Category: Night of the Living Cher Doll (Page 1 of 3)

The big news from the last week was Cher’s appearance on 30 August 2025 to help her friend Cyndi Lauper finish out her farewell tour at the Hollywood Bowl. Unbeknownst to me, Lauper’s closing song for this tour, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” was paired with a set inspired by one of her favorite artists (and mine), Yayoi Kusama.

And not in a million years would I have been able to even drum up a fantasy of a Cher/Kusama mashup. But there it was. And the news went nuts. A sampling:

• Rolling Stone
• New York Post
• American Songwriter
• Classic Rock and Culture (what exactly is classic culture, btw?)

Oh and Joni Mitchell was also there (!) and SZA, John Legend, Trombone Shorty and Jake Wesley Rogers.

Clips are going up and being taken down as we speak. Apparently the show is being turned into a TV special so stay tuned on that. Fans who were there say Cher said “I’ll see you soon” which they took to mean a new tour. But it could mean anything.

Anyway, I thought it would be a good time to do a news rollup of articles (old and current) I’ve come across over the last few years that have been stuck languishing in my phone’s browser tabs. I had over 200 tabs open as a kind of to-be-read-later list.  Now that I’ve culled out all the Cher articles and dead links (pages and even whole websites now gone), I’m down to 124.

Sigh. I categorized them.

Movies

Let’s start with this young YouTube film aficionado who does video reviews, in Cher’s case her whole oeuvre. Nora! has watched every Cher movie and talked about the experience, all of which is interesting. I mean just hearing how young Cher fans see Cher movies differently than we did in the theater. Also, Nora has interesting thoughts about even movies we don’t enjoy, like Faithful. Spoiler alert: she liked it. I equate this to my thoughts about the movie Suspect. Sometimes there’s a fan out there who sees something nobody else does.

Nora astutely notices (and why haven’t we?) how Good Times is basically Sonny’s movie with Cher appearing only as a minor character. (To answer her befuddlement about this: it’s because he pretty much wrote the thing.) Nora calls out Chastity for having a “nothing story” and “no real plot,” that it’s just basically “Cher walking around and pontificating” which pretty much sums up that movie. But she gives those films redeeming points for Cher fashion.

Nora comments on what an uphill climb it must have been for a pop icon to become a serious actress because “society doesn’t let women be complex and multi-faceted.” Truth.

She finds a “weird looming element of racism that is never explained” in Silkwood. I completely missed this (and can’t even locate it in memory) and so I will watch it again to see what I can see. She calls out Silkwood’s “extreme de-glamming effort” on Cher. She focuses on “the emotional stuff” in Cher’s performances and quotes the L.A. Times in noting Cher’s ability to reveal depths underneath. This is helpful for me when trying to figure out how to write about Cher in her movies, not being a film critic and all.

It’s interesting to see how a younger person scoffs at the whole Cher, Sarandon, Pfeiffer love-lines plot in The Witches of Eastwick (“how three queens fall for Nicholson”) . As Gen-X kids we did not do this. We remembered Jack Nicholson as a sexy younger man and I guess we just started to suspend belief as he aged. Huh. Likewise, the character played by Dennis Quaid in Suspect annoyed her in ways that were novel to me. His audacity. We focused on the improbable illegality of his behavior, but not his audacity with Cher.

It’s great to hear Nora enthuse about Cher’s “career-defining role” in Moonstruck and the balance she struck between comedy and emotion. She calls Cher’s ability to continue with parts after the age of 40 in the 1980s an “astonishing accomplishment.” She expresses surprise at the good reviews of Mermaids because it “seems like the kind of movie male critics love to hate on.” This I think speaks more to the increasingly misogynist manosphere Nora grew up around as opposed to male critics writing in the early 1990s. Asshole Male wasn’t such an institutionalized thing back then. (As Nora says earlier, “Lord, give me strength.”) She rightly notes the shifts in roles Cher gets after Mermaids, how Cher begins to play her own persona. And Nora is right to call the plot of Tea with Mussolini meandering but as a kind of memoir, maybe that was unavoidable. She ends the video in talking about Cher’s unique sense of agency in show business.

Nora also did some great research on Cher’s press at the time of her movie releases and I tracked down some of the articles she sourced and quotes from:

1. Let the Oscar Sweepstakes Begin! Our Fearless Forecasters Predict Who Will Will, Say Who Really Should (Washington Post, 9 April 1988) – I’ve always said Cher is not as popular in Los Angeles (her hometown) as she is in New York. I take that knowledge just from having lived in both places and attended multiple Cher concerts in both places at different venues (including the Broadway musical). The difference in enthusiasm is palpable, my favorite NYC overheard quote being “That Cher! I just love her!” L.A. is, ironically, too snobby for Cher. This article explains, for one, how the best movies rarely win Oscars. It’s a great overview of how the Oscars really work behind the scenes. It also articulates why Cher always gets snubbed by L.A. (and double the irony, she didn’t this particular year): “But, again, the overwhelming grass-roots response to “Moonstruck” — and Cher’s own fairly heavy media barrage — has all but eclipsed the early positive feeling for Hunter. Also, with “The Witches of Eastwick,” “Suspect” and “Moonstruck,” this is thought to be Cher’s year — especially since she was snubbed in 1985 (remember the Spider Woman dress?), when she was left off the list for Mask. Speaking of that dress, the only possible fly in the ointment here is that Hollywood is not really crazy about Cher. Yes, they think she has talent (finally). Yes, they respect her drive and determination to break through as an actress. But the sentiment is that she is too independent, too outspoken, too, well, tacky. They’d much rather give the award to Meryl Streep or Glenn Close, because even if they’re playing bums or psychos, those perpetual Oscar-baiters still have class, taste and legitimate acting credentials — all the things that appeal to Oscar’s sense of snobbery. And all things that Cher gloriously lacks.” And all which seems very rock and roll to me but oh wait…she’s usually snubbed there too.
2. “The Cher Conundrum: The Oscar Winner/Pop Diva/Exercise Goddess Talks About Acting, Relationships, Being Fortysomething and Other Serious Stuff” (Los Angeles Times, 3 November 1991) – This is a great article to follow the preceding because it further underscores how Cher is treated in L.A. by reporters who are just not that impressed. This is a particularly tough interview that pushes back on almost everything Cher says particularly about why she isn’t making more movies, and the conclusion of the piece seems to be that it’s due to a perfect storm between parts Cher turned down, difficulty with a few directors (Mask, Suspect and Mermaids), the infomercials (which historically have taken the most heat on this issue), and the fact that Cher just didn’t love the process of making movies. The interview then gets into comments about difficulties Cher was having with her mother (Georgia situations which occasionally used to show up in interviews but surprisingly were all but missing from the memoir last year). The article also misspells the name Sonny. Oy.
3. “Cher: ‘Women have always been sex objects and always will be’” (The Guardian, 7 November 2013) – I struggled on whether to put this in movies or music because it talks about the Closer to the Truth album and the legacy of “Believe” but also about the movie Burlesque. And it even occurred to me to consider what she was wearing for the interview: sweats or jeans (movie interview) or leather jacket, fishnets, tiny skirt and biker boots (music interview). But that felt reductive. And the comments about Burlesque were what Nora was referring to in her review.
   More movie articles from my phone:
4. “10 Powerful Movie Quotes That Deserve More Recognition” (Screen Rant, 17 August 2025) – and the quote discussed is “Everything Is Temporary. That Don’t Excuse Nothin’.”
5. “The best singers turned actors of all time” (The Week, date unknown) – The article doesn’t really say why. Just that these people have skills in both areas. And that this is rare.
6. “Cher rejected Eric Roth’s biopic script” (Film Stories, 1 March 2024) – More news than scholarship but hey, it was hanging out in my phone. All I will add is that there are music stars and there are film stars and then there are films about music and film stars.
7. “7 Things You Didn’t Know About ‘Mask,’ Cher’s 1985 Breakthrough Film” (Remind, The Home of Nostalgia, 8 March 2025) – and yeah there were some things in the article I did not know.
8. “Guardian writers on their ultimate feelgood movies” (The Guardian, 22 July 2025) – In a list that begins with Big Night, Rushmore and Amélie, I assumed Cher’s title would be Moonstruck would be the listed movie and was painfully wrong on that assumption. Here’s the link to the article’s full review of Burlesque by Guy Lodge where he agrees was a “less-than-seminal 2010 musical…a film with precisely zero complexities to unparcel, that exerts a strangely forceful hold on me just the same.” Also of note is the inclusion in this list of The Towering Inferno, which sticks in my mind because in Sonny’s book he talks about taking Raquel Welch to that movie on a date (after they met at a Christmas party hosted by Cher) and that they both agreed to leave early because they thought it was a terrible movie.
9. While I was putting this together, I found another good one: “Cher movies: 15 greatest films ranked worst to best” (Gold Derby, 17 May 2025) – they get the top four right.

Music

1. Dark Lady by Cher Dollmation (2022) – very cool dollcreation.
2. “Texas judge blocks Ten Commandments in public schools with epic ruling that quotes Sonny & Cher, Kurt Vonnegut and Billy Graham” (The Independent, 20 August 2025) – Wow.
3. “Top 10 Sonny & Cher Songs” (Classic Rock History, 2020) – top 4 are good. “It’s the Little Things” should be higher. A few factual errors.
4. “Top 10 Cher Songs of All Time” (Classic Rock History, 2025) – Odd list. I don’t even think #10 is Cher’s best Diane Warren Cher song (the subject matter was already handled better by Elvis Costello, for one). “Take Me Home” at the top but no “Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves” or “Bang Bang”? Tsk tsk.
5. “Cher’s 30 Greatest Songs–Ranked!” (The Guardian, 18 October 2018) – a good interesting list that goes through all the years and all the things and puts “Gypsies” up on top.
6. “Cher’s 10 greatest songs ever, ranked” (Smooth Radio, 20 May  2025) – while I was compiling this list I found another song list.
7. “The 150 Greatest Albums Made by Women, Shocking Omissions: The Resilient Reinvention of ‘Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves” (NPR, 20 September 2017) – the album “was written to showcase and cultivate her signature contralto and the title track became her first No. 1 hit on Billboard Hot 100” (as a solo artist). “It even scored her a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Vocal Performance” (losing to Carol King’s Tapestry). The song “presented a darker, more powerful Cher, whose strength lies in her embodiment of the character.” Even Cher’s dislike of the song does not deter this writer (Désiré Moses), who said, “that’s exactly the sentiment that makes Cher, well, Cher.” Right! We’re under no obligation to agree.
8. “It Has Stood the Test of Time: 1971, The Greatest Year in Music” (The Guardian, 22 May 2021) – Cher’s album or song is not in this article but it’s a good one to read after #7 above because it was one of those unforgettable songs of 1971.
9. “In Praise of Cher, the Self-Proclaimed Betty White of Rock and Roll” (Salon, 29 May 2021) – This one is by Annie Zaleski, the same rock journalist who did the write up for Cher’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee program essay and this year’s picture bio, I Got You Babe, A Celebration of Cher (which I still need to blog about). Great writing as always, “Although Cher is often viewed through the lens of a comeback narrative — among other things, she had to extricate herself from a bad business relationship with her late ex-husband, Sonny Bono, as well as climb back from solo career nadirs — this has softened into her being positioned as a beacon of resiliency.”
10. “The Number Ones: Cher’s ‘Believe’” (Sterogum, 4 July 2022) – “Less than a minute into her improbable comeback smash, Cher shatters. The moment happens when she sings the line ‘I can’t break through.’ On the word “can’t,” Cher’s voice atomizes, breaking into a billion tiny little shards, before coming back together. She sounds like a glitching-out robot, or like a kid singing into a fan. All throughout ‘Believe,’ her first #1 hit in a quarter-century, it keeps happening. Cher’s voice falls to pieces, and then it resolves.”
11. “Cher’s secret pop history: The massive hits pop icon sang backing vocals on” (Gold Radio, 13 August 2025)
12. “Cher Sells Range of Music Assets to Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists Group” (Music Business Worldwide. 2 August 2023) – “Cher is the fifth-ranked female artist with the most Billboard US Hot 100 charted singles….Cher is one of the world’s best-selling music artists. Launching her career in the 1960s as part of Sonny & Cher, the superstar made unprecedented strides in what had long been a male-dominated industry. Cher has sold more than 100 million records. Her three-year 325-show world Farewell Tour from 2003 to 2005 played to more than three million fans and became the most successful tour ever by any female artist.”
13. “Cher On Making Her First Holiday Record” (Billboard, 6 October 2023)
14. “Cher Talks New Christmas Album” (People, 11 October 2023)
15. “Cher, 77, on her six-decade career: ‘I’m some sort of freak’” (New York Post, 20 October 2023) – NYC loves Cher. “…when it comes to taking on Mariah Carey for Christmas queendom: ‘I’m not gonna take over that spot,’ she said. ‘I’m kind of out of my league there.'”
16. “Cher’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Performance Interrupted” (Entertainment Weekly, 23 November 2023)
17. “Cher Scores No. 1 Song on a Billboard Chart in Seventh Decade” (Billboard, 30 November 2023) – This article is in my phone because I sent it to my brother last week after my sister-in-law sent me a Cher drawing from the Canfield Ohio Fair and I asked what the art category was and my brother said “has-beens.”
18. “Cher’s Christmas Album Tops the Charts” (NPR, 4 December 2023)
19. “Cher is Heading to the Metaverse with ‘Christmas’ Roblox Event” (Billboard, 8 December 2023)
20. “25 Years Ago, Cher Released a Song That Would Change the Sound of Pop Music” (NPR, 19 October 2023)
21. “Should Cher Have Cancelled Her own ‘Offensive’ Song?” (The Telegraph, 5 September 2024)
22. “Rock Hall Inductee Exhibit: From Cher’s glamour to Frampton’s guitar” (Axios Cleveland, 11 October 2024)
23. “Cher facts: Songs, age, films, husbands and children of the Goddess of Pop” (Gold Radio, 23 October 2024)
24. “Miley Cyrus’ Bright, Effervescent Cover of Cher’s “Believe” Is Vocal Nirvana” (NBC, 21 October 2024)
25. “Decades Before Kellyoke, Cher Covered a Dazzling Range of Songs on Her Weekly Show” (Billboard, 30 September 2024)
26. “Cher Returns Half Of Her Career Hits To The Same Billboard Chart” (Forbes, 27 November 2024)
27. “The One Song Cher Couldn’t Live Without” (Far Out, 18 January 2025)
28. “I’m Not a Cher Fan:  why Cher desperately wanted to be like the Eagles” (Far Out, 9 February 2025)
29. My own Cher interview with Robrt Pela on KJZZ (NPR Phoenix) – of course I kept this in my phone.

Concerts & Stage

1. “Michael Keaton’s disastrous stint as Cher’s opening act: ‘It was death‘” (Far Out, 10 November 2024) – this was interesting.
2. “Cher and share alike: three actors star as the singer in musical that turns back time” (The Guardian, 20 April 2022) – review of the UK musical…still in my phone. There’s an interesting video in the article about the creative team for the show.

Style and Beauty

1. “Cher at Home: The Goddess of Pop’s Domestic Life in 22 Photos” (Architectural Digest, 15 August 2025) – I had this bookmarked twice. The first version of the article was only 15 photos apparently.
2. “Inside Cher’s Stunning Malibu Mansion” (Show Biz Cheat Sheet, 5 January 2022) – “Every day when I wake up and look out my bedroom window I’m never not amazed.”
3. Sonny & Cher’s former home rentable from Airbnb for allegedly around $600 a night.
4. “Cher’s 31 Most Iconic Looks of the ’70s, From Dazzling Dresses to Bold Bodysuits” (InStyle, 26 June 2025) – There’s a 1960s outfit in the list and at least one from the 1980s. Sigh.
5. “Cher’s 10 Best Looks of All Time, Hand-Picked by Bob Mackie” (Variety, 20 May 2021) – Too bad we didn’t see that unicorn outfit. And interesting he puts in the duct tape TBT-fit in his list considering…
6. “Designer Bob Mackie Didn’t Want Anyone to Know He ‘Had Anything to Do’ With Cher’s Iconic Bodysuit” (US Weekly, 26 January 2025)
7. “Cher and Bob Mackie on Over 60 Years of Iconic Looks” (Harper’s Bazaar, 11 October 2024) –  “For the past six decades, Cher has been living in our collective minds rent-free.”
8. “Turn Back Time Like Cher with Her 5 Beauty Secrets” (Women’s Health, 26 June 2021) – There’s a sign-in wall. I never did see the five secrets.
9. “Cher’s Take on The French Manicure Features a Glitzy Detail” (Marie Claire, 25 October 2023)
10. “77-Year-Old Cher Has Eaten Like a Blue Zoner for 30 Years. Is That Her Secret?” (VegNews, 26 September 2023)
11. “Bryan Adams photographs Cher, Grimes and Iggy Pop for Pirelli calendar” (The Guardian, 5 August 2021) – Remember that happened??
12. “Cher is Inducted Into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Leather Platforms at the 2024 Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Induction Ceremony” (Yahoo! Entertainment, 19 October 2024) – There were plenty of seen-in-that-outfit news stories in the last few years, but this is the only one I left in my phone.
13. “Cara Delevingne, Cher and Jodie Turner-Smith Celebrate Burberry Flagship Reopening” (Variety, 23 October 2024)

Food

1. “Cher’s Mom’s Cheesecake Is Impressively Easy” (Parade, 2 December 2023) – but this review links to a non-existent Allrecipes page. Even allrecipe’s own article about it has vanished. But another site has archived it so…. I’ll be blogging about this later after I make it for the Cher food page. Another mention I just found, “The Heartwarming Story Behind Cher’s Favorite Cheesecake Recipe” (Mashed, 26 November 2023)

News & Tabloid 

1. “Cher Mourns Ex Husband Gregg Allman” (Rolling Stone. 27 May 2017) – Yup. still open in my phone.
2. “Queen Elizabeth Death: Cher Appears to Refer to the Queen as a Cow” (All over the press, 9 September 2022) – Well, they are little emojis and hard to see clearly for the elderly. I’m sure there is someone in the colonial world who was calling the Queen a cow; it just wasn’t Cher. Cher’s rebuttal.
3. “Cher Posts Thirsty New Pic of New 30-year-old Boyfriend and…whoa” (Queerty, 24 November 2022)
4. “Cher Relists Iconic Malibu Mansion with a $10 Million Price Cut for $75 Million” (People, 4 April 2023), A.D. version (21 March 2023) – Why does this house keep going on and off the market?
5. “Cher Opens Up About Her New Cherlato Business: ‘It Was A Labor Of Love’ “- Remember Cherlato, the new perfume(s), Sanctuary, Aquasentials? You gotta take advantage of these Cher ventures when they come up because they disappear fast. (I have a few regrets.)
6. “Cher “Only” Averaged $6 Million Per Year Throughout Her Career, But It All Adds Up” (The Things, 24 September 2023) – Only? wtf.
7. “Celebrities Partying in the ’70s: Photos” (Esquire, 10 January 2023) – I’m sorry, any list of 1970s debauchery that excludes a photo of Margaux Hemingway (particularly at Studio 54) just isn’t worth its margarita salt. This exact photo below was indelibly etched into my childhood imagination forever as illustrating precisely what 1970s debauchery was…the drink between the legs, the facial expression…
   Whenever I try to pose debauchery, as unconvincing as it is (and this is one of my favorite Mary Tyler Moore Show quotes that I can relate to: “I might not have been around, but I’ve been nearby“), this is the pose I attempt.
8. “Cher hired men to kidnap troubled son Elijah Blue Allman from NY hotel as he tried to save marriage” (New York Post, 26 September 2023) – Only the family knows about all the things in this story but Cher being vindicated this summer is not so happy news.
9. “Cher’s son Elijah Blue Allman responds to conservatorship filing: ‘I am well, and able’” (NBC Los Angeles, 29 December 2023)
10. “See Photos of Cher with Her Sons Chaz Bono and Elijah Blue Allman Through the Years” (People, 28 December 2023) – Some sites tried to focus on the positive aspects in their capitalizing on that story.
11. “Cher Says She’s Living ‘in the Moment’ with Boyfriend: ‘It’s Never Too Late’ to Find Love” (People, 11 October 2023)
12. While looking for the link above, I found this one: “Cher Says Younger Boyfriend Alexander ‘A.E.’ Edwards Doesn’t Get ‘Most of My References’” (People, 24 October 2023)
13. “Cher, Who Turns 78 Today, Says She’ll Celebrate By “Putting My Pillow Over My Head and Screaming”” (Marie Claire, 20 May 2024)
14. “Kevin Costner Sits Next to Cher at SNL50 After His Epic Reaction to Her Recent Performance at Radio City Music Hall” (People, 16 February 2025) – Kevin Costner sits next to Cher…and it’s news.

Two takeaways here. One, there are many more news stories out there than any one mere Cher scholar could keep up with.

And two, the categories of this list are a good study itself in demarking the areas of Cher’s cultural influence (in real time surfing the Internet). And the spread of articles across each category is telling in where the most interest seems to rest.

Although I would correct that in saying the articles in the movie section are the most laudatory, so even though that category is small in number the section is still pretty packed with cultural value.