Q&A: Mandy Lee Strikes the Match: Cherry Bomb Ignites a Glitter-Soaked Solo Era
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY KIMBERLY KAPELA ☆
Photo Credit: Matty Vogel
THERE’S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN REINVENTION AND DETONATION — With Cherry Bomb, Mandy Lee isn’t quietly pivoting, she’s striking a match. Best known as the magnetic frontwoman of MisterWives, Lee has stepped into a new chapter with her solo project Cherry Bomb that feels like a reclamation. Glitter-soaked, maximalist, and defiantly feminine, the project formally introduces a new world built on autonomy, rebellion and radical self-expression.
The fuse is lit with her debut single and video, “Never Be Me (M★therf★cker),” an anthem that pulses with liberation. It’s a synth-heavy, and unapologetically bold dance-pop exorcism of a loveless love. “I came home that night from working on the song and just had it blasting in my headphones, dancing around my house alone,” Lee says. “It just felt so cathartic.”
She calls the track “a defiant declaration of independence dressed up in maximalist synth pop made for dancing out a loveless love.”
“Starting this project I knew I desperately needed to reconnect with parts of myself I lost along the way and NBM was the catalyst to reclaiming my power, saying farewell to spaces that made me shrink while welcoming back the energy of the little girl who once wore boas routinely, blasting ‘You Don’t Own Me’ through a bedazzled boombox,” Lee says. “This song has become a mantra in learning to let go of old painful patterns and letting in the pleasure of self I once abandoned for the love and acceptance of others.”
The thread of sisterhood-as-lifeline runs vividly through the single’s saturated visual. Co-directed by Lee and collaborator Matty Vogel, the video captures her sprinting down an outdoor track in a wedding dress, surrounded by women in exaggerated, brightly colored gowns. The symbolism is deliciously loaded: tradition shed, expectation outrun, the altar abandoned in favor of autonomy.
But beyond the metaphor, the video is anchored in real-life sisterhood. The women flanking Lee are her closest friends who she calls “a pillar of support through the whole process.”
“Running on the track is like starting over at the end, and just a big metaphor for where I'm at,” Lee tells Luna. “And it being such a colorful, opulent, visually exciting world very much sums up the song and sums up what my relationships are.”
Created entirely independently with the help of friends, the visual doubles as a statement on artistry in an era dominated by short-form content cycles.
“I couldn’t be prouder of what we pulled off especially at a time when music videos feel increasingly more extinct with the ever growing pressures artists face to focus their energy and resources on short form ‘content’,” Lee says. “This project was an absolute labor of love and a closet full of old tulle celebrating the very girlhood that’s kept me afloat, inspired, and connected during what could have been an isolating start to this new chapter. Visually, it’s a colorful, opulent ode to liberation — told through the lens of a group of runaways starting over. It’s about refusing to settle for a comfortable hell when an uncomfortable heaven is just at the finish line.”
The Cherry Bomb realm is steeped in feminine power and hard-won autonomy. For Lee, the mission is to remind women, especially those who have felt themselves shrinking, that starting over is not failure, it’s freedom.
“I think women can learn to feel emboldened by their authentic selves, not being swayed by what society puts on us,” Lee says. “I think things get a lot clearer of who you are and what you want to be and how you want to show up in this world.”
This isn’t Mandy Lee stepping away from something. It’s Mandy Lee stepping fully into herself, glitter blazing.
Photo Credit: Matty Vogel
LUNA: Thank you for talking to Luna. Our readers would love to get to know you and your music more. For any readers who aren’t familiar with you yet, what kind of atmosphere or emotional space do you aim to create for your listeners?
CHERRY BOMB: The atmosphere is definitely pop escapism. I think we really need that right now. It's just a permission slip to be your biggest, boldest self, to dress up, to dance, to just authentically express all parts of you is the manifesto of Cherry Bomb.
LUNA: Launching Cherry Bomb marks a major shift from being the frontwoman of a beloved band to steering a project entirely on your own. What did you need that a solo project could give you that a band dynamic couldn’t?
CHERRY BOMB: The band gave me so much. It's beloved to me as well. The shift has been wild doing this on my own, because it's been my whole teenage years. Up until this point, I've been in MisterWives. I think the band got to a point where we were in the album-tour cycle for over a decade, and rest was deserved and needed for everybody, but in that break, the music did not stop for me. It was just a really fun moment for the canvas to be totally blank and say, what do I like outside of what this band that's been established? We have a sound and a vision and we have everything in place. What do I like when all of that is taken away and I get to follow the intuition of not having to have the creative go through a lens of something that's already established. It provided such a freeing experience of getting in touch with little Mandy, the kid who would wear boas to school and singing, “You Don't Own Me” in kindergarten for the talent show. I need to get back.
LUNA: Were there ideas you’d been holding onto for years that didn’t quite fit within MisterWives but finally found a home in Cherry Bomb?
CHERRY BOMB: I want to say yes, but then recently, I watched a music video that we did called “Not Your Way,” where the boys were in drag, but I think for me personally, it's just so different getting to make music without having to think about, okay, everybody needs a part, and getting to dress myself and not thinking, how do I make that? How do we make this a collective and a collective vision? It's been very fun to find my voice without having to figure out what everybody likes.
LUNA: In stepping out solo, what parts of yourself surprised you the most?
CHERRY BOMB: I think feeling really embodied in my femininity. I think that in a band full of dudes, I was always like, how do I blend in? I don't want to stick out. I would definitely cover up parts of myself that I'm now learning to set free — emotionally, mentally, even physically with what I'm wearing. Before, I would never wear certain things, especially with me and all my brothers, it just didn't feel like the right fit for things. Now I want to feel embodied in a way that when you're in such a boys club — just the alt rock scene in general is very much male-driven — you're usually the only female on the lineup at a festival or men saying horrific remarks about your body or sexualizing you. There's a bit of fun taking the power back and being like, I don't have to fit in this world. I get to make my own.
LUNA: You’ve described your debut solo single “Never Be Me (M★therf★cker)” as a defiant declaration of independence. What were you declaring independence from and what inspired the track to come to fruition?
CHERRY BOMB: Great questions. Definitely independence from patterns that I was reenacting for a long time in relationships, which was looking for love in all the wrong places. It was a declaration that we are no longer continuing that pattern. This is drawing a line in the sand for this next chapter of just not reenacting those same patterns, also, in a literal sense, independence in this industry. I'm doing this whole project independently, which has been beyond liberating, not going through the machine of the major label system that the band has been a part of since the genesis of MisterWives. I don't have to answer to anyone. I don't have to lessen the vision. I don't need comments about how to look, how I'm supposed to sound. I get to make music videos. That was something I always have to fight for on labels, because I've been told that it's a waste of money. To me, this is such a worthwhile investment, having visuals that work in tandem with the music. It's just been incredible to be on a path where if I want to do something, I'm going to figure out how to do it, and I don't have to answer to a bunch of suits.
LUNA: “Never Be Me” is accompanied by a music video centering women starting over again together — almost like runaway brides rewriting the narrative. What story were you hoping to tell visually about girlhood and how was your experience filming it?
CHERRY BOMB: I just got chills. I mean exactly what you said. That is the story that I wanted the video to capture is this starting over could have been a really isolating, dark time. While it hasn't been the easiest, what I was able to lean on was the power of sisterhood, and all those women in that video are my close friends who are just such a pillar of support through this whole process that I wanted to celebrate the power of leaning into what that type of relationship can be for you. Running on the track is like starting over at the end, and just a big metaphor for where I'm at, and it being such a colorful, opulent, visually exciting world that very much sums up the song and sums up what my relationships are. All those girls are my best friends, and we brought my partner to shoot the video. It was just us on a normal Friday night or any night of the week, in a limo, dressed up, having fun, dancing like that really has been such a lifeline for me that I wanted to amplify and also make people feel a part of that. When I play shows, I just want it to be an extension of what that feeling is for me.
LUNA: What does feminine power look and feel like to you right now?
CHERRY BOMB: Feminine power is trusting your intuition, not being swayed by what is expected of us, what has been oppressed by us. Right now, I think this is an incredibly terrifying time for anyone. I think women can learn to feel emboldened by their authentic selves, not being swayed by what society puts on us. I think things get a lot clearer of who you are and what you want to be and how you want to show up in this world.
LUNA: How do you hope listeners — especially your femme audience — can connect with or find power in this new era of music from you? What emotions or messages do you want to leave with them?
CHERRY BOMB: I want them to feel how this project has made me feel, where you get to start over. You have a choice. You have free will to be like, I actually want to do something entirely different and pivot, and I want to wear the crazy thing that people would make remarks about, or I want to sing differently than how I've sung my whole life. I want this project to be, like I said earlier, a permission slip for everyone to show up, however it is that they want to show up, especially in the ways that often in life, we're told too much or not enough. All sides exist here.
LUNA: When you feel a creative spark coming on, what do you need in your space to nurture it? Are there any rituals, objects, or energies you always return to?
CHERRY BOMB: I love this question. I should have more rituals. My ADHD brain is just like a spark. Let's run and figure it out. I wish I had more structure. But the inspiration just shows up whenever she wants, often in the shower. I always have my phone nearby to record a voice memo. Showering is a ritual. It's very cleansing, honestly, and I feel like it's a place where you're alone, you don't have any screens, you don't have distractions, and often, most of the songs that I've written, some part of the idea came from in the showers.
LUNA: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the rest of the year look like that you would like to share with Luna?
CHERRY BOMB: I am feeling so grateful. I think this project's intention was to not get wrapped up in how it's received and what's on the other side. Just make what you love and be proud that I'm letting myself do something I thought I never could do. But with that said, it has been mind blowing. The response that this first song has received, how much people have welcomed Cherry Bomb with open arms. I was really expecting a lot of backlash, for people to be upset that I'm doing something new, and I just feel really thankful the people that are listening to this are making this whole process so much more fun than I ever thought it could be. Gratitude is definitely the number one thing that I'm feeling. What's next on the Cherry schedule, I have a new single coming out next month, so that's exciting. Building this world brick-by-brick for the show is my number one love language. I'm really trying to get back to the show. Cherry Bomb in a club, that's what the doctor ordered for me.
Photo Credit: Matty Vogel
