Deep Album Cuts Vol. 355: Cher
Cher is nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year, alongside Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey, Dave Matthews Band, Eric B. & Rakim, Foreigner, Peter Frampton, Jane's Addiction, Kool & The Gang, Lenny Kravitz, Oasis, Sinead O'Connor, Ozzy Osbourne, Sade, and A Tribe Called Quest.
2. Dream Baby
3. Time
4. I Look For You (with Sonny Bono)
5. The Cruel War
6. Living For You (with Sonny Bono)
7. Classified 1A
8. Crystal Clear / Muddy Waters (with Sonny Bono)
9. Mama Was A Rock And Roll Singer, Papa Used To Write All Her Songs (with Sonny Bono)
10. Chastity Sun
11. Holy Smoke!
12. Do I Ever Cross Your Mind
13. Working Girl
14. Does Anybody Really Fall In Love Anymore?
15. The Gunman
16. Taxi Taxi
17. Real Love
18. Lovers Forever
19. Drop Top Sleigh Ride (with Tyga)
Track 1 from Sonny & Cher's Look At Us (1965)
Track 2 from All I Really Want To Do (1965)
Track 3 from The Sonny Side Of Cher (1966)
Track 4 from Sonny & Cher's The Wondrous World Of Sonny & Cher (1966)
Track 5 from Cher (1966)
Track 6 from Sonny & Cher's In Case You're In Love (1967)
Track 7 from Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves (UK version) (1971)
Track 8 from Sonny & Cher's All I Ever Need Is You (1972)
Track 9 from Sonny & Cher's Mama Was A Rock And Roll Singer, Papa Used To Write All Her Songs (1973)
Track 10 from Half-Breed (1973)
Track 11 from Prisoner (1979)
Track 12 from I Paralyze (1982)
Track 13 from Cher (1987)
Track 14 from Heart Of Stone (1989)
Track 15 from It's A Man's World (1995)
Track 16 from Believe (1998)
Track 17 from Living Proof (2001)
Track 18 from Closer To The Truth (2013)
Track 19 from Christmas (2023)
The other day a friend of mine, the Baltimore rapper D.King, sent me a video of him meeting Cher, and praising her as "the first one with one name and the first one to use AutoTune." And it was funny because I had just been listening to Cher for this playlist and thinking about how much she is the prototype for the modern pop star, the biggest mononym diva before Madonna.
Sonny Bono and Cher met in 1962, and both worked for Phil Spector, and she sang backing vocals on some of the biggest songs of the '60s, including "Be My Baby" and "You've Lost That Loving Feeling." Then in 1965 they made "I Got You Babe," and spent nearly a decade as America's favorite married pop duo. They made five albums together, plus Cher released several solo albums, with Bono as the primary producer and songwriter.
Sonny Bono wrote "Classified 1-A," a song from the perspective of a soldier dying in Vietnam, and Cher recorded it for one of her most successful solo albums, 1971's Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves. The song was deemed too controversial and unpatriotic at the time and only appeared on the UK release of the album, and on a single B-side in America (it's still not on the Spotify version of the album, so I grabbed it from a compilation for this playlist). The 9-minute title track to Mama Was A Rock And Roll Singer, Papa Used To Write All Her Songs is pretty remarkable too.
Cher has had historic longevity as a solo artist since breaking up with Bono in 1974, and she became the oldest female artist to top the Hot 100 when she released "Believe" at 52. Cher worked with a wide array of songwriters and producers, including a lot of the big names of '80s pop like Desmond Child, Diane Warren, and Michael Bolton, and sporadically writing herself. "Does Anybody Really Fall In Love Anymore?" was an outtake from Bon Jovi's New Jersey, written by Child, Warren, Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora.
Some of Cher's co-writing credits include "Chastity Sun" (co-written with Seals and Croft), "The Gunman" (produced by Trevor Horn), "Lovers Forever," and "Real Love" (produced by Stargate, with lots of "Believe"-style AutoTune). Last year "DJ Play A Christmas Song" hit #1 on the Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales chart, making Cher the only solo artist in history to score a #1 song on a Billboard chart in 7 different decades. Somehow it felt right to open the playlist with a duet with Sonny Bono, and end it with a Christmas song with Tyga, who tells Cher to "shake that thang like a snowglobe."
Cher actually made one album in which she co-produced every song and co-wrote nearly every song, and I was disappointed to see that it's actually not on Spotify. Cher attended a songwriters' workshop in 1994, and recorded a set of songs that her label Warner Bros. declined to release because it was "not commercial." After the success of 1998's Believe and the rise of the internet, Cher decided to finally self-release the album under the title not.com.mercial in 2000 through an early online music retailer, ARTISTdirect, before continuing to release more conventional albums through Warners. Since it was never on a proper label, not.com.mercial is not on streaming services today, but you can hear it on YouTube and it's pretty cool, I wish I could have included it here, and perfectly polished and marketable if Warners had been willing to accept a mellower sound from Cher. It closes with "Classified 1A" as a bonus track -- even long after she'd parted ways with Sonny Bono, she was proud of that song.
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