Cheri Percy Interview
Cheri Percy is a freelance writer, editor, and broadcaster. She’s pitched and produced features for The Guardian, Noisey, and more. Her new book is an entry in the 33 1/3 series dedicated to the album Come Away with ESG.
How did you get to where you are today, professionally?
Like most thirty-something music journalists, I played in a touring band during my late teens/early twenties that really kicked off my love affair with guitar gear and writing riffs. (The highlight to date remains sharing the lineup with the late, great Ari Up of The Slits). When my parallel studies took me abroad for a year to live in Paris, the band went on an indefinite hiatus.
It was then, in this European city without many French-speaking friends, that I sought solace back in music halls and huddling over new records. I pitched myself to a since-defunct online magazine (the girls are) as their Parisian correspondence. I quickly scaled the ranks there, graduating to Albums Editor, Features Editor, and, eventually, Deputy Editor. In those last few years, the small indie team even produced three print iterations of the same magazine which appeared in Rough Trade and welcomed Warpaint, Brody Dalle, and Neneh Cherry as its cover stars. This passion for print continued as I made the leap to freelance writing full-time in 2018.