
Itâs way past time to catch up on how Cherâs new album has been doing.
Remixes
Before we start, the digital remixes for âDJ Play a Christmas Songâ were just released. Check your local streaming service. Some remixes I like even better than the âcanonicalâ song, and I think I can only say that about two prior remixes. Although I acknowledge the fun aspect of remixes, (which is a very unfun way of saying it), remixes kind of confuse me in a scholarship sense: whatâs the canonical version if remixes fare better than the album versions in sales or on the charts?
And anything that stars with a pounding beat for three minutes will send me to bed with a headache. But happily, this is not the case with these remixes.
Good Reviews
So letâs start with the fans. Ones Iâve heard from have been playing the album nonstop. Starting with Google reviews, I couldnât find anything less than a five-star. The Amazon reviews are spread out between the two editions Amazon is selling.
Amazon 1 or 2 stars complain that their CD cases were cracked. I bought some extra copies for gifts and the majority of mine from Amazon US were cracked as well. None of my Amazon UK cases were cracked. But some fans were complaining that their CDs were cracked too! Boo Amazon US.
One four-star review said the album lacks the sparkle of a typical Cher album and they wanted more dance songs. Another four-star review wanted the songs to be more traditional. This speaks to the variety of Cher fans and how many subgroups want different things.
Some other four-star examples:
âSo it’s arrived ,after year’s of rumours Cher’s Christmas album has finally landed. Overall its a good affair with stompers Dj play a christmas song and Angels in the snow ,Drop top sleigh ride withTyga could have been awful but is a winner, couple of ballads which fit in well.Home feat Michael Buble is almost the same version he recorded with Blake Shelton ,should have done Baby it’s cold out side instead or maybe that’s to woke or snowflakey for these days. Dissapointing mastering or production ,not sure which it is but the sound is very basie and not clear at all which for me spoils the whole album. That said Put the dec’s up have a drink and put this Cher-mazing album on ! ,â
Or this funny four-star:
Good CD except for 2 tracks which are awful
There are more cracked CD complaints.
Some of the five-star reviews:
ârefreshingly different, in top form, Cher puts her stamp on Xmas, âFavorite Christmas CD of All Timeâ
Two fans disagreed over one song:
âI love “Drop Top Sleigh Ride” with Tyga! It’s has a great upbeat and is just plain fun.â
Another fan disagrees:
âTrack #7 “Drop Top Sleigh Ride” with Tyga is the stand out bad track simply the rap ruins the song. The song starts great and fits perfectly, then Tyga puts the spoil on the song with rap. Wish there was a [Tyga] rap free version of the song.â
And this hilarious five-star review:
âJUNK the album is a piece of junk..cher should leave christmas ALONE
Or this review speaking to the variety:
âThis is the best album Cher has ever recorded! The perfect mix of 60’s nostalgia, dance, rock and ballads.â
Other headlines used words like fabulous, quality, wonderful, loved it!
The overall Amazon rating is 86% at five-star (at this time). But these are most likely big fans. Dancing Queen also has a five-star rating at 85% (and I don’t remember such enthusiasm for that album) so this could just mean Cher fans like Cher stuff and theyâre motivated to give Amazon reviews. Not that there’s anything wrong with that and I use those reviews all the time when picking out books for authors Iâm less familiar with.
But next I put it to Mr. Cher Scholar. Mr. Cher Scholar is not a Cher fan, per se. Heâs also very much entirely not a Christmas song fan. So this album posed particular problems for him potentially. But he lives with a Christmas song / Cher fan who made him listen to the album four times on a recent road trip (I gave him 48-hour breaks in between). But his opinion was already contaminated by my complaints about the album’s one bad online review so he defended the album as âfun.â
But letâs be honest. Mr. Cher Scholar is Mr. Cher Scholar for a reason. Heâs no dummy. So we need to go searching for other reviews. But where do you even go to find album reviews these days?
The Harvard Crimson gave the most detailed review and called it a âstrong showing from an industry legend.â
âWhile holiday albums are a dime a dozen, Cher gives her own take on the saturated genre by combining mid-twentieth century doo-wop and early 2000s dance-pop with belovedâŠclassics.â
âChristmas is at its best when Cher leans into one of two genres: big band ballads of the 50s and 60s and dance-pop tracks reminiscent of her 1988 hit âBelieve.ââ
The reviewer likes the high notes and vocal runs of Darlene Love and Cher and thinks âAngels in the Snow is a strong trackâ (although the reviewer considers the song a love song which I donât because of the strong backup by Cyndi Lauper).
âOne experimental, yet highly successful track that deviates from these genres is âDrop Top Sleigh Rideâ with Tyga. Proceeds with a bass and 808-heavy instrumental. Tygaâs highly suggestive verse. âThese rap elements would be astonishing on any Christmas album, let alone one by Cher. Still, the track is surprisingly festive and cohesive, as the jingle bells and Cherâs silken vocals soften its more unconventional parts.â
The rap song comes up again and again as a touchstone in reviews. Weâll talk about this song more at the end.
The reviewer didnât like the duet with BublĂ©, but for no other reason than itâs too slow. Slow and sad Christmas songs have long been my favorite type of Christmas song and last week The Guardian agreed with me.
The reviewer talks about the âuplifting anthemsâ on the album but then doesnât like the most anthem-y ones:
âSome songs display too much holiday: âThis Will Be Our Yearâ and âChristmas Aint Christmas Without Youâ (mistakenly listed as âChristmas Wonât Be Christmas Without You) for those songsâ âpine-scented mediocrity.â
Itâs interesting our bad review below will single out âThis Will Be Our Yearâ as  the only âcharmingâ track on the album.
Herald&Review says, âThere isn’t much Cher hasn’t done in her career. A Christmas album is new territory, thoughâŠThe secret, of course, was to lean into the incredible eclecticism of her career, all while avoiding the sleepy, saccharine pitfalls of a ‘Silent Night’-heavy holiday release.â
They go on to say, âAlexander Edwards, Cher’s romantic partner and a credited producer on the project, is best friends with Tyga, who helped make the most unexpected and delightful collaboration happen.â
Yes: âmost unexpected and delightfulâ â keep that in mind for later on.
This review also had some interview elements.
âShe was asked to do a special, she says. âThey said, ‘Well, we can do it in England.’ I said, ‘We can do it on the moon, but I’m not doing it,'” she says, not until an [acting strike] agreement is reached.ââ
Yup, I support that. Maybe we can get a special next year once the strike is, hopefully, resolved. Because that would still be awesome.
Allmusic gave the album3 1/2 stars and said it was a ânice balance an upbeat contemporary energy with the storied Motown sound of the original recordings..â
Digital Journalâs review was almost too positive. They liked just about everything with no clear indication as to why. The most specific they ever got was to say that on âChristmas (Baby Please Come Home)â Cher and Darlene Love âboth showcase their powerhouse crystalline vocals, to the point where it is hard to differentiate where Cher picked up and where Darlene Love left off.â They also say âAngels in the Snow âwould be a good sing-a-long and they end the review with âMariah Carey ought to watch out⊠With this new collection, it is evident that there is a new âChristmas Queenâ in town.â
Well, not quite.
Retro Pop was the only review, fan or online to talk about the âriotous rendition of “Put A Little Holiday In Your Heartâ and called ââDJ Play A Christmas Songâ a “genius opener that sets the scene for an album where Cher throws out the Christmas album rulebook and places the focus on having a good time.â
They go on to say, âthe Motown-inspired ‘Christmas Ainât Christmas Without You’ and hip-hop leaning ‘Drop Top Sleigh Ride’ (feat Tyga) add to her musical toy box.â
However, âthereâs the occasional misstep; a reworked âHomeâ with Michael BublĂ© is less a winter warmer and more an ill-judged vehicle to shoehorn him into the set â and clocking in as the longest track on the album between two feelgood originals, something of a vibe-killer â while âSanta Babyâ is a little out of place on an album that largely avoids the obvious holiday staples.â
Thatâs kinda true on both counts.
But, the review says, “come closing number, a cover of The Zombiesâ âThis Will Be Our Year,â however, those shortcomings are forgiven and the overall effect is one of joy and warmth that has you reaching for a snowball and soaking up the holiday cheerâŠ.Overwhelmingly festive and quintessentially Cher â thereâs a new Queen Of Christmas in town!â
Okay, letâs drop the Queen of Christmas thing. This is one album, people.
Bad Reviews
I have to say if you want to be a Cher fan who reads positive reviews about her all the time, youâll have to be a fan of her movie career because she gets about 100% positive accolades for her acting performances, even in movies where sheâs clearly playing a version of herself. Film people love her.
Music people, not so much. The music reviews historically have been very disdainful reviews. Not just bad reviews, but vitriolic. Like pre-trolling, offensive ad hominem reviews. Theyâre usually personal attacks and this goes back to the beginning of her career. But something changed in the last 10 or so years where these trashy reviews suddenly stopped, like overnight.
But sometimes you still see one and you have to think about what it is about Cher herself they do not like. And you can tell it gets personal because attacks on what she represents will slip in there. Oftentimes, it’s political. They don’t like her politics. So whenever I read a bad review, I try to separate legitimate points, (because even Cher herself will criticize her vocal performances as being far from perfect), from reviews with subterranean agendas.
On an album like this, reviewers could focus on her vocal changes or the sentimental Christmas genre they just donât like, on production matters.
Slant Magazine put out not one bad review but two pieces trashing not only the album but the song âDrop Top Sleigh Rideâ particularly and weâll end this conversation talking about that song.
The author of both articles is a self-described fashionista and cool-finder. Which, of itself, does not make her a bad critic. But cool-finders and fashionistas tend not to like Cher because her fashion is of-its-own-path and the only people who find her cool are other cool people, like Nile Rodgers, for example. Thereâs surface cool and foundational cool and the ones who gravitate to the prior donât like the later.
But let’s look at her points individually:Â âA Holiday Album We Didnât Know We Didnât Needâ
The reviewer talks about the âlong-dated dance-pop of [Taylor and Cherâs] late-â90 smash âBelieveââ and how âthe sleigh goes off the railsâ with the âpaint-by-the-numbersâ DJ single, ” its âgratuitous Auto-Tune” (she likes the word gratuitous) “and half-step key change.â She complains there are too many songwriters, a common lament for Cherâs dance music songs and says âSanta Babyâ is âvampy-to-the-point-of-campyâ and thatâs kinda true but fully in the pocket of a Cher thing if you knew her history at all. In fact, to invoke the words “vamp” and “camp” in a review of Cher without any acknowledgement of irony says a lot about the age of the reviewer and their cultural literacy.
She says, “but that most âcringe-inducingâ is the âtrap-adjacent ”Drop Top Sleigh Ride.ââ She calls the song âa crime against the holiday spiritâ and dislikes the âembarrassing wordplay.â
So here’s my question: if she found the toned-down sexual elements of the Cher song uncomfortable, what does she think about the entire genre? Because she is the only reviewer to repeatedly label the song âtrap-adjacentâ vs rap. I looked up bios and Wikipedia pages for both Tyga and Alexander Edwards and a page on the top trap artists and they were not listed as trap artists.
According to Wikipedia, âTrap is a subgenre of hip hop music that originated in the Southern United States in the 1990s. The genre gets its name from the Atlanta slang term “trap house”, a house used exclusively to sell drugs.â
Both Tyga and Edwards are from California, not Atlanta. I’m not sure how these are trap artists.
In any case, the reviewer even hates the album title (but what Christmas album ever had a good title?)
She only liked âThis Year Will Be Our Yearâ and went on to highlight its hipster credibility.
In another article, “The 15 Worst Christmas Songs of All Timeâ the same reviewer starts with even more snark beginning with âapologies in advanceâ (a total hipster adage). The list included, judging by the Facebook comments defending them, some fan favorites. All the comments I could find about the Cher’s song on their Facebook post were defending the song. Some examples:

The reviewer alo attacks Dan Fogelbergâs âOld Lang Syneâ for its âgratuitous detailsâ but aren’t the details of the scene in that song the whole effect? She hates that effect! She attacks the usual novelty songs for being novelty songs.
The Rap Song
SoâŠ.anyway. Thereâs something significant about a white woman (who gives a lot of good reviews to Taylor Swift) placing a laser focus on the one rap song over multiple reviews. Which is not to say a white, female, pro-Swiftie can’t make sentient points about rap, but this review seems to be sticking out like a sore thumb. It feels like a dog whistle. Especially when so many other fans and online reviews single out the song as a good showing.
As I was driving to Cleveland a few weeks ago I was tooling some response jokes to this review, like this one:
âThis reviewer needs to pull that piece of coal Santa gave her last year out of her ass.â
Or âIsnât if funny that on this album Cher asked us to ‘put a little Christmas in our heart’ but the reviewer couldnât find it.â
Anyway, those were my jokes. Once I got back I realized this bad review was a very significant review. Because after trying to figure out what so offended this reviewer about the song, I have come to believe this is the most important song on the album. And a crucial song at this juncture of Cher’s recording career.
I believe there is a direct through line from Sonnyâs love of gospel and R&B to this very song. And there’s a direct connection between this song and “Believe.”
Rap music has always incorporated technology in subversive ways. The white rock response to this just illustrates that subversiveness, like this other ironic Cher intersection involving Gregg Allman. “When asked what he thought about rap music, Gregg Allman said rap was âshort for crap.â
So itâs politically significant that Cher included a song from her boyfriend, who happens to be a rap producer who then called on his best friend, Tyga, to sing on the Cher song.
And itâs also significant that Cher recorded âBelieveâ which is known as the Cher-effect, a technology that she stubbornly continues to use, a technology establishment rockers dislike but that the rap community has wholeheartedly embraced, a fact proven not only in the rap songs themselves that went on to use the technology but with the famous story of Jay-Z approaching Cher at the Met Gala one year to tell her âthank youâ for spearheading its use. (In one story I read it was the former Mr. Kim Kardashian who said thank you). In any case, rappers understood auto tune’s potential as part of their ongoing use of technology. And since then, Cher has been seen as much more popular in the rap community.
Therefore, the song makes perfect sense on this album and can be read as Cherâs merging musically and officially into the community she is already a part of.
The first essay in The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock (I’m only two essays in) is called âPlugged In: Technology and Popular Musicâ by Paul ThĂ©berge and it covers a lot of this ground:
âAny discussion of the role of technology in popular music should begin with the simple premise: without electronic technology, poplar music in the twenty-first century is unthinkable.â
He talks about pop technology from instruments to recording, performing and playback. Technology is a baseline and has a long history of being a âcatalyst for musical changeâ as does using technologies in ways for which the technologies were not intended, much of musicâs technology having been historically developed for other industries like for example the microphone being developed by the telephone industry.
There have been âconflicts in musical aesthetics and values have accompanied virtually every development in musicâ and that âdifferent uses of technology reflect differentâŠcultural priorities.â
ThĂ©berge talks about microphones and amplifiers that fueled the new crooner of the 1940s and how those were once controversial technologies which have now been naturalized. He says it is a lie that pop and rock music can ever really be âunpluggedâ and how this is more of an ideology than a possibility.
The impact of the microphone alone âwas both subtle and profound: for example, the string bass could be heard clearly, for the first time, in jazz recordings and the instrument quickly replaced the tubaâŠâ Crooning was instantly âregarded by early critics as effeminate and their singing style and both technically and, by extension, emotionally âdishonest.â
The microphone.
ThĂ©berge talks about how crooners would develop a singing technique better suited to the microphone and how Bing Crosbyâs âlow register was particularly enhanced by the microphone though the physical phenomenon known as the âproximity effect.ââ
Singers sing, ThĂ©berge says, âfirst and foremost to the microphone and every microphone has itâs own characteristics and colours the sound in subtle, yet unmistakable ways.â
This is a fact fans have noticed in the Michael Buble duet where the sounds of their respective microphones possibly doesn’t meld well in the final result.
ThĂ©berge says our experience of the âgrainâ or âwarmthâ or âpresenceâ of a singers voice is always mediated by the microphone.
Then, ThĂ©berge shows, we begot magnetic recording and putting mics on other instruments. Then engineers âgradually took over much of the responsibility for achieving musical balancesâ and then multi-track studios and then guitar pickups and then rock amplification and feedback and distortion and then computers and computer software.
âThe loudness or rock or the booming bass of hip hop are sounds that can only be produced and experienced through technological means.â
ThĂ©berge talks about early technology effects that started out as novelty effects but have since become normalized: the echo effect in Elvis Presleyâs âHound Dog,â late 1960s âflanging” on many psychedelic rock recordings, (created by manipulating the speed of tape recorders), and the multitrack tape recorder âwhich makes of song recording a compositional process and is thus central to the creation of popular music at the most fundamental level.â
Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole used multitrack recording to isolate their vocals from their orchestras. Overdubbing was used by Les Paul and Marty Ford and âa single vocalist performing multiple harmony parts [was] a technique pushed to its limits by artists such as Joni MitchellâŠthrough overdubbing.â Phil Spector and Stevie Wonder also using overdubbing for various purposes.
And then mixing â a complex and specialized tasksâ used by Giorgio Moroder and other disco producers continuing on to dance remixes and DJ mashups and rap songs.
And then MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) which led to synthesizers, samplers, drum machines, sequencers, home computers, software simulation. âThe technical reproduction is not without its social consequences. The technologies of rock and pop music production have long been a male-dominated terrain, and this has been as true for the most basic of rock technologies, the electric guitar, as it Is for the wider range of electronic technologies associated with stage and studio.â
âMusical instruments are often the centre of controversy in pop and rock because their use is so intimately tied with musiciansâ notions of personal expressionâŠ.even Bob Dylanâs adoption of the electric guitarâŠwas looked up with derision.â
ThĂ©berge then addresses rap and the Roland TR-808 drum machine (see above in The Harvard Crimson review of “Drop Top Sleigh Ride”) that became âthe instrument of choice among many hip hop, house and music producersâŠ.for the ability to detune the bass drum, creating a sound akin to a low-frequency hum, and the necessity of building rhythm patterns in a precise grid-like framework, have been cited as influences on the musical style of these genresâ
â…scratching and the art of the DJ, ” digital samplers, tape loops going back to the Moody Blues and King Crimson,
Electronic pop is criticized âby the rock press for being âcoldâ and âinhuman.â but that digital effects âappear in a surprising number of genres.”
He ends by saying, âtechnology must be understood as both an enabling and a constraining factor, that acts in complex and contradictory ways in music production, distribution and consumption….Technology acts to disrupt both music performance and recording practices but the business of music itself,…mediating the ever-shifting power relations.â
ThĂ©berge adds this article in is his notes: “An insightful case study of the uses of technology in the production of rap music can be found in âSoul sonic forces: technology , orality, and black cultural practice in rap musicâ by Tricia Roseâ (1994)
Itâs worth a full read but letâs just excerpt the salient parts of that piece. Tricia Rose talks about common criticisms of rap: it’s too simple and repetitive, it’s not creative or musical, its just noise. She takes the structures of rap, (the volume, looped drum beats and bass frequencies), back to earlier black cultural traditions and explains rap’s social and emotional power for black communities. She also outlines the differences between Western classical music structures and African-derived structures.
Since weâre talking about technology here, I just want to say Rose makes a very detailed case for repetition and how new technologies enable that repetition in rap, âthis advanced technology has not bee straight-forwardly adopted: it has been significantly revised in ways that are in keeping with long-standing black cultural priorities, particularly samplersâŠ.[which have raised] complex questions regarding fair use of musical property and the boundaries of ownership of musical phrases.â
That we already know. But Rose then explains how sampling is âcritically linked to black poetic traditions and the oral forms that underwrite themâŠ.intertextuality, boasting, toasting, and signifying in rapâs lyrical style and organization. Rapâs oral articulations are heavily informed by technological processesâŠ.in the way orally based approaches to narrative are embedded in the use of the technology itselfâŠ.these black techno-interventions [me: of which auto tune is now one] are often dismissed as nonmusical effects or rendered invisible.â
âThe arrangement and selection of sounds rap musicians have invented via samples, turntables, tape machines, and sound systems are at once deconstructive (in that they actually take apart recorded musical compositions) and recuperative (because they recontextualize these elements creating new meanings for cultural sounds that have been relegated to commercial wastebins)âŠ.These revisions do not take place in a cultural and political vacuum, they are played out on a cultural and commercial terrain that embraces black cultural products and simultaneously denies their complexity and coherence. This denial is partly fueled by a mainstream cultural adherence to the traditional paradigms of Western classical music as the highest legitimate standard for musical creation, a standard that at this point should seem, at best, only marginally relevant in the contemporary popular music realm (a space all but overrun by Afrodiasporic sounds and multicultural hybrids of them).â
âAdvances in technology have facilitated an increase in the scope of break beat deconstruction and reconstruction and have made complex uses of repetition more accessible.â
Rose talks abut the bass line, the loop, the rupture of the pattern and âthe cut,â where she establishes a ground zero in the music of James Brown and goes on to say, ââŠ.music embodies assumptions regarding social power, hierarchy, pleasure and worldview.â
âAlthough rap music is shaped by and articulated through advanced reproduction equipment, itâs stylistic priorities are not merely by-products of such equipment.â
(An important sentence and the same is absolutely true for âBelieve.â)
And hereâs the thing:
âIf rap can be so overwhelmingly mischaracterized, then what other musical and cultural practices have collapsed into the logic of industrial repetition, labeled examples of âcultâ like obedience. [Theodor] Adornoâs massive misreading of the jazz break, beside betraying a severe case of black cultural illiteracy, is another obvious example of the pitfalls or reading musical structures in the popular realm as by-products of industrial forces.â
âRetaining black cultural priorities [and feminist ones, I would argue] is an active an often resistive process that has involved manipulating established recording policies, mixing techniques, lyrical construction and the definition of music itself.â
Rose also states that âRap lyrics are a critical part of a rapperâs identity, strongly suggesting the importance of authorship and individuality in rap music. Yet, sampling as it is used by rap artists indicates the importance of collective identities and group histories.â
And again when we criticize a cadre of writers on a Cher song, or a producerâs advanced involvement in a Cher song, weâre fighting this same idea of a collective cultural project.
âRap musiciansâ technological in(ter)ventions are not ends in and of themselves, they are means to cultural ends.â
If Cher doing Rap offends you, thatâs on you. She has a direct connection to rap although she heretofore never crooned a syllable of it. The majority of the reviews and comments state that it hasnât offended many listeners. I have no doubt there are sinister areas of the internet that are trashing Cher for her involvement with rap and for her attachment to Alexander Edwards and black culture. But the song is not offending the rap artists Iâm pretty sure, which is an interesting phenomenon itself in an era of calling out cultural appropriation.
What is Cher doing differently, (other than dating a rap producer)? What cultural work did “Believe” perform? Controversy always illustrates something.
Rap has been using technology in music in empowering and subversive ways. Cher, as a music outsider, has given rap another tool. And in return, rap artists have helped Cher record a rap song….for Christmas even. It’s pretty amazing.
There are some fine points being made here about how communities merge and how one song can culminate after 25 years of influence on a genre of music.
Appearances & Interviews

I’m not about to watch all the Hallmark Christmas movies this season but Cher songs have made there way into many of them: https://www.hallmarkchannel.com/christmas/cher-and-countdown-to-christmas
Chehttps://www.hallmarkchannel.com/christmas/cher-and-countdown-to-christmasr and Countdown to Christmas (All Season Long)
- “DJ Play A Christmas Song” can be heard in “The Santa Summit” starring Hunter King and Benjamin Hollingsworth.
- In “A Merry Scottish Christmas” starring Lacey Chabert and Scott Wolf, listen to the original song “Home” performed by Cher and Michael BublĂ©!
- In “Christmas on Cherry Lane” you can catch the classic Christmas song, “Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)” performed by Cher and Darlene Love.
- In “Holiday Road” listen for Cher’s performance of the joyful song “Run Rudolph Run.”
- Finally, don’t miss the unforgettable song “Angels in the Snow” by Cher in the original Christmas movie “Friends & Family Christmas.”

22 November â I Heart Radio Special
https://www.iheart.com/live/holiday-season-radio-9608/?autoplay=true&pr=false&fbclid=IwAR0AK5Bxcrg28Tcqc2XcbHqhAjVILlRYI6c1bMD1A2eGnaw_1VhxcUE6L_E
https://wnci.iheart.com/calendar/content/2023-11-22-iheartradio-holiday-special-cher-elton-john-meghan-trainor-more/
23 November â Macyâs Thanksgiving Day Parade starting on NBC at 8:30 am (all U.S. time zones)
https://www.macys.com/s/parade/lineup/?lineupaccordion=Performers&lid=parade_primarycta-lineupperformers
The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon NBC 11:35e/10:35c
https://www.nbc.com/nbc-insider/how-to-watch-cher-on-the-tonight-show-starring-jimmy-fallon
29 November â Christmas at Rockefeller Center with Darlene Love
https://people.com/christmas-in-rockefeller-center-performers-cher-keke-palmer-barry-manilow-8401862
Barry Manilow is another listed guest. I love the rare times those two coincide in a cultural product.

1 December – at Odeon de Luxe, Cher in Conversation
https://www.nme.com/news/music/cher-announces-live-london-in-person-interview-event-3537716
This event is also offering a Cher Christmas magazine in combo with the LP or cassette tape but order fast (you have until Nov 23)
https://shop.thisisdig.com/gb/dig/artists/cher/?ref=direct
1 December – Cher on Graham Norton Show
https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/reality-tv/a45824179/graham-norton-show-julia-roberts-tom-hanks/
Keep up with the news on further Christmas-related appearances and chart info: https://twitter.com/TCherUniverse