Cher! at 80!
How to encapsulate a legend of her caliber?
I’ve been struggling to write this one, and just, be a little more loose with it. I get so historian-minded and sometimes I need to abandon that. I wasn’t missing Cher’s 80th birthday, even if my imposter syndrome keeps trying to creep in, the rat bastard. Maybe starting it like this will help me… could I say it any better than this?
When it comes to Cher, I focus on music first, so that’s all I’m focusing on with this post. I could give you this and that’s about Will and Grace, and Stuck On You, and of course Moonstruck, but I’ll save that for another time.
I focus on music first when it comes to most (unsurprisingly, since this is most of what I write about). Cher has no shortage of music to her name, even if the decades we’ve both inhabited this planet have been somewhat quieter on the musical front for Cher, releasing just 8 albums in the span of my 36 years. In total, she’s released 27 studio albums. But she’s also starred in 20 films (including a few animated ones), hosted a series of variety shows, cemented herself as a fashion legend, written some books, and so on and so forth.
Again, music first (just like the VH1 of my day), I own about 11 of her albums, along with something like 10 singles. I’ve seen like 3 of the films she starred in, and that’s about it from her filmography. So on some level, I feel unqualified to adorn this legend with authoritative praise as she hits 80 years old but still gives off 60 on a bad day.
But I’m a Cher fan of some capacity dating back to at least 1999. Like many others I arrived at Cher as Believe propelled her back into a focal point of pop culture. I think I got it for Christmas in 1998 or my birthday or Christmas in 1999. I remember watching her and Tina Turner whoop it up on VH1 Divas 1999 during “Proud Mary.” There’s electricity in the moment she dances out onstage and these three legends (including Elton John on the piano) occupy the same small stage at the Beacon Theatre at the same time. I can still feel it 27 years later.
Her Behind The Music special, which clocked in at a whopping 60 minutes (most Behind The Music episodes were 40 plus commercials, built for an hour of airtime), aired that same year. It was effectively Cher 101 for me. Thankfully, the internet has managed to retain the full episode, and just like I was 8 or 9, I found myself getting lost in it again.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2126794457513095
As a burgeoning little gay (whether I knew it or not), Cher was irresistible to me, and in some ways, still is. I mean come on. The wigs, the fashion, the voice, the presence. She’s gay cat-nip. And Believe was like a huge pouch of it. Following the title track/opener is “The Power,” a funky Eastern-influenced record that’s positively hypnotic.
“Strong Enough” became an instant favorite for me. As I was working on this, I popped on the live version from The Farewell Tour and couldn’t help grooving and singing along. It hasn’t lost an ounce of its appeal for me.
And in my later years, I’ve discovered, that in true fashion of doing it for the gays, she recorded a “male” version, where the pronouns about the person cheated with are changed from “she” to “he.”
A little over two years later, I bought Believe’s follow-up album, Living Proof, the week it was released in the U.S. in 2002 (which was about 3 months after its international release). While I’ve got many albums to go, Living Proof remains my favorite of what I know. I’ll go to the mat for that body of work, specifically the international version, which presents the tracklist in a different order and flows much better as a body of work. Sequenced in international order in a playlist for your listening pleasure:
I also live for the bossa nova groove on Japan’s bonus track, “The Look,” which finally hit streaming in 2024. It’s so random when put up against the rest of the album, but god if it isn’t catchy and campy.
And that can very much be Cher sometimes. Like many others, Cher is genre-adverse. Pick up any compilation album of Cher’s musical career, and that’s evident. She was singing backup on early R&B like The Ronettes “Be My Baby,” representing 60’s counterculture when she broke out as a duo with Sonny, straddling pop and rock, but often incorporating a theatrical motif, even if just in the storytelling of it all. She dabbled in disco, delved into rock and sang a helluva power ballad or few, and of course, fully submerged herself into contemporary dance.
I got my first Cher compilation the following year, 2003’s The Very Best Of Cher, branded to accompany her seemingly neverending ‘Living Proof: The Farewell Tour’ which began in 2002 and wrapped in 2005 after a whopping 325 shows (and eventually followed by two residencies and two more tours, so far). That compilation gave me better insight into Cher’s catalog, and classics like “Dark Lady,” “I Found Someone,” and “Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves” became favorites of mine.
I was at Target the day Closer To The Truth was released in September 2013 (I can still see the time stamps from when I imported it into my iTunes that very day). As per usual, I had to have that Target deluxe edition.
Like many with a career as extensive as hers though, Cher’s discography has not entirely made the transition to the digital era. Beyond the remixes and such that are still spotty online. Her mid-70’s 3-album run on Warner Brothers have never made it to CD, let alone digital, despite 1975’s Stars album cover being printed on crop tops at Old Navy (I own one), and 1976’s I’d Rather Believe In You is adorned with one of the most memorable Cher images. The same can be said for her ill-fated collaboration album with then-husband Gregg Allman, Two The Hard Way. Just one song from that 1977 set appears on streaming outlets, thanks to its inclusion on an Allman compilation. That too was a Warner Bros. release.
There’s also a little-known 2000 folk-rock album, not.comm.ercial, initially written and recorded in 1994. Her label at the time rejected the project, and she took it upon herself to release copies of it exclusively for sale on the internet in 2000. It’s never gotten a digital release. This is a favorite of mine:
I remember trying to tune into the 1999 HBO broadcast of the Do You Believe? Tour. We didn’t have HBO, but sometimes it came through a little. I tuned that TV to channel 14 (our HBO) and tried, to dismal results. But I finally got to see her in concert 2014 and then again in 2019. That first show is what prompted me to acquire the small point-and-shoot camera I still bring with me to concerts to this day.
It is magnificent to behold Cher in concert. She’ll don more wigs and complimentary ensembles than any other performer you’ll see in concert, all without missing a step.
And lastly, I’m still holding out hope that we get to hear one of the two songs Cher cut with Wu Tang Clan for their Once Upon A Time in Shaolin album, beyond the very brief snippet.
There’s a cartoon Cher quoted in her Behind the Music special, “after the nuclear holocaust there’ll be cockroaches and Cher.” I think that wholly informed my perspective of Cher. She’s eternal. And continues to prove that.
Here’s a little of the Cher that stays on repeat in my world: