By: Will Cherry


My name is Will Cherry. I’m 23 years old, and I’m an artist that focuses on music and film. Like most artists and most humans, the pandemic completely changed my life. It caused so many plans to be either restructured or abandoned. It sent so many people back to the drawing board.

In March of 2020, I was aiming for a summer release of my solo debut album BURGUNDY, with the dream of a heavily populated Kanye-style listening session in the middle of my hometown in Ohio. The music and videos were ready, and it felt like after all of our strategizing, it was time to put things into action. Then, the world stopped.

In the midst of the early quarantine, I experienced a lot of new things like going vegan, anxiety attacks, and making a killer quesadilla. But, there was one new element that stood above everything else: I started a band

.In 2017, when I was first finding my footing and learning how to make music, I had a lot of ideas. Some materialized on BURGUNDY, and some never saw the light of day. Those unreleased ideas mostly involved some friends and I, namely Z-Wells, Xavier Clark, Save, Mandell Harrison, Rico Blu and Darnell Hooks. We wanted to do an album as a collective, but the chemistry and ideas just weren’t at the level that warranted a full album at the time. In 2020, some of us rekindled the idea of doing some music together with the extra free time that fell into our laps.

After a couple of songs were created, we hopped on our usual group Facetime and while brainstorming band names, we came across one that instantly clicked: STARLITE. From there, we started working on singles and projects that are finally set to come out this year. We did all of this remotely, none of our songs were recorded with members in the same room. This could seem virtually impossible because I’m from Cleveland, Ohio, Z-Wells is from Houston, Texas, Xavier Clark is from Indianapolis, Indiana, Save is from Los Angeles, California and Mandell Harrison is from Louisville, Kentucky. It feels weird to type this out, but rather than the distance becoming a roadblock, it was the catalyst to us finding our chemistry by talking more and becoming best friends through Facetime calls and group chat messages. Entire songs were created in one night during multiple hour-long calls, until we found a rhythm that led us to sounding as if we made the songs in one studio.

Our first single is “Shining”, which I produced and started with the intention of being an introductory single/theme song, similar to Eminem’s “My Name Is”, Snoop Dogg’s "Who Am I? (What's My Name?)" and Jay-Z’s “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)”. I asked myself “What do stars do?” and went from there. We have a ton of music that will follow this, and the whole process of creating these songs with a team dynamic has been refreshing. As the producer and lead engineer of the band, I’ve been able to push myself and cross into different genres and cultivate new sounds. This whole experience has given me a new perspective on who I am as a person and an artist.

As crazy as it sounds, the internet made my band what it is. We survived and created while the world burned.

We were truly Made in the URL.

willcherry.us