When Charli XCX first announced the band Nasty Cherry, she hailed them as a badass “girl gang,” which is true if you’ve ever seen them. They’re a group of four young women with ’70s shags who look tough in leather jackets and sing songs about getting it on with your dad. But beneath the rock ’n’ roll facade, the group is more a “sisterhood” than a motley quartet of musicians. “We definitely feel like a family at this point,” Nasty Cherry member Gabi Bechtel tells BAZAAR.com.
Yet, just more than a year ago, they were a mere group of strangers moving into a house in Los Angeles to make music together for the first time—a process chronicled in Netflix’s docuseries-meets-reality show I’m with the Band: Nasty Cherry. Charli XCX plucked four young talents and, like Simon Cowell did with One Direction and Fifth Harmony, created the girl group she wished she looked up to when she was a kid.
There’s lead singer Gabi, a former model and newcomer to the music world who previously worked with Charli on a music video; guitarist Chloe Chaidez, an energetic performer who’s also the lead singer of the rock band Kitten; drummer Debbie Knox-Hewson, who played drums on tour with Charli; and bassist Georgia Somary, one of Charli’s longtime friends who worked in film set design and started playing her instrument only a year before joining the band.
It’s been a whirlwind year for Nasty Cherry after meeting, living, and working together, and releasing their debut EP, Season 1, on November 22. Here, members Debbie and Gabi tell BAZAAR.com of their rise.
They filmed their Netflix series for about five months straight starting in November 2018.
Gabi: It was wild. We are all in that house together for that time of filming. That’s time that we took off of work, didn’t see friends, and focused solely on the project to make sure that it was all worth it. I don’t know if it was a lot at risk, I mean, I think personally and individually, there was a lot at risk for everyone. But it was a ball in the sky, really. We didn’t know what was going to come of it.
Debbie: I think that now that time has passed a bit, we forget how mad it was to just sit there and think, Okay, no pressure, but we should really write a good song. And luckily, we did, but I can’t imagine how stressful it would’ve been if we didn’t. But we started writing really quickly. Pretty much as soon as we were there, and we’d shared a pizza and a bottle of champagne, we just got to work.
Luckily, we all came in really willing to share and open up with our song ideas. Because previous to being in this band, I literally couldn’t think of anything worse than saying, “Here’s a song I wrote,” to someone. But then there’s four of you doing it, and you’re all in the same boat and actually everyone’s championing it. So you suddenly get really confident with your ability to put something together. It was really wild.
Nasty Cherry have been compared to groups like The Runaways and Spice Girls, but their musical influences stretch beyond that.
Gabi: Growing up, I didn’t really pay much attention to who I was listening to. It was like top 20. And then I started listening through the door of my sister’s bedroom, and it turned into Gwen Stefani, and then exploring that whole world. So it was very much like pop bands.
I think in high school, I started listening to The Runaways, definitely, and people like Suzi Quatro and even The Cramps. I’ve always loved Poison Ivy and just people, women, with really strong voices and visions in whatever band they’re in. Even actresses and everything like that. Nina Simone and people like that, where they just created their own world.
Debbie: For me, there’s always been this split between music I really get behind musically, and then just musicians or artists I just think are so fucking cool, because they don’t want to take themselves seriously. I’ve been listening to this both an equal amount. My iPod would be the worst thing to come on shuffle, because you’d have The Donnas, and then Simon and Garfunkel, and then Joan Jett.
Visually, these girl bands that I grew up with, I thought, That’s so cool. They’re not trying to look like a boy band. They’re not trying to be apologetic and creep through the door. They’re so feminine. So, the Spice Girls, The Donnas, Lillix. I was mad into girl bands when I was younger.
The prospect of joining a new band and living with strangers was equal parts exciting and intimidating.
Gabi: I mean, does that not sound like the greatest thing ever? And also kind of like a huge lie? Who does that? So, yeah, immediate excitement. I’d never done music before, but I was just willing to work with anybody because I’d never had.
Debbie: I was just super excited about it but also nervous about how close we were all going to get. Because I hadn’t been in my own band before. I kind of knew, Oh, we’re going to really have some ups and downs, and it’s going to be really intense. But I was definitely in for it.
Gabi, who was new to singing, was eager to try something new through Nasty Cherry.
Gabi: Charli reached out to me, and I worked with her a while ago, maybe two or three years ago on a music video, and I just kind of remember her being a light, and we kept in contact. I already had that trust with her. I feel like I’ve been saying this a lot, but I say yes to a lot of creative things. I’m down to do new things, work with new people, whatever it is. But I’ve really never done music. And I thought, Why the hell not?
I think maybe this would be the only opportunity where someone would trust me not having any experience, not playing any instruments, not singing before. I don’t think this ever would have happened again. So how the hell could I have said no? And then I saw who she put together for the project, and once we met over Skype that first time and talked about our music interests and everything, I was like, “Hell yeah, these are the girls that I could really hang out with probably forever.”
Their single, “Music with Your Dad,” started with the notion that there’s no such thing as “guilty pleasures.”
Debbie: We went to this restaurant in L.A., shout-out to Pergoletta, and we had way too much pasta and wine, then we came home and we had everything set up, but we just started jamming. It started on the idea that none of us believe in the expression “guilty pleasures” because actually, it’s really fucking good. So then everyone’s playing like Hilary Duff and Paris Hilton’s last album, and we’re all just screaming the lyrics at one another. And then got our instruments out and kind of started jamming on the idea.
Their EP came together quite fast.
Gabi: I just think it’s insane how quickly these things can move, and I think that we’re all actually super proud of what we’ve created. I’m blown away that this is going to be something tangible for people to listen to. I think it’s probably more serious maybe than people thought. I hope that everyone after this knows that we really took this entire thing seriously and will continue to do so. I don’t think it’ll feel real until it’s actually out on platforms. Right now, I’m just waiting for everyone to hear it. It’s just, it’s crazy.
Debbie: When you watch the show, you can see the moments that we started these songs, and you can see us talk, see us deciding how we want them to sound. And then the EP is there, and it is exactly what we did with some new exciting stuff that no one’s heard yet. So I’m the same as Gab. I’ve saved every Nasty Cherry poster from a gig that we’ve played. I’ve got, like, a fan shrine in my own bedroom of my own band. I’m a fangirl.
Although I'm with the Band mostly shows the group making songs in the “jam room” of their house, their creative processes take on many forms.
Gabi: Sometimes, it’ll be Georgia sending a voice memo when we’re all asleep and saying, “Can we work on this later?” Or it’s just a matter of us all being in a room and Chloe jamming on the guitar or Debbie having an idea that she’s really been liking recently. And then we just go from there. Sometimes, it’s just moods or movies or even photos that we really like, and make a song about it. But no one person does one thing.
I think that’s something amazing about this—we’re all really good at voicing our opinion. Obviously, we’ve had much practice to do so in six months of living with each other, so we know how to talk to each other now. I think ultimately, everyone’s goal is just to have our music sound like us as one voice.
Charli XCX isn’t just a mentor; she’s also a close friend.
Gabi: We’ve written with Charli a couple times. She does offer us advice, but it’s not like, “You’re going to do this, and you need to sound like this.” It’s like, “What do you think is going to be the best for you, and how are you going to be happiest with this in the end?” It’s really kind of crazy how there she is, how present she is. I can send her a picture of me having a shit day if I’m trying to write something, and she’s like, “Oh, you’ll be fine, just think about this,” or something. She’s perfect.
Debbie: She’s one of the first people to pop up on my phone with ideas, almost every day for the band. She’s so into it, and I remember when we were living together and some days it’d be super intense, she’d be the first person I’d text and say, “Something’s stressing me out.” She was just very, very present and, obviously, really wants the band to do well and believes in it, which has made us believe in it a lot as well.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Erica Gonzales is the Senior Culture Editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage on TV, movies, music, books, and more. She was previously an editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com. There is a 75 percent chance she's listening to Lorde right now.
