Category: Music (Page 25 of 34)

Well…bombastic Bon Jovi rock is not exactly in. So this kind of made sense to me when I heard it. Cher and country: not exactly oil and water.

The rumor was out last week that Cher's new album would be country. This article below also chronicles in excruciating detail Cher’s appearances at Country events and venues over the last few years: http://tasteofcountry.com/cher-country-album/

…as if to say "it's okay…Cher has country cred."

Gregg Allman is contemplating a country album and Gwyneth Paltrow signed a recent deal to make a pop-country record, but here are four words country music never thought it would hear: Cher is going country!

The diva herself has hired Carrie Underwood and Lee Ann Womack‘s producer, Mark Bright, according to Digital Spy, and he is confirming that Cher is indeed recording a country album. Bright says, “Cher knows that her listeners also listen to country music, so she felt it was a natural thing to develop a country music relationship.”

Cher, of course, is not a total stranger to country. She was a presenter at the 2010 CMA Awards, getting a standing ovation by the likes of Tim McGraw, Keith Urban and Ronnie Dunn when she walked onstage. Taylor Swift was even seen throwing her arms enthusiastically into the air as Cher sauntered up to the mic.

The ‘I’ve Got You Babe’ singer reminded the audience that country runs deep in her family. When her mom was young, she sang with Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. On the show, Cher said, “When I was about five, I thought there was only two kinds of music: the songs that were in ‘Dumbo’ and ‘Cinderella’ and country.” She added, “The first song my mom ever taught me was ‘Hey Good Lookin,” and my dear friend Merle Haggard and I’ve been talking about doing a duet forever, but I really have a hard time wrapping my head around ‘Haggard and Cher.’”

The last publicly reported time Cher was in Nashville was 2008, when she booked a private jet and came to Twang Town to see her good friend Haggard in concert at the Ryman. Later that night, a man was charged with disorderly conduct and public intoxication after he repeatedly harassed her at the legendary club Tootsies Orchid Lounge.

In 2009, Cher and her boyfriend were seen at a Haggard show in California. Her most recent brush with country music was to star in the movie ‘Burlesque’ alongside Julianne Hough earlier this year.

But we can’t ignore one of Cher’s earlier run-ins with a country great: In the video [check the site to view the video], Cher joins the legendary Dolly Parton onstage for a ‘Spiritual Medley,’ dated from a 1978 television special.

More of the same from The Boot: http://www.theboot.com/2011/03/18/cher-country-album/

Cher is going country, according to famed Nashville producer Mark Bright. The studio veteran has added the pop culture icon to his impressive production resume, which includes albums by Carrie Underwood, Rascal Flatts, Reba McEntire and Sara Evans, just to name a few.

Mark met Cher through a mutual friend, Songwriters Hall of Fame member Desmond Child. "Because we know each other," Mark says, "when she came to Nashville she thought of me."

Although Cher has been tight-lipped about her foray into country music, Mark's confirmation offers hope to rabid fans who crave new music from the living legend. The new album would mark her first studio album since the release of 'Living Proof' in 2001.

I was actually kind of getting excited about a Cher country album; but then reports came out that this was all rumor (per usual).

http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/the-beat-goes-on/posts/exclusive-hold-on-to-your-horses-cher-is-not-making-a-country-album

Hold your horses — Cher is not making a country album (Melinda Newman)

You know that story about Cher recording a country album that’s making the rounds today? It was true, but is no longer the case.

As often happens once artists get into the studio, the direction shifts. Cher is now making a full-on dance record, according to her representative.

We contacted Cher’s spokeswoman today to see if there were more details about Cher’s country album with Nashville producer Mark Bright. Bright told the website Silk And Denim that he and Cher met each other through songwriter Desmond Child, who has written songs for Cher and who now spends much of his time in Nashville.

That interview ran in January, but for some reason, all the major websites picked up on it today.  News that Cher was looking for country songs first surfaced last November.

We’re waiting for more details about the new set and will add more when we get them, but Cher’s rep tells us that although the country album was in the works, it "no longer is. It will be a dance-oriented album.”

This all gives me a headache. I was actually psyched about some kind of musical departure. Another dance album isn’t going to turn the rock and roll world around. Don’t get me wrong: I love Cher’s dance records. This isn’t about dance. It’s about country. Cher’s voice is very soulful and soul and country are kissing cousins. Cher has never fully developed this natural inclination of her voice (think Elvis and country). It's so neo-hip, too. Just the thing I would love (like so many other thwarted Cher desires: a tourch ballad show, a full-fledged movie musical staring Cher).

I’m feeling a spoiled child tantrum coming on. I'm channeling Napoleon Dynamite.

Gah!

This story got Cher fans to listing out her country oeuvre:

Doug wrote: Cher already has a few country songs under her belt:  "Do I Ever Cross Your Mind" from the I Paralyze album [1982], "You're Just What I've Been Looking For" from the Dark Lady album [1974], and "It's Too Late to Love Me Now" and "My Song" from the Take Me Home album [1979].

Ibekeen wrote: Don't forget "She Thinks I Still Care" the George Jones standard from her first album [1965] and "Crying Time" the Buck Owens/Ray Charles classic from the second S&C album as a bonus track [1966], and "Spring" from I'd Rather Believe in You [1976] could be considered country too.

Marcus wrote: And possibly, "Dixie" from Cherished [1977].

I feel a mix tape coming on.

Cher’s Warner Bros albums have now completely missed two levels of music technology: cassette tapes and CDs. We’re now on to mp3s downloaded from iTunes and these four albums STILL are buried under a rock like a time capsule we buried back in 1978 and now can’t find. What the hell?

This awesome Cher scholar Joe Marchese reviews the gems of Cher's late-70s Warner Bros time period and daydreams about the absolutely necessary compilation that is missing from our lives.

How can Cher be taken seriously as 5-decades-long musical artist when some of her best tracks are hijacked in a closet under hundreds of pairs of shoes?

“We listeners don’t need a modest little Diane Warren power ballad to remind us that Cher isn't going anywhere.”

I love his line-up but would one-up the thing after reading about Neil Young’s Blu-Ray DVD set Archives. This is the kind of package Cher fans need, a really serious musical retrospective of her career.  Young's set includes three cornerstone live concerts, rare footage and his entire catalog. Sure it’s $300 but what Neil Young scholar wouldn’t eat it up.

Read the whole Warner Bros retrospective:

http://theseconddisc.com/2011/01/27/reissue-theory-cher-a-womans-story-the-warner-bros-years/ 

Speaking of Warner Bros tracks, Cher scholar Tom found the original version of "Island" on iTunes, recorded by Chunky, Novi and Ernie. Some Cher fans speculated that the song's writer Illene Rappaport was a psudonymn for Cher but this isn’t true. Ileen is her own self (although her name is Lauren Wood) and was alledgedly thrilled Cher recorded her song.

http://www.beyondrace.com/columns/catching-up/980-catching-up-with-lauren-wood

I've been avoiding reviewing a stack of Cher compilations, both old and new, that I've been picking up new on Amazon and at Amoeba Records in Los Angeles. May as well get it over with.

cher: all I really want to do: best of the early years
Microwerks, 2009

First, awkward cover photo. Both this one and the inside photo show off her gargantuan rings of the time. This is a modest solo compilation, not the most comprehensive or unique selection, not remastered, has the major hits ("All I Really Want to Do," "Bang Bang,"  "Mama," "You Better Sit Down Kids") and the almost hits or not-really-hits-by-cher ("Where Do You Go," "Alfie," "Needles & Pins"). The fillers are common compilation selections ("Behind the Door," "Hey Joe") and not-so-common ones ("Elusive Butterfly," "I Go to Sleep," "Don’t Think Twice," The Click Song"). Thankfully the packaging is somewhat green. Bill Dahl did the liner notes:

“a beloved entertainment icon for so long we can barely remember a time when Cher wasn’t basking in superstardom.”

How about 1964.

But these liner notes taught me that "Behind the Door" was penned by Graham Gouldman, later of the band 10cc. They wrote these 70s tunes: remember "I’m Not in Love" (Big boys don't cry) and "The Things We do for Love" (like walkin in the rain and the snow when there's no where to go and you're feelin' like a part of you is dyin').

"You Better Sit Down Kids unfolded from the male perspective…Cher’s legion of followers weren’t disturbed by the gender jumble, sudden tempo switches and jazzy sax interjections”

Cher Scholar’s husband was.

CHER ICON
Geffen Records ICON series, 2011

The cover is a Herb Ritts chain mail photo…and that's all the photos you get, no liner notes, just a cheap series cash-in from Geffen.

Common of these Geffen releases, there's no "Believe," just "If I Could Turn Back Time" (without the parenthetical title), "I Found Someone," "After All," jumping back to "Half Breed," "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves" (spelled right and yet wrong), back forward to "We All Sleep Alone," back to "Dark Lady," forward to "Just Like Jesse James," back to "The Way of Love," up to "Love and Understanding," back to "Living in a House Divided," back up to "The Shoop Shoop Song." This thing gave me whiplash. For no good reason.

Classics Sonny & Cher
Rhino imprint Flashback or Collectables Records (it was hard to tell), 2007

The artwork really annoys me in that it’s clearly a 60s compilation but it uses one 60s pic and two S&C 70s pics (inside) which says to me the person putting this together has no idea about the timeline of Sonny & Cher. This greatly perturbs me. It’s historically inaccurate. Scholars hate shit like this.

Also, here is a compilation without "I Got You Babe" which makes it one people are most unlikely to buy. The hit in the mix is "Baby Don’t Go;" nonhits are "Living for You," "500 Miles" (which I've always liked), "Let it be Me, "Unchained Melody," "Then He Kissed Me," "You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me" (tunes are heavily taken from the Look at Us album).

John and I listened to this one when we were heading up through the Chama Valley in New Mexico. I said "Unchained Melody" has always sounded to me like she’s singing from another room. And then there's that awkward splice at the end. Caesar and Cleo's "Love Is Strange" is also included as are Sonny’s "Laugh at Me" and "The Revolution Kind." We both agreed we liked "You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me" and I promised someday to play for him Cher and Gregg Allman’s version.

While in the car listening to these I was trying to explain to John how these reissues come to be, who picks the songs, what is the defining principle? Without liner notes you can’t usually tell. Hell, sometimes with liner notes you can’t tell either. My theory of creation is pure random sloppiness: seven monkeys in a room picking out song titles from a hat.

The one-page CD sleeve for this one has a very ugly advertisement for www.oldies.com on the back. The cover is very fugly and loud too. I hate this thing. It is trash polluting our universe.

Sonny & Cher The Definitive Pop Collection
Rhino/Atco, 2006

First of all this is a far cry from "definitive" although there are 2 CDs. On this one, I do like the cover art. Very mod. The thing is needlessly overpackaged but I do appreciate the Good-Times-era living room photo inside with Sonny pouring Cher tea. I don’t appreciate the 70s pic in the back of the booklet. No 70s songs, no 70s pics. Cher Scholar law.

Sheryl Farber’s liner notes have been reused from The Essentials: Sonny & Cher and are a good historical review on Sonny’s early efforts in the music business and meeting Cher as “a teen runaway…with dark, mysterious eyes and world-wise alto.”

“The (Phil) Spector presence is so strong on the fisrt S&C cuts…it’s as if the soundboard knobs used to record were still greasy from Spector’s corned-beef sandwich.”

Interestingly, Farber claims the song “Just You” is perilously close to The Ronettes' “Baby I Love You.” And she talks about early evidence of Sonny's politics in his lyrics:

“While the couple’s outsiderness was referred to in many of their songs, the future Republican Congressman Bono managed to keep that image in check by making sure the public knew they weren’t real radicals, but genuine patriots, in 1965’s The Revolution Kind.”

These 30 tracks havebeen digitally remastered and include the big duets: "IGUB," "Baby Don’t Go," "What Now My Love," "The Beat Goes On," and Cher hits: "All I Really Want to Do," "Bang Bang," "You Better Sit Down Kids." Side one is otherwise filler from Look At Us and Sonny’s Inner Views ("Laugh at Me," "The Revolution Kind") and the b-side "Have I Stayed Too Long," ending with filler from The Wonderous World of Sonny &Cher. Side two is filler from In Case You’re In Love with non-album singles "A Beautiful Story," "Plastic Man," "Good Combinations" and "Inner Views ("My Best Friend’s Girl Is Outa Sight") and two songs from Good Times ("It's the Little Things," "Don't Talk to Strangers").

Again…randomness.  My husband (who likes many Sonny songs) gafawed during Sonny’s French hamming in "Sing C’est La Vie." I told him I liked "Why Don’t The Let Us Fall In Love" (a favorite from childhood) and he was appalled when I told him "It’s Gonna Rain" almost beat out "IGUB" as the first Sonny & Cher single in 1965. It sounds so dated and lyrically inferior to "IGUB."  John likes "The Beat Goes On" and "Bang Bang" (who doesn’t) although he didn’t get the gypsy interlude in the western saga. We both snickered through the lyrics of "Monday" but I came to a new appreciation for Sonny's music and lyrics for the song "Cheryl’s Going Home." "Plastic Man" and "My Best Friends’s Girl is Outa Sight" (I don’t get the ending…did his friend get married or was the girl available at the end?) are both painful to sit through. John loves "It’s the Little Things" as do I.

"Good Combination" is manic, as John said many of Sonny’s arrangements were. I said, didn’t you know Sonny was a big proponent of the 60s movement called Speed Saxing? He said, "Really?"

And with a straight face I said, "Oh Yeah."

These compilations will never end; and they already feel dated without Cher’s latest hit from Burlesque: "You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me."

So the battle is waging to get Sonny & Cher into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. On the fansite Just Plain Cher, I noticed a great, great opinion piece on the matter from Goldmine Magazine by Phill Marder.

By the way, over the years Goldmine has published some of best, most serious, retrospectives of Cher’s musical ouvre. So I'm not surprised to see a defense of her bid to legitimacy there.

Here are the article highlights:

Long before there was Joan Jett. Long before there was Madonna. Long long long before Avril and Pink. And lonnnnnnnnnnnnnng before there was Lady Gaga.

There was Cher.

In short, Cher was it. From top to bottom, Cher was the prototype of the female rock star, setting the standard for appearance, from her early hippie days to her later outlandish outfits, and her attitude – the perfect female punk long before punk even was a rock term.

Contemporaries Marianne Faithfull – the British bad girl with the angelic looks – and Nancy Sinatra – the rebel with the Playboy looks – did their part to advance feminine rebellion in the Rock world, but Cher led the way. Her schtick as near dominatrix over husband Sonny may have been a put-on in 1965, but Cher continued to force issues as she grew, not only with her stage costumes, but with her song selection as well.

With Sonny & Cher churning out hits, Cher’s solo career continued to soar, a rare occurrence in the music industry. Seldom does an artist score simultaneously with solo and group hits – Phil Collins is a recent example – but Cher did it…the very strange “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down), penned by Sonny, which came in at No. 2 in the U.S. and reached the top 10 in eight other countries, including No. 3 in the U.K. Later the same year, Nancy Sinatra did a smoking version, used in “Kill Bill,” and most recently The Raconteurs, led by Jack White, have been including a remarkably decadent cover in concert.

“You’d Better Sit Down Kids, “Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves,” “Half Breed,” among others, followed, covering issues popular female singers weren’t known to address – divorce, prostitution, unplanned and underaged pregnancy and racism just for starters.

In 1974, we listened to it as “Dark Lady.” Today we watch it on the tube and call it “Snapped.”

[I had to include the "Dark Lady" bit because I love the show Snapped! Crazy ladies!]

Cher carried her success through to the new millennium. She starred on TV, won an Oscar and put records into the Top 10 in every decade from the 60s through the 90s, selling out shows whenever and wherever she appeared. In 1998, 33 years after her chart debut, Cher was No. 1 again with “Believe.”

Her album success also was substantial, 22 solo efforts reaching the charts in addition to 12 with Sonny. In the United Kingdom, Cher posted 10 top selling albums, hitting No. 1 twice in 1991 and 1992. Her singles numbers are staggering, 32 reaching the British Top 40 between 1965 and 2001, with her cover of the Betty Everett oldie “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)” joining “Believe” and “Love Can Build A Bridge,” a joint effort with Chrissie Hynde, Neneh Cherry and Eric Clapton, as chart-toppers. Seven efforts with Sonny also reached the U.K. singles chart, led off by the No. 1 “I Got You Babe.”

Cher has expressed disappointment in the Hall of Fame’s failure to recognize her accomplishments, but, diplomatically, she has put the emphasis on her late husband, noting particularly the great songs he composed. There would be no complaint here if the Hall of Fame was to induct Sonny & Cher. But realistically, Cher sustained her musical career over the years and has become a show business icon…Perhaps this is the main reason her contributions to Rock & Roll have been overlooked. She has transcended Rock.

But Cher always has been and always will be Rock & Roll. Every female singer who followed her owes her a debt of gratitude. As does the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

http://www.goldminemag.com/blogs/rock-hall-of-fame-would-be-a-lot-sunnier-with-cher