye Cherry up until 2012. The never-ending touring and being recognized everywhere he went had taken a toll on him, and he needed a break. The plan was never to be gone for that long, but it gave him time to go back to a normal life again and find his footing. He still played the occasional gig, and eventually it was his longing to get to share the live experience with his band and the audience again that urged him to make a comeback with the album Can’t Get Enough in 2012. Six years later saw the release of the album Streets of You, which was nominated for a Swedish Grammy award and reached the top 10 on the Swedish radio chart.

Back on Track will be released in January next year. The years of the pandemic made Eagle-Eye once again question his place in the world when he saw health care workers struggling to save lives, and he doubted whether he’d made the right career choice. But once again, it was his missing the live experience that made all the difference. Being on stage and feeling the togetherness and love for and from the audience: that means something. That’s how the album title Back on Track was born.

Several of the songs were finished before the pandemic, but the extra time Eagle-Eye got while the world was put on hold allowed him to go back to the music he used to love as a teenager: the neighbors in New York and other bands from the same era. The energy that bands like The Clash, Blondie, Talking Heads and Modern Lovers exuded became an inspiration for new songs, even if the foundation of his music is still, as he puts it, “organic old school”. Throughout the years, he has put more and more effort into the arrangements, playing with the production of the songs and trying to find completely new lyrical angles.

After the release of the album, a European tour awaits. It’s about time Eagle-Eye Cherry gets to reunite with his audience, the audience that has repeatedly gotten him back on track.