As Cherry Bomb, Mandy Lee has created a glittery, feathered world that’s entirely her own. Her debut solo album, ‘The Pursuit of Pleasure,’ is a masterclass in euphoric pop with emotional depth. We caught up with the artist about embracing every side of herself, Dolly Parton visiting her dreams, vocal stacks being the bedrock of a song, and being unapologetically “all chalant.”
Stream: “Never Be Me” – Cherry Bomb
Reinvention is a scary thing. Most people are never brave enough to do it.
They stick with the versions of themselves they’ve built to make other people comfortable. It’s something most of us have fallen victim to. When you’re young, you live unfiltered. As you get older, you shapeshift into what you think you should be. You’re always you, but you slightly edit over time based on the outside world’s perception. It’s the people who find their way back to the original versions of themselves who live the freest. Because reinvention isn’t always about becoming something entirely new. Sometimes, it’s about becoming who you always were.
Mandy Lee has returned to her truest form with Cherry Bomb and her debut album, The Pursuit of Pleasure, out today (November 13th, 2026).
“This project is very out with the new, in with the old,” Lee tells Atwood Magazine. “I really wanted to get back to who I was as a little girl who was singing ‘You Don’t Own Me’ and ‘Respect’ for the talent show as a five-year-old with a boa and a sparkly outfit and sunglasses.”
While the MisterWives frontwoman’s solo project is all glitter and pop on the outside, the layers of artistry and depth when you get inside are endless. It’s not that Cherry Bomb is everything MisterWives isn’t. The quintessential Mandy Lee shines through in everything she creates. But Cherry Bomb is freer. She’s an expression of the parts of herself that didn’t always have room to exist in MisterWives.
“It was really hard to sever the way in which I was so used to creating, but I just was struck by the little firecracker that was so embodied, the diva energy,” Lee explains. “And while that essence of me is always there in every iteration of every album – you know, it still is always bombastic and in your face and very maximalist – there were just parts of me missing also.”
The Pursuit of Pleasure is a perfect pop album.
There’s the euphoric and undeniably poetic “Oxymoronic,” and the absolute banger that is “No Hard Feelings,” blending Madonna’s eighties nostalgia with Charli XCX’s club classic energy. The title track, “P.O.P.,” with a chorus so catchy it’s impossible to get out of your head. And a personal favorite, “333,” a song about leaving the past where it belongs, with gorgeous melodies and vocal runs that require a replay.
The production is pristine. The vocal stacks are superhuman. The lyrics are gut-wrenching, even when the music makes you feel like you’re on top of the world. That’s the magic of this album. It makes room for all of it. The heartbreak and the healing, the glitter and the grief, the freedom and the fear. It’s okay to feel it all. In fact, you should. The Pursuit of Pleasure is a celebration of everything that makes us human, wrapped up in some of the most exhilarating pop music you’ll hear all year.
We sat down with Mandy Lee a few weeks before her album release. With her dining room transformed into a makeshift photo studio, she’s deep in album mode. DIYing the rollout alongside her partner and incredibly talented photographer, Matty Vogel. Every detail of this new world has been brought to life with intention.
Cherry Bomb is giving us a record we’ll want to play over and over again. It’s the kind you dance to with your friends in the living room, cry to in the club, or blast in your car with the windows down. It’s pure joy. It’s pop in its very best form. Enjoy our conversation below.
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:: stream/purchase The Pursuit of Pleasure here ::
:: connect with Cherry Bomb here ::
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‘The Pursuit of Pleasure’ – Cherry Bomb
A CONVERSATION WITH CHERRY BOMB
Atwood Magazine: Hey Mandy! How are you?
Cherry Bomb (Mandy Lee): I’m so happy to be doing this together.
So am I! How are you?
Cherry Bomb: You first.
I've been listening to this album for the past week, so I'm great because it's making me so happy.
Cherry Bomb: Oh, that’s really sweet.
It's pure joy.
Cherry Bomb: That was the goal. That’s what I needed because I was feeling the opposite of it. So I was like, okay, maybe there’s some magic if I try to make something that celebrates the opposite of how I’m feeling.
Are you in LA right now?
Cherry Bomb: Yes. I was hoping I could go back to New York for my sister’s birthday and Halloween, but the album is taking up every second.
Well, you have a show there coming up, right?
Cherry Bomb: Yes, December!
Okay, amazing. So – writer, director, producer, what can't you do?
Cherry Bomb: Most everything. Honestly, I feel like I can’t do any of those things. I have such imposter syndrome, but there’s something really fun about the lack of resources that forces you to be the one to do it, so you have no choice. It kind of just throws you into the line of fire of like, “Okay, I don’t have the means to hire anybody, so I got to figure out how to DIY this.”
Matty Vogel, the love of my life, is a creative genius. So our dining room right now is literally a photo studio as well. We’ve been shooting the album trailer and the track list reveal and trying to crank out the, I hate to say it, but socials of it all.
Yeah, but that’s part of it and you've been crushing.
Cherry Bomb: Yeah, I’m at the part of the process where I’m like, I can’t keep going and renting out studios and stuff. So we’re like, oh, we could just turn our house into a studio.
I want to talk about the album as a whole before we dive into the songs. It's such a happy pop banger album, but then lyrically, it's really meaningful. It’s a whole world that you have built. I want to know about when you figured out this glittery diva pop world and how you landed on it?
Cherry Bomb: First of all, thank you. That means the most. It’s very pop, shimmery, shiny production. And then when you read the lyrics, you’re like, “Oh, depressing.” Which as we know is my favorite sorcery. But the glittery pop diva of it all, and maybe this is a recession indicator, but I feel like this project is very out with the new, in with the old. I really wanted to get back to who I was as a little girl who was singing “You Don’t Own Me” and “Respect” for the talent show as a five-year-old with a boa and a sparkly outfit and sunglasses. I just felt like when the canvas was really blank and I was like, “Well, where do I go that isn’t MisterWives?” Which was really hard because MisterWives is my whole life. It was really hard to sever the way in which I was so used to creating, but I just was struck by the little firecracker that was so embodied, the diva energy.
And I was like, “That could be really fun to tap into that,” because that didn’t necessarily fit in MisterWives. And while that essence of me is always there in every iteration of every album, even Nosebleeds – you know, it still is always bombastic and in your face and very maximalist – there were just parts of me missing also. I had this closet in my room that the doors were shut for a while and I opened up this closet and it’s every boa, every sequin, every tulle, every glittery thing you could think of. And I was like, “Okay, maybe this is the direction. This is the north star.” Let’s just work with what we have and get back to the roots of who I was when I first started.
I love that so much. It does feel so you and it feels so free also, the whole thing.
Cherry Bomb: Yeah, that was the goal. The industry does a really good job at sucking the joy out of music. With this, I really was like I don’t care about the outcome. Of course I want Cherry to fulfill all the dreams, but really it was just wanting this to be freedom and pleasure and finding how to enjoy this thing that has always been the love of my life that throughout the years can chip away at the pureness of what you intended to do.
It feels like you put so much into this in the best way. Everything is intentional. You made this just the way you wanted to. It doesn't feel like it's trying to do anything or be anything other than what it is, if that makes sense.
Cherry Bomb: Oh, thank you. It’s been fun. Having tight parameters sort of makes you get even more creative.
It doesn't feel like you had tight parameters. Listening to this album and all the visuals - this feels big.
Cherry Bomb: Thank you. I mean, Jason Suwito, the producer, who did a lot for MisterWives, he’s one of the best. I was really grateful he was down to do the album with me. I owe him a lot. I feel very grateful that everybody who’s been a part of the project, whether it’s Matty or Jason or my friends who are down to do the music video and learn the choreo in my living room and make it a party have made this project able to be what it is. And I’m aware that that’s such a gift because without those people, it would not look and sound the way it does.
It’s become very clear over the years that you're good to your people. It must have been easy for them to want to step in and be a part of this.
Cherry Bomb: And tequila helps people come shoot a video.
Right, of course. Make it a party.
Cherry Bomb: Which I didn’t realize was an option. My girlfriends have been doing the videos. I’m like, “I’ve never had a drink on a music video set.” They have really infused the project of like, “Oh, just make it fun and it doesn’t feel like work.”
Yeah, that sounds amazing. So starting with “Curtain Call,” I love this one. I love the outro. It’s almost like its own poem.
Cherry Bomb: Those are my favorite lines of the album.
Now I know in the end
what I did not from the start
A black hole was a star
Before the star fell apart
Watch the lights cut to black
While I’m standing at the mark
A black hole was a star
Before the star fell apart
Something that once was so great and the intention was like, “Oh, it was this star that now doesn’t exist how it once did.”
Tell me about the production of this one. It’s so catchy.
Cherry Bomb: I wrote this one a long time ago. There are so many iterations. That song first started off with a friend, Lucky West, who’s another amazing producer, but it didn’t feel like the world of Cherry. So Jason took it on to bring in the synths and the drum sounds, so it sounded cohesive. When you write with a bunch of different people, it can start to feel a little bit far out of what the world is. So that song has had a lot of different versions, but I don’t know. I just had that melody of that verse in a voice note for a long time, and it just felt like one that I had to really chip away at to get it to the final form and was worth the fight.
Yeah, definitely. I love it. Ok, I want to talk about “Oxymoronic.” I need to know when you landed on “Oxymoronic” as the title. It’s perfect.
Cherry Bomb: Oh yeah. I mean, that, “Myriad Reflector,” “Curtain Call,” all those songs really started off with something I read or something that just comes to me and I throw it in a notes app of running ideas for songs.
I loved “Oxymoronic” carrying this opposing juxtaposition. That’s really what a breakup can feel like. I’ve never heard it in a song before, which is good because it’s very hard to find words and chords that haven’t been done. I really loved how much you could play with the percussiveness of it. I kind of just threw out rules of what a chorus should be. Even with how low it is – that was very intentional. I wanted to make this as weird and as fun and as dancey as possible.
This is the song for when you’re in the club with your girls crying about the person you’re trying to get over and wondering if you should take them back even when you know that’s not the right thing to do. It’s living in that liminal space of the awareness of it being pretty ugly. It’s both beautiful and horrifying all at the same time.
So that was fun, both lyrically and then in the production. This song is in Jason’s pocket. The heavy distorted synths and the dance break beat. So it was really fun to be like, “Let’s go further into that.” That one, “Myriad Reflector,” and a lot of these songs really dive into the dancier parts. While MisterWives was always dance music, it was very much still a band playing it. It was really fun to mess with sounds that were opposite of that.
I would say “Oxymoronic” was probably the one that went furthest into new territory from a production standpoint, even with how I was singing and the cranking, the Auto-Tune and distortion, and it being spoken on the chorus. Even though it’s still got very robust melodies in the pre-chorus and still has things I’ve always done, that chorus for sure was like, “Ooh, this is something that is fresh and different and feels a little dangerous because I’ve never done it before.”
This one in particular feels very much like what I was saying earlier. It’s such a banger, but then the lyrics really make you feel.
Cherry Bomb: Those are my favorite. We need to find a word for the genre, like Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own.” Those songs are so fun, euphoric and free, but then they carry guttural and painful opposing feelings, which I think is a part of healing, truly. Not to be “holding space for both,” but it really is like, “Oh, these two feelings are polar opposite,” and I think that’s the way you work through it. It’s never this, “I was sad and now I’m happy.” It’s pleasure and pain and joy and the grit and the glamour and the death and rebirth, which is really what this whole album is about.
Letting it be okay that you feel that way and leaning into it.
Cherry Bomb: Even the name Cherry Bomb. It was really important to me that it holds multitudes. As someone with OCD and having been in the music industry for so long you very much feel like you need to fit in a box. It was always “MisterWives is too pop for rock and too rock for pop.” It always made me doubt my instincts because I love such a vast array of music and sounds and fashion and culture. So this project was really good at letting me be me. It’s okay that it’s all of these things and it’s clear it’s not just Cherry and it’s not just a Bomb.
It’s everything!
Cherry Bomb: And explosive, yeah.
“No Hard Feelings.” I mean, what a banger. When I listen to this, I obviously feel all the influences like you were talking about earlier, the Donna Summer disco classics, but then it's also very “Club Classics” Charli XCX.
Cherry Bomb: Hell yeah. Okay. I love that.
I would imagine making this was really fun in the studio, and I would imagine you're very excited to do this one live.
Cherry Bomb: This is the live song. That was the takeaway. Me and Jason were like, “Oh my God.” He’s like, “I just can’t wait to feel the bass of the song.” They all are always for the live show, but there’s ones where you’re like, “Okay, we’re going to extend this part for five minutes and build it up and break it down and build it back up again.” And this one is just… I said the
Je suis, so free
Watch me work it out on the beat
and then we were like, “Wait, that’s actually fun.” I feel like it is such a good energy I’ve never really tapped into before in writing. It’s a little bit more tongue in cheek. I knew that song had to exist on the album, and that was one that was written later on in the process. I had this itch I had to scratch. I wanted to do something almost pulling from old Gwen Stefani. The very operatic, and quirky vibes, but it’s also Donna Summer and Madonna. It’s just all the women that I looked up to and loved. I wanted to make a Cherry version of the things that have influenced me, inspired me most. It’s just really fun to be like, “Cunt!”
Exactly! The first time I listened to this I was truly smiling from ear to ear like a lunatic walking down the street.
Cherry Bomb: That’s how I felt when I would come home from the studio and listen to the bounce of that day in the Uber. It was permeating very loud out of my headphones. This driver was definitely like, “This girl’s going through some shit right now.”
Incredible.
Cherry Bomb: But it is a good sign. When I started getting ready for these shows, I would put on “No Hard Feelings” and “Oxymoronic.” They were the first songs I started running to again. I hate running and these songs were making me feel like I could fly. The energy of those songs really just elevate and make you feel like you can do the thing you’re terrified of doing.
“No Hard Feelings” was kind of a manifestation of “say it with your chest.” Do the thing you want, no hard feelings, let go of all the heaviness you’ve been carrying around that’s been making it so hard for you to move forward. This song was such a reclamation. The past can stay, it doesn’t have to come with you.
Which brings us perfectly to “Cocoon.”
Cherry Bomb: Yes. I love her. I love her so much.
I also love her so much. I love when the music feels like the lyrics in a song.
Cherry Bomb: They’re on the same page.
Yeah, exactly. The music has this anticipation that feels like wanting to break out of a cocoon. One of my favorite lyrics on the album comes from this one: The regret of not giving into intuition.
Cherry Bomb: Thank you. The “into intuition” is my favorite part.
It's an earworm.
Cherry Bomb: When you find those little fun plays on the alliterations it’s the best. That one is one of my favorites and totally embodies what the whole album is about. Anytime I’ve done an interview and people are like, “What’s the word or takeaway for the record?” It’s intuition and letting that be the North Star, which in the past has been really hard for me to trust. The song has such a weightless feeling of just saying, “You can trust yourself. It’s safe to trust your intuition.”
Yeah, totally.
Cherry Bomb: Taking into consideration all the external noise, doubt, and judgment is exhausting. We all carry baggage of what people want us to be versus who we really are, which can really muddy the waters of your identity.
The vocal arrangement of this song, and all of the songs really, are insane – and I know that’s just you in the studio doing your thing. There are so many really interesting, cool things that you do in the background. How do you do this?
Cherry Bomb: It’s probably ADHD. While I’m writing the main melody, I’m singing 20 harmonies, the BGVs, and the pads. It’s very strange that it all happens all at once, really. There’s never a “what should we do here?” Usually I’m reprimanded for doing too much. Jason had a joke of me reaching my allotted harmony stack.
They make the song so full and dynamic. They are some of the best parts!
Cherry Bomb: 100%. All the delay throws and the tremolo effects on the vocals; those are my favorite parts of the songs. It’s funny because no one with the exception of you who is listening closely usually hears or cares for those things. When we’re in the final stages of mix notes, I’m like, we have to boost this. And everyone’s like, what? I don’t even know what part that is. The background vocals are almost more important to me than the melody and I’m sure I’ll get penalized for saying that. I’m often singing those parts more than the lead.
It's crazy that your brain can sing all of those parts. While some won’t hear every part, all of the pieces are what make the song whole.
Cherry Bomb: They’re the bedrock of the music. They may not be able to pinpoint the exact part, but it creates the whole stack and color and texture of the song in the same way it is with drums and synths and guitars and all of that. You’re playing and hearing melodies while figuring out the chords and lyrics all at the same time. It does sort of resolve when you’re in the flow state, just too much flow. We’re like, we got to close those gates a little bit.
And then you leave and have no idea if what you did was good or bad.
Cherry Bomb: Yeah. It is such a back-and-forth. My goodness. I always think it’s a good sign after I’ve made a song if I’m going to sleep and I can’t stop playing it in my head. It’s a good indicator if it’s in my dreams.
I love that.
Cherry Bomb: This is a tangent, but when Dolly Parton died, that night she visited me in my dream and sang a song to me on her nails. You know how she does the –
Yes.
Cherry Bomb: It fully rhymed, it had a melody I could sing and it stuck in my head where I’m like, wow, it’s either I’m really losing it or Dolly is telling me to keep going.
That is incredible. Dolly is on your side!
Cherry Bomb: My family loves Dolly Parton. When we told my niece that she passed, she said she thought Dolly would come back as a ladybug. When I got home later that day, a ladybug was on the doorknob to get in my house.
This stuff happens for a reason.
Cherry Bomb: Anyways, sorry. Just how songs can be in your dreams.
Totally. I talk to so many songwriters who say the songs sometimes come from somewhere else. They have no idea how they wrote them. I do feel it’s really one of the only magical things we have left. Making songs.
Cherry Bomb: I know. And then it connects to everybody. It really is wild.
Let's get into “P.O.P.” Pursuit of pleasure. This is my favorite chorus on the album.
Cherry Bomb: I fought this one! It was supposed to be a 10-song album. It was the last song that I wrote.
Oh, was this always the title or did it then end up being the title track?
Cherry Bomb: I always had the title. I’ve had the title for years. And then I just really wanted to make this song to embody the whole record. It’s the manifesto.
Yes. I love that. Yeah. One of my favorite lyrics is “loving all chalant.”
Cherry Bomb: Yes! All chalant was another one with me and Miranda Glory, my co-writer. I did a lot of the album with her. I brought that up to her. I was like “I don’t want to be nonchalant. I want to be all chalant. I’m tired of everybody trying to be like, I’m too cool. I don’t want to care. Cringe this, cringe that.” I want to be the antithesis of that where I am proudly caring, showing up maximalist and loud and not ashamed of it in the ways that I have been prior. I hope for people who listen that it’s that bridge back to yourself and permission to be whomever you are.
And I’ve had the “apricity” lyric saved on my phone for years. If even the winter feels warmth, why can’t you?
So if you want it come and get it it’s been eternity
Even the coldest of Decembers feel the apricity
Just like a modern day Icarus melting into the heat
Burning up a fever dream
Insane, top-tier songwriting.
Cherry Bomb: I’ve gotten a lot of funny comments lately of people saying they miss my old songwriting. They think this is too pop or too different, but the songwriting is always there. Just because it’s fun music it doesn’t take away the magnitude and the weight of what you’re feeling. People are condescending about pop. They’ll say it’s lowbrow. I swear it’s just sexism. It’s just another way to weaponize the hate towards women in pop. People have been having such a gripe with me of missing my old stuff that “carried more weight”.
They’re not listening. Also, going back to “Dancing on My Own,” this song – your songs, and pop in general – the way they are produced paired with the lyrics evoke so much emotion. Anyone who's saying otherwise doesn’t want to get it.
Cherry Bomb: Yeah, totally. Or just not listening. I feel like in doing this and ruffling people’s feathers I’m doing something right. Cherry Bomb embodies evolving and stepping into new territory. Making people feel uncomfortable who want me to stay the same, I guess, means we’re doing this right.
Absolutely. “333.” This one is my favorite.
Cherry Bomb: I agree. That’s my favorite.
Is it really?
Cherry Bomb: Yes!
It's stuck in my head. I love the bridge. The riffs you do at the end, I'm like, I feel like only you could do. They're almost not human.
Cherry Bomb: “333” was this idea I had. I never met my grandma. She was an amazing seamstress and I love to sew and make all my outfits. I feel this connection to her even though I never met her. She inspired Superbloom. When I went to the Poppy Fields, that was because it was her favorite flower, and that’s where I came up with the whole concept of that record. So I feel like she’s always been there with me. I remember being told that 333 is an angel number. I was at a Tarot reading – which, I know, I take it all with a grain of salt – but she said that someone you’ve never met is a big part of your life and everything you do. She is proud of you and is telling you to keep going.
I love that.
Cherry Bomb: I’ve been waking up, and I’m sure this is just that my cortisol levels are all f***ed, but I wake up every single day at 3:00 AM.
Is this a sign or is it mayhem?
I wrote that in one of my wakes. The witching hour. So I wake up with all this anxiety. I’m starting over. It’s easy to question everything when you’re starting over. I just ran with that idea of
I don’t wanna show and tell it
Used up all my tears about it
I just wanna dance until
I forget that you ever happened
I can’t keep ruminating over this or it’s going to continuously wreck my sleep, wreck my life. The song was me relinquishing. I can’t control what’s happened. I’m here now. I want to let it go. And not in a spiteful way. So much of songwriting and doing what we do is having to take this really painful thing and be like, “Here it is. I’m going to keep ripping the Band-Aid off. It’s going to be so hard to heal because you’re constantly talking about it, constantly reopening the wounds.” With this one, I wanted to feel light from the heaviness that I’ve been carrying all these years. The song gave me permission to leave it in the past.
It can be a celebration when you sing it.
Cherry Bomb: Yeah, totally. The second verse I love too. The line about hearing a song on the radio that once was your favorite, that now the meaning is gone. You can hear the song and remember how your life was back then, but it doesn’t carry the same pain that it once did. That one really is like, that’s been sticking with me a lot.
One day forever
Will feel like a favorite song
That’s been forgotten
til you hear it when the radio’s on
And the meaning is gone
I wrote those lyrics down as favorites of mine. What you’re singing about is such a specific thing that everyone has - we all have that album or song that takes you back to a specific moment in time.
Cherry Bomb: Yes! It’ll happen. That came from hearing a song that I hadn’t heard in ages that I used to listen to every day on the way to the train going to high school. It came on a playlist and took me back. It was so crazy. I remember feeling like my life was falling apart when that was my favorite song. I listen to it now a million years later and it’s actually really special. You get a glimmer of the feeling, but it doesn’t overtake you in the way that it did.
It’s crazy how time can change things, but you still have the memories so clearly.
Cherry Bomb: I always feel like that’s where you can really feel growth. It’s very hard to ever feel like you’ve grown or you’re healing, truly. But then something like that will happen where you’re like, okay I’ve evolved. I’m reacting to pain so differently now.
Totally. This goes with the album theme of intuition and trusting your gut. It’s so hard to do that when you’re younger. I feel like I'm just getting to that now.
Cherry Bomb: I think that’s why everybody says your 30s are your best years. Things start to click more.
Yeah, it feels that way.
Cherry Bomb: Yeah. Trusting yourself more and not reacting in the same way to things. I just respond to things I’ve gone through prior so differently now. We’re really grown up, girl!
Can you believe how long we’ve been doing this? I think our first interview was almost 10 years ago.
Cherry Bomb: Yeah, I know. We should find the first one.
I’m sure we have it.
And we’ll keep doing it! You've got the LA & NY shows coming up. What else?
Cherry Bomb: I’m in this moment of, go as far as you can see, and when you get there, go further. That’s literally what I’ve been living my life by.
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Lee tells me she heard the above advice from Ina Garten on Amy Poehler’s podcast.
It feels like the perfect sentiment to carry into The Pursuit of Pleasure era. With this debut, Cherry Bomb proves that some of the most healing music comes wrapped in the shiniest production. The album arrives November 13th, with Cherry Bomb taking the stage for a sold out show at the Moroccan Lounge in Los Angeles on November 18th, followed by Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn on December 7th.
Listen to the album. Go see it live. This is music worth celebrating.
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:: stream/purchase The Pursuit of Pleasure here ::
:: connect with Cherry Bomb here ::
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© Matty VogelThe Pursuit of Pleasure
an album by Cherry Bomb
