Charli XCX is more than a pop star. Sure, we love and stan her for her infectiously catchy hit songs like “Boom Clap,” “I Love It,” and “White Mercedes,” but did you know Charli is legit a music-industry mogul in the making?
Since cementing a fan base that would put even the most formidable of groupies to shame (she calls them her Angels, btw), Charli started to dream bigger and thought: Well, why don’t I start a f*cking band? Thus, Nasty Cherry was born.
Nasty Cherry, aka the main subject of Charli’s new Netflix series, I’m With the Band: Nasty Cherry, sees Charli embarking on the journey of forming a girl band to complete her unfulfilled teenage desire of creating a modernized version of The Runaways—relatable, because who doesn’t secretly kinda wanna be Joan Jett, amirite?
Ahead of the show’s premiere, Charli and the girls of Nasty Cherry spoke with Cosmopolitan to spill all the tea on their soon-to-be iconic formation story.
“I’d always wanted to be in a band and I’d put a load together when I was younger. No one was really as into it as I was, so they all fell apart in seconds,” Charli told me of her earlier endeavors. But this time around, things were different—Charli finally found the right set of girls for the job.
Enter Chloe Chaidez (guitar), Debbie Knox-Hewsom (drums), Gabbriette Bechtel (vocals), and Georgia Somary (bass)—four of Charli’s closest friends, although none of them knew each other…yet. “You know when you have a friend and you know they’d be super into this other friend you have, but they don’t know each other so you make the connection? It was like that,” Charli said.
So she hit up each of the girls with her proposition—starting up a girl band to make music that absolutely slaps. “It started from a genuine interest and a fun “let’s do a band” vibe, and then when the girls got together and actually clicked it was like...‘Oh, shit—this could be something.’”
Debbie, at least, had jammed with Charli in the past. “Debbie was my drummer when I toured with a band [during my Sucker era]. She’s always up for starting bands, so I knew she was in,” Charli said.
An experienced drummer? Check. “I was really excited about being a part of it because literally anything Charli touches is always good,” Debbie added.
Georgia on the other hand…yeah, she and Charli go waaay back and have been friends for years, but Georgia didn’t quite have the whole music thing down. “We’ve worked on a load of creative projects together, so when I asked her if she had ever thought about being in a band and she said, ‘Yes, but I can’t play anything…I’m gonna learn the bass,’” Charli recalled.
Which…what?? But Georgia was up for the challenge. “I felt like it was a lot of hard work. I know that if I’m playing with Chloe and Debbie, I have to be good because they’re f*cking insane musicians,” she said. Thankfully, that only drove Georgia to work even harder at perfecting her craft. “I just had to really get my shit together with learning how to play and being technically good enough,” she added. “Of course it was scary, but that made it much more rewarding and enjoyable.”
Charli also hit up Chloe, whose band, KITTEN, had supported her on tour. Chloe’s still the lead singer in her own band (casual), but Charli convinced her to come in on guitar for the new group as well. Which sounds…busy. “At times, it was hard and I spread myself a little thin,” Chloe admitted. “I still deal with that, but whenever I’m in a creative situation, my energy comes back, like, immediately, like a shot of heroin into my veins.”
As for Gabbriette, “We knew each other from parties before and she’s danced in my music videos,” Charli explained. “I just liked her energy, so I DM’d her....She said she wasn’t sure if she could sing, but she would try it out and see. She sent me a video of her singing and she was amazing—that was that.” Or as Gabbriette puts it, “Charli just gave me an opportunity and said, ‘I don’t give a shit if you can’t sing. You’re gonna do it, and we’re gonna make it happen.’”
So they got to work, both on bonding as a crew and on making cool shit. The band recalls one girls’ night in (complete with carbs, wine, and a guilty pleasure playlist full of early 2000s hits) when they broke out their instruments right in the kitchen and penned their bop “Music With Your Dad.”
The really dope thing about watching I’m With the Band: Nasty Cherry is that viewers get to see the girls coming together in real time. But when TV meets band forming, it’s easy to automatically think it’s manufactured. I mean, have you seen The X Factor?
“I think there’s this association of “putting together a band” with Warholian or Simon Cowell–esque ethos,” Charli explained. “I admire both Andy Warhol and Simon Cowell, but this was much more relaxed than that. There was no audition process, no eliminations, none of that. Everything was based on instinct.”
And that instinct led to a bona fide leopard-print, leather-clad fever dream of a girl group inspired by Josie and the Pussycats, The Donnas, The Craft, and Valley of the Dolls. Oh, and the iconic rock ’n’ roll haircuts of The Runaways, of course.
“In our very early sessions, we were honestly thrilled that we enjoyed playing together and that it didn’t sound like shit,” Georgia said. “We were so blown away by the fact that we were playing well that our true sound wasn’t even in there yet. We were just like, ‘Yeah! Let’s do stuff, let’s make stuff, let’s get it out!’”
Now that I’m With the Band: Nasty Cherry is out, the girls say they’re ready to go global. Their bangin’ six-track debut EP, Season 1, is out now and they’ll be embarking on a nine-date mini tour in 2020, but there’s still a lot they wish to accomplish in the future.
Next up? If you ask each of the girls, you’ll get a different answer:
“More music, more shows, more TV!” Gabbriette said.
“Influence forever, duh,” Chloe said with a sassy scoff.
“Mind control,” Debbie said, firm.
As for Georgia: “World domination!”
