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Cher Scholar’s Deep Thoughts

June 24, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Cher is going through some family stuff right now. The Johns and I were driving up to a family reunion in northern New Mexico last week when I saw the news on my phone, that Elijah was in some more drug trouble. I remember thinking to myself days later, this is going to push back an already-rushed Memoir 2 schedule and we’re going to need to be okay with that.

Sure enough, Cher Universe reported last weekend that the memoir is being pushed back to May 19, 2026. Not the least of our problems right now. Anyway, let’s not dwell about sad Cher-family things.

Dark Lady, The Unlikely Musical

Happily I recently created a Broadway page on Cher Scholar. Last week, Playbill announced a new Cher musical called Dark Lady, this one aiming for an Off-Broadway run.

The Cher Show musical (on tour now) tells the biography of Cher through her hits catalogue (which was a challenge since very few of her songs are autobiographical) and I contend was worthy for its direct message to fans and women about working through fear and Cher’s candor about how difficult parts of her life were.

But this is a new fictional musical possibly using many of the same songs.

There was supposedly two private, by-invitation-only, industry presentations held on 20 June in NYC with a presentation cast, directed and choreographed by Sara Edwards. They story was written by Mike Sheedy.

Ok let’s just stop here for a minute to talk about Mike Sheedy because there is a story here. (Today has been nothing if not adventures in show-biz research on search engines.) My new Brave search engine found nothing on this man. Zippo. Google (secondary searches only) pulled up this amazing story on him from 2015. He’s a family practice doctor from Chatham, Illinois, who wrote this musical and has been trying to get it produced  since 2008! It’s based on something he wrote for his daughters to perform at a party! “I discovered a story line in her songs,” he says. “I used 23 Cher songs to create a musical called ‘Dark Lady.'”

What a smooth Dad move! I love this guy! The more I read about this the more I’m 100% in favor of it!!

According the Playbill story, the musical follows a young gypsy on a wagon train who has a fortune-teller mother, a preacher father and two friends of various hair colors. “It seems safe to assume the score will include Cher’s 1971 hit, “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves.” (Playbill writer Logan Culwell-Block quipping there.)

Some Broadway aficionados are already sniping that The Cher Show didn’t do well enough to warrant another Cher jukebox musical. “Broadway61004” posted on Broadwayworld.com on 20 June at 10:41am: “I was about to say ‘why does someone think another Cher jukebox musical is needed when the first one did so poorly’ and then I saw Ken Davenport and it all made sense.”

There’s a snipe in there about this man’s production record so I researched him this morning, too. Davenport produced Barry Manilow’s ill-fated but bravely produced (considering the subject) Harmony musical most recently. He also did Cyndy Lauper’s Kinky Boots which won Tony Awards for Best Musical and Best Original Score and Davenport has a list of plenty of other awards and Broadway successes so…why the shade?

No news on when the show will open. Maybe it depends on how well the presentations went.

Meanwhile, Cher World has also been hinting about some major Cher news on July 8.

Has anyone started to notice the trend in social media Cher accounts: Cher World, Cher Universe, The Cher Planet….we now just need a Cher Galaxy, a Cherlandia, the State of Cher, and a No Cher Country for Old Gay Men. (Ok, I’ll stop.)

But here are some other things to keep us preoccupied for a little while:

Fan Theory

I’ve been gathering a decade’s worth of notes on pop-culture theory for a Cher book. They’re organized by subject type and I picked fan theory to start with so I could turn over all my books to the Intro to Anthro podcast team who are working on a future show on fandom. (I have now moved on to film theory.)

But fan theory is very fascinating: how do people become fans of things, what are the kinds of fans? We all have grandiose ideas around taste but it’s really all about peer groups and identity building.

I made some buckets for myself to categorize how fan-y people can get (with my own examples):

  1. Things you happen to come across and think are great (Dolly Parton, Bryan Cranston performances). You make no effort to find more of their stuff but appreciate each thing you come across and tend to proselyte about it.
  2. Things you like enough to consume “the best of” that thing (Patti Labelle, Ben Folds). You are no completist but you know a lot more than someone who isn’t a fan.
  3. Things you try to be a completist about (Haruki Murakami novels, Vincent Price). You’ll complete the series or all of the albums, movies or books in an oeuvre but then never feel compelled to do that ever again. Things for which you can say, “I once got really into The Muppets.”
  4. Things you are a completist about and consume over and over (The Mary Tyler More Show, Cher).

Not all of these things are about identity building. Some are just escapist fun. For example, I like to read haunted house novels but I’m not a part of any horror-loving community. And what does contribute to identity-building sometimes has nothing to do with its intensity level. For example, I can trade in on my Bryan Cranston fandom (as in “I saw Bryan Cranston perform in Network on Broadway”) in ways to offset how people may harshly judge my intense Cher fandom. My Cranston fandom is not intense, but it’s useful you see?

It’s all about this thing called “social capital.”

Social Capital

Fans have this annoying tendency to use their knowledge about something in order to gain social standing, especially in the fan universe of that thing. Poets are the absolute worst about this, by the way. Worst of the worst. But it’s flagrant in pop-culture fandom, too. One fan-theory scholar used the fan universe of the TV show Quantum Leap as an example. The people who knew the most about the show gained social capital in their fan forum; they gained social standing among the other fans.

I have become highly aware of my social capital as Cher Scholar. I am reminded of this whenever I am contacted to speak as Cher Scholar or when I meet other fans who have visited my site and tell me they are fans of my fanning. I am also aware of my social capital in other fan environments.

For example, during Covid my day-job company started social forums on all sorts of subjects from cooking to pets to music. In each forum I found myself having to negotiate my social capital around that subject. You were acknowledged or ignored based on the dynamics of each group. I had no cooking experience but that group found me funny. I had some music knowledge but that group was overrun by male heavy metal snobs who only wanted to talk to each other. The book group dynamics went nowhere because everyone was conversationally challenged.

If you’ve been to any fan forum, Facebook page or attended a fan convention, there is invariably that guy (and many times a girl) who will be angling for social positioning as the top dog, maneuvering to get to the top of that particular heap ‘o fans based on their longevity in the group or the lording of arcane knowledge or just from a place of general snootiness.

I refuse to trade in on my own social capital or deal with anybody else’s. It’s a waste of everybody’s time. I tend to gravitate to the nicer fans (often the goofballs in the group). They are often the only ones I will engage with. It’s also why I put the term ‘Cher scholar’ before the names of all other fans I talk about on my blog. Because truly we’re all experts in different ways.

Academic discussion itself is a distancing tactic (I know; I do it). That’s also why I gravitate to the fans who squee (show exuberant emotion about the thing) for the opposite reason. It’s intentional lack of distancing, it’s demoted social capital. Besides, I have often found that it’s the popular kids who are always the least interesting. There’s not an adjective “extraordinary” for nothing.

Here’s another favorite example: during one of the old Cher Conventions in Woodland Hills, California, years ago a talk show crew showed up (I think it was Megan Mullally’s short-lived show) and they interviewed the organizers and hosted a trivia contest for the fans. Now I ran the trivia game for prior conventions so I had social capital in this area. But I did not play for various reasons including I hate all cameras and competitions. But a longtime Cher fan named Phil did play and I watched him answer questions from the sidelines. He missed only one question: “what does Cher consider her best feature?” He guessed her cheekbones. The show’s answer was her eyes. Fair enough. He came straight over to me afterwards to ask me what I would have said. I said I would have guessed the very same thing, her cheekbones!

The fact is we are on the same team, all of us Cher fans. We weren’t in competition with each other. And I think Cher fans in general are like this because they’re truly outsiders in so many ways, sometimes very difficult and dangerous ways. We need to stick together. There are some Cher fans who try to cash in on their social capital, maybe as writers of liner notes, authors or talking heads. But it’s not very extreme like it is for fans of other people.

The fact is, social capital really buys you nothing valuable (at least as a writer and at least outside of that fan bubble).

This all got me to thinking recently of the ex-wife of a friend of mine who trades in on the embarrassingly intimate secrets of her social group for her projects. She does this to position herself as a guru in order to try to gain social capital. And it doesn’t work very well for her, by the way, because you need knowledge, expertise (and a bit of charimsa) to be convincing as a guru. But this all seems to be a big part of her identity building. And that got me to thinking about Cher as a guru. Cher has published books and tapes on exercise and eating well and has traded in on her fame as a commercial pitchwoman.

But in almost every case she has had a real fitness, hair or beauty guru alongside her. She positions herself as a student, not a guru. The book Forever Fit had Robert Hass. Her exercise videos had professional dancers and trainers running the routines (Keli Roberts and Doriana Sanchez). Her skincare line had  makeup artist Leonard Engelman. Cher never claimed expertise over something she hadn’t earned. Which is kind of unusual in the celebrity product world. And I think in some ways, her willingness to be perceived as a student and not as the top-dog has an affect on her fans.

Why do we position ourselves as gurus and superfans? I don’t know. I think it’s part of our influencer obsession. Nobody wants to be a real teacher (the pay is for shit) but everyone has a how-to or educational video on YouTube. And it’s not that they’re not often very helpful, both the YouTube gurus and the superfans. Their lifehacks and CD recommendations are often very valuable. It’s just the spirit in which their advice is offered which can be completely useless.

Being Ahead of the Curve

And then there are the fans who are ahead of a curve. This has it’s own social capital. Mr. Cher Scholar calls it being a “cool finder.” People take a certain pride in finding things before everyone else does, before things attain mass popularity or critical acclaim. To like something before it “hits big” has a special cachet. It says something about your taste and ahead-of-it-ness. You’re not a follower. You’re a leader. What older Cher fan hasn’t felt it when a whole new generation of Cher fans gets onboarded or whenever institutions and critics come around to Cher?

Many fans will abandon their subject when this happens. And they have both true and false rationalizations at the ready for when they do this. Usually they will say the artist or thing got commodified and has started pandering to the bigger audience. But the truth is that the very fact of being ahead-of-it was where their identities were building, not in liking the thing itself.  They can say “it was better before x. y and z” all they want.

I call this the “As Good As It Gets” phenomenon. At the end of that movie, Melvin Udall gives this big, beautiful speech:

“I might be the only person on the face of the earth that knows you’re the greatest woman on earth. I might be the only one who appreciates how amazing you are in every single thing that you do, and how you are with Spencer, “Spence,” and in every single thought that you have, and how you say what you mean, and how you almost always mean something that’s all about being straight and good. I think most people miss that about you, and I watch them, wondering how they can watch you bring their food and clear their tables and never get that they just met the greatest woman alive. And the fact that I get it makes me feel good… about me.”

The last line is the most important: “and the fact that I get it makes me feel good…about me.”

Some fans abandon their subjects, yes, but since we are Cher fans and she’s been in and out of favor more times than practically any other artist, we’d get motion sickness trying to stay ahead of it. Plus personally I just love to be right. Like I really like it. And I can like it a long time.

It’s actually one thing to see somebody doing something great before others do. You also have to able to articulate what you see. Especially if it’s something non-obvious. Or sometimes you like an obvious artist for non-obvious reasons (Barry Manilow). And then you have to gain some kind of appearance of objectivity. This is important. I’ve worked over the years at trying to sound objective about Cher. There’s the academic distancing and the claims that I don’t consider Cher a role model or an icon, which is mostly true but not entirely true. I don’t like everything and don’t feel compelled to say I do.

The point is you can see the magic but you need to be able to articulate it, that something deeper about it. And you need to be able to make an argument.

Deep Thoughts

Deep thoughts can get you social capital after a time and can change how a subject is perceived. And I’m not the only one who’s been doing this for Cher, by the way. This whole thing is just basically fans talking about you in a deeper way than most fans tend to talk about you. Often it takes lots of thinking about pop culture and a few mad creative writing skillz and maybe a Lit. degree or some such thing where you had to learn to write papers explicating a cultural object and make an argument about it. (Room 237 is a great documentary about this practice run amuck).

The average fan is not suited-up for this. Nor should they have to be. Rob Sheffield’s deep thoughts about Taylor Swift in his book Heartbreak Is the National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop and Wayne Koestenbaum’s Jackie Under My Skin: Interpreting an Icon are the best examples I can think of that are professional fan explications.

For Cher in the 1960s, 70s and 80s and 90s, nobody thought enough about what she was doing. Nobody put up an apparatus up to mull it over, gave it an area in which to ponder, a place to post their findings.

And for Cher I think all our work has helped a lot (as did the passage of time and Cher’s longevity) to raise her credibility profile. It was mostly Gen X fans who grew up with post-modernism and the willingness to talk about pop culture with the same consideration as high art. We were young students who understood pop art as a matter of fact. Highbrow was already considering lowbrow subjects and lowbrow subjects were already aiming higher and it’s all become swirled around together.

I’ve even come to think that good writing about an artist is more important than any accolade if only because accolades are not really all that specific. They never explain exactly why something is good or better.

Mr. Cher Scholar sometimes mentions that my Cher blog is about pop culture broadly and sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s also about Cher. And sometimes when I’m writing about Cher, I’m not really writing about Cher or pop culture at all. Sometimes I’m sending out subversive messages about myself. Or about you.

Memorials: Teri Garr, Val Kilmer, Jimmy Carter

June 9, 2025 / / 0 Comments

We usually do memorials when people who have worked or lived with Cher have died. So much has happened since late last year, this is woefully behind.

Teri Garr

In Cher’s memoirs she said that Teri Garr was so funny she could have had her own show. Teri Garr and Steve Martin were part of The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour family (two friends from the earlier, cancelled Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour) and Cher would go on to have those two as guests on her solo show.  Teri Garr was also a cast member of Sonny’s solo TV show, The Sonny Comedy Review, which always seemed odd to me because Garr’s movie career was picking up around that time.

She was fabulous in Young Frankenstein,  Close Encounters of the Third Kind (the mashed potato scene alone) and my favorite, Mr. Mom. She also had great roles in Head, After Hours, Tootsie and Oh God! opposite John Denver.

Cher and Garr would have also crossed paths when Garr was a dancer on Hullabaloo, Shivaree and Shindig!

In Garr’s memoirs she told a story about how Cher tried to impress upon her that she needed “a look.” (And I don’t think Garr every was really convinced enough to create one.) Garr also credits learning her German accent for Young Frankenstein to her time spent with the Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour’s hairdresser Renate Leuschner.

Once in L.A. my friend Julie talked me into going to a taping of Hollywood Squares and we could see Teri Garr making her way to the center square and struggling with a cane. We wondered if she had been in a car accident. Not long afterwards, Garr went public with the fact that she was struggling with M.S.. Sadly, she made fewer public appearances as the condition progressed. This was the last interview I saw her give.

Teri told some stories about working on The Comedy Hour on Bob Costas in 1991.

Val Kilmer

Cher dated Val Kilmer around 1982 to 1984. I think Cher said Kilmer was the one to break it off due to their not being able to spend much time together. Maybe we’ll hear more about that in Volume 2 of Cher’s memoirs. In any case, they were a very photogenic, happy-seeming couple and from existing Cher accounts and things Kilmer has said to the press and in his own memoirs, they had nothing bad to say about their time together or each other and they parted as good friends. In fact, Cher took Kilmer into her Malibu guest house when he was suffering from cancer.

Interestingly, Val Kilmer was born in 1959 making him 13 years younger than Cher; but I don’t remember anyone making a big deal about this at the time, like they would later do for every other boyfriend Cher would go on to have. Then again, I completely missed this relationship as a fan being only 12 years old at the time. I do think I have one People Magazine photo of them together from my childhood Cher scrapbook. Other than that, I learned about this relationship much later.

And my ignorance was unfortunate because I really did like the Val Kilmer of this early period. I liked both Top Secret and Real Genius, but exited the Kilmer train at Top Gun which I still haven’t seen.

Jimmy Carter

Cher and Sonny were famously on opposite sides of the 1976 election. Cher and her husband Gregg Allman (and The Allman Brothers) were big supporters of Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign. My friend Mikaela sent me this excerpt from NPR via The New York Times where Amy Carter recalls Cher visiting the White House.

Cher’s memoirs are full of these brushes and casual relationships with uber-famous people. It’s been an extraordinary life of meeting famous characters. Which makes it all the more amazing that when she gave the eulogy for Sonny she still insisted he was the most interesting person she ever met. That’s quite a tribute considering.

Cher TV Catch Up and Elephants

June 3, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I hit a milestone today. I finished the Cher TV page by finishing up the last of the Cher TV specials.

It feels kind of apropos that I would finish the last special, Cher and the Loneliest Elephant, right when Cher is back in the news in another battle to save Billy and Tina, formerly of the Los Angeles Zoo, now having been secreted away in the dark of night to the Tusla Zoo despite a lawsuit pending to prevent their move to anywhere by an elephant sancturary.

Hopefully, this lawsuit will make progress anyway. We’ll have to stay tuned.

But the Cher specials are done in any case. There is probably a hoard of broken links in the TV appearances section but at least most of the appearances and dates are documented, along with her music videos and commercials.

If anyone sees anything missing, feel free to email be at cherscholar(at)cherscholar.com.

Cher scholar Jay has also sent me some information on two or three Sonny & Cher variety TV episodes and that should be the last of the TV work for a while (until lost variety show episodes start coming to light).

After reviewing the memoirs of Cher and Sonny, maybe we’ll move on to in-depth reviews of the movies. Not sure yet. This year is full of surprises.

 

 

Memoir Versus Memoir, Part 1

May 21, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Because I started out as a post-toddler Sonny & Cher fan and because I purchased an extra copy of Cher’s memoir to use as my marginalia-strewn one (gotta have a MIB one), I thought I should revisit Sonny’s take on everything and compare books.

 

  • Cher, The Memoir (parts one and two), Dey Street Books (an imprint of HarperCollins), 2024 and 2025 (predicted); page numbers refer to the hardback edition
  • And the Beat Goes On, Pocket Books (an imprint Simon & Schuster), 1991; page numbers refer to the paperback used copy I just bought on ThriftBooks for this exercise

I thought I would do the comparison in parts: early childhood, late childhood, the S&C cute-meet through 1969, 1970-1979, and wait for Cher’s part 2 to come out to continue.

Sonny’s book cleanly cut off at age 7, but Cher had no similar cut off, hers was more at age 9 (and a lotta livin’ happens between 7 and 9 so that wouldn’t work). Then I decided the cutoff would be end-of-high school for both of them, but Cher’s high school ending was murky so that didn’t work either. By the way, I had read many times that they both dropped out of high school but Sonny’s book maintains he graduated.

So the easiest solution was to break it up by these three sections:

  1. Before S&C
  2. S&C in the 1960s
  3. S&C in the 1970s

I started by comparing the structures of the two books.

First of all, it’s a sobering thought to realize Sonny only lived about 20 years after the last Sonny & Cher concerts of 1977 (Sonny died in January of 1998). He fit a lot of living into those 20 years.

The best story they both relay in common is the cinematic “Sahara’s Kitchen” story so it must have been indelibly memorable for both of them. It’s a description of their hard early-70s nightclub tour where they had to stand in the casino kitchen in full suit and gown, dodging waiters at the swinging doors, waiting for their cue to go out on stage. It’s a story that says a lot about show business but shows their sense of humor about their career nadir.

Re-reading Cher’s front-matter, I now see that she says her 2024 story is based on memory. So fact-checking her is beside the point. I mean, scholars still have to fact check as historians but this is basically her get-out-of-jail-free card.

In Sonny 1991 story, he thanks Mary and his four kids and Denis Pregnolato (who is one of the bad guys in Cher’s book but I have a feeling he will be portrayed as a good guy in Sonny’s) and his publisher. He also adds a note that says “This story is not about right or wrong. It’s just another story of a life and what one goes through, hopefully gathering wisdom as one travels.” This Sonny’s get-out-of-jail-free card. A bit of false modesty maybe. But okay, he’s trying. It’s also a way of saying ‘I’m not going to cast blame here’ right before he casts a lotta blame.

Cher’s book has no dedication but a note on the use of the names Chastity, Chas and Chaz (a usage cleared by her son). However, in the back are a list of acknowledgements with thanks to Joe DeCarlo (Cher’s heroic manager to contrast Sonny’s Dennis Pregnolato) and by name her family members, a list which includes both Sonny and “Sonny & Cher,” as well as and her friends, assistants and publishers.

Right there, you can see a difference. Sonny does not thank Cher in this ritualistic way and he should have, no matter what he has to say about her in the text of the book. It’s just the right thing to do. Even if they were sworn enemies, which they weren’t even.

They both use music for chapter and section titles (in Sonny’s case). Cher sticks to mostly song titles (only 3 of 21 chapters being songs original to her own act), but Sonny uses songs and lyrics exclusively from his oeuvre. His section one is Needles and Pins, part two The Revolutionary Kind, part three I Got You Babe, part four Bang Bang, My Baby Shot Me Down (not even correctly using the parentheticals there) and part five The Beat Goes On. You can easily figure what happens in each section by these sections by their titles. Frustratingly, Sonny’s book has no table of contents. I will probably flip it to death trying to find things.

Sonny’s preface story is basically a chapter titled, “She’ll Make Me Cry Until the Day I Die,” a line from “Needles and Pins” and a pretty hefty admission of emotion considering the chapter is about how Cher keeps reappearing (via fans and the press) into his professional life despite attempts to escape the omnipresence of Sonny & Cher. His story begins with scenes of him running for the Mayor of Palm Springs and having to dodge Cher questions from fans and the media. This story then feeds into the whole David Letterman appearance and his take on it. We’ll return to this episode once Cher finishes her 1980s chapters in the forthcoming memoir.

Cher’s preface is watching American Bandstand in 1956 as a ten year old and seeing Ray Charles sing “Georgia on My Mind.”

The chapters of Sonny’s section 2 are “It’s Gotta Start Sometime…It’s Gotta Start Someplace” which are lines (reversed) from his song “Laugh at Me.” (I went right to the lyric part of the song by the second! High five!), which is a chapter about his childhood. The next chapter is “Why Can’t I Be Like Any Guy” another line from “Laugh at Me,” a chapter about his early jobs pre-Cher, jobs he had hustling in the L.A. music business. He meets Cher halfway through chapter 4, suddenly using a song title, “A Cowboy’s Work Is Never Done.”

Chapter 2 starts with things Sonny wrote in that that diary Cher gave him in the late 1960s and how this diary got him to thinking about his life story.

Sonny’s book is much smaller than Cher’s  which is famously in two parts. Sonny didn’t become the big legend Cher did so this is understandable, but there’s only a slim amount of genealogy from before his parents, which is unfortunate because there are probably interesting people back there somewhere all contributing to his unique Sonnyness. Why did his relatives migrate from Italy? Did he know any of them?

Cher’s family and childhood stories run from pages 1 to 124. Sonny’s from pages 1-34.

In Cher’s book, the main Sonny & Cher saga goes from pages 124 to 369ish (stuff happened between them even into the 80s and 90s). Sonny’s Sonny & Cher stories go from pages 57 to 239. Cher’s life with Sonny takes up most of her first book, as does Cher in Sonny’s book.

Cher’s book ends with life-after Sonny from pages 369-441, very little room to talk about major love affairs with Gregg Allman, Gene Simmons and Les Dudek. Sonny’s book ends with his his marriages to Susie Coelho and Mary Whitaker (she’s been married four times now, by the way which is why we’re just going to revert to her maiden name from now on), his restaurants. mayoral and congressional professions, all running from pages 243 -277, just over 30 pages to cover about 10 years of his life (1981 to when the book was published in 1991).

Cher’s genealogy, childhood and first forays out into the world are covered in eight chapters called “Georgia On My Mind,” “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes,” “Unforgettable,” “I’m Movin’ On,” “Because You Loved Me,” “Trouble” and “New York, New York.”

Another thing to note right off is the differences in tone in how they speak about themselves and each other.

Although interviews for Cher’s memoir focused mostly on Sonny’s dick moves, the book is really much more even-keeled about Sonny, his good and bad points and Cher takes some responsibility for some of her own moves or lack of moves. She tries to be fair and true as much as she can. Cher said it was a hard relationship to describe.

Sonny’s tone was different. Even in the preface he takes pains to reinforce that he knows what’s going on in the Late Night with David Letterman experience. He wants us to know he doesn’t feel used by show business. He knows the score. He’s a smart guy so this isn’t as pronounced as in other memoirs of faded stars which often devolve into defensive victimizing, but these are gestures in here that still reflect his need for control, especially because the power relations dictated by the media were different for Sonny and Cher respectively and had become pretty unbalanced by this time. Cher had more cultural capital by this time and more professional capital. You sense that Sonny feels he has to stake his ground.

He also consistently describes Cher as cold and distant, sometimes in a disingenuous gesture of innocence. He’ll say that he has no idea what’s going on in the world of Cher, that since the divorce he never really sees her. Forget all the stories about Cher babysitting Sonny’s girlfriends kid (Anthony Kiedis) in the mid-70s or Sonny extensively photographing and babysitting Elijah in the late 70s. Or that trip to Paris Cher describes them taking together after the divorce. He absents Cher in his life story in ways Cher never did absent him in her stories. And it says something about how they must have felt about each other, each in their own way.

And there are problems with his point of view. Even if we give him the benefit of the doubt because his relationship with Cher was different than her relationship with any of her other romantic partner. Their relationship had aspects of caretaking, parental guidance and sibling rivalry. So the Cher he knew was unique to him.

But it’s worth mentioning that no other former husband or boyfriend describes Cher as anything but lovely and amazing (except for Josh Donen, I don’t know if he’s ever gone on record). I have seen glowing (recent) comments from Gene Simmons, Les Dudek and Richie Sambora. Robert Camiletti stays out of the press but he is still Cher’s friend so that speaks for itself. Gregg Allman is not that great at compliments and their marriage ended on a sour note but even still, his comments about Cher-as-person are positive. Val Kilmer, who passed away recently, was known as one of the few men who left the relationship first and even so, Cher took him in when he was sick with cancer. And his comments about her before and after that gesture were always very positive. None of these men describe Cher as Sonny does, as moody and distant and as selfishly ambitious.

I am chalking this up to two things: their relationship was different, not on equal footing, and possibly this required extra distancing behavior from Cher after it was over. Maybe like a young adult leaving the nest, it became easier to distance yourself rather than to fall under Sonny’s spell again. (It reminds me of stories of Cher’s fast-talking father, Johnnie Sarkisian.)

Also, we’re dealing with Sonny here: jealous, proud, egotistical, a willing Hollywood player with a show-biz tendency to self-mythologize opportunistically. He’s not a reliable narrator for this reason. That said, his stories are necessarily told here albeit imperfectly; and it takes a bit of effort to separate his Cher-wounds from his truths. But it’s possible.

Sonny even takes control of his self-criticisms. He readily admits to his flagrant cheating and tries to explain why he did it. And he apologizes for it.

As I re-read Cher’s book I see different things. I don’t have many memories reading Sonny’s book, except for some of the factual errors. We’ll see if I can find them again.

In the very first biography I ever read of Cher, Simply Cher by Linda Jacobs, I learned that her birth name was Cherilyn Sarkisian, but we learn in her memoir that this was never a name she really used all that much except during the time her parents were re-married when she was around eleven. The name is so solidly and continually trotted out as her “real name” but it never really was a name she used for more than a few years. And you can see how, for Cher more than any other mononymed person because of all her many step-fathers and husbands, that the idea of surname for her is a truly contested space. So her mononym is more than just a show-biz pseudonym.

The story of Cher getting kicked out of her house by her mother after a creepy come-on from one of Georgia’s boyfriends named Gabe (and Cher saying she had to wait until her mother “cooled off” until she could return home) is oddly similar to the story Chaz Bono tells of coming out to Cher in New York City and also having to leave the apartment until Cher had time to “cool off.”

Cher uses the word “soch” (for socialite) to describe popular kids, which is the word we used at my high school in the mid-1980s as well. Other points I connected with this read were her love of running around barefoot. My mother’s pediatrician (a Dr. Spock-like iconoclast) was a big proponent of letting children run around barefoot for the better development of their feet. I rarely remember having shoes on and never wear shoes inside. Cher also tells a story about crying in the bathtub once after a trauma and how a running bath makes her want to cry to this day. And I have cried in so many bathtubs, I would say the same. And what tween or teen girl hasn’t danced around her bedroom to their favorite songs?

In the TV special Dear Mom, Love Cher there is a picture of Georgia Holt kissing the sidewalk (shown multiple times) and in the memoir Cher tells us the story of that picture and that she still has the picture.

I mentioned incorrectly in the Cher Show Phoenix musical that the musical conflated two stories of Cher meeting Phil Spector, the first being with an earlier boyfriend I misidentified as Red. It was really her earlier boyfriend Nino Tempo who first introduced her to Phil Spector, the meeting where they had the saucy exchange.

In Cher’s first chapters, she talks a lot about the history of her mother’s side, a bit about living in Fresno with her father’s family and lots of stories about childhood adventures and struggles. She details life with her mother’s boyfriends and husbands, star encounters, life in New York, taking acting classes with Jeff Corey back in Los Angeles and her fist attempts at trying to leave the nest.

Sonny beginning covers his life in Detroit and the Hawthorne and Inglewood areas of Los Angeles, early struggles with his father, high school stories. Both books talk about how he was suspended from high school for hiring an R&B band to play prom. And both books mention he was a masseur, but Sonny’s book elaborates on the story, how he had to fake it as a masseur for only a week to earn plane ticket money back to L.A. from Detroit. His early stories also include learning how to play three chords on a ukulele and learning to write songs. A good amount of story is given to the problems of his first marriage to Donna Rankin. He called her “an ornament, blonde and beautiful, someone that I didn’t believe a chance of getting.” This was sadly an ego relationship and Sonny admits they weren’t compatible. She was a homebody and he wanted to be a music industry mover and shaker. He also admits he was absent from most of his daughter Christy’s early life.

The story of how he got his first song in front of Frankie Lane is pretty incredible. It shows how he built his future on both luck and chutzpah. He tells how he came to start friendships with Jack Nitzsche and Harold Battiste while renting a guest house from Art Rupe, the owner of Specialty Records. Battiste used to practice saxophone in Rupe’s hot house and one day Nitzsche and Sonny were listening to it and Nitzsche said, “this place would make a helluva coffee house.” Sonny tells stories about being a songwriter and A&R man with Specialty, including the dramatic moments when both Little Richard and Sam Cooke left the label (Richards to become a minister and Cooke to become a pop star). Sonny also describes his first recorded songs with Larry Williams (“High School Dance” and “You Bug Me, Baby”) and involvement in early Payola (and what that looked like) with DJs while he worked as a promotion man. He talks about trying to start his own label (he calls it Gold) and recording songs under the monikers Ronny Summers and Sonny Christie. But this is strangely misremembered.

First of all, this man needs a better Wikipedia singles discography. Let’s explore what I was able to figure out in a day:

Specialty Songwriting

According to https://tims.blackcat.nl/messages/sonny_bono.htm “Sonny convinced Rupe that he was also a songwriter and he managed to place two of his songs, “High School Dance” and “You Bug Me Baby”, on the flip-sides of Larry Williams’s hits “Short Fat Fannie” and “Bony Moronie”…his best rock ‘n’ roll composition is undoubtedly “Koko Joe“, recorded by Don and Dewey in 1958, with “She Said Yeah” (1958, Larry Williams) as a close second.”

The later song was also recorded by the Rolling Stones in 1965. The first two Larry Williams songs are credited to Williams-Bono. The Don and Dewey song is credited to S. Christy.

Don Christy versus S. Christy

So it appears S. Christy was the writing pseudonym and Don Christy was was the singing pseudonym; and under Don Christy I was able to find some singles but not under any Gold label. But Don Christy songs span many labels.

Specialty:

  • The site above continues, “In 1959 Bono recorded a single of his own, under the pseudonym Don Christy (“Wearing Black“/”One Little Answer,” Specialty 672)”

Fidelity:

  • Discogs has “Wearing Black” also released with “You Don’t Have to Tell Me” on the (unintentionally ironic) Fidelity label.
  • Another message board has conversations about Sonny’s early work, including this note: “Sonny Bono & Little Tootsie (!!!) on Specialty, and it’s called “Coming Down The Chimney“. The record was issued on Specialty #733 and was flipped with “One Little Answer” as credited to Sonny Bono instead of Don Christy. I would presume it to be the same take as on the 1959 release of the song.” (the label shows Fidelity not Specialty). (Find at the 4.20 mark.)

Go:

  • Discogs also has “I Don’t Care” with “Teach Me” on a label called Go. (Is this the misremembered Gold label?)
  • Discogs also has “As Long as You Love Me” at the 10:50 mark with “I’ll Always Be Grateful” (Go)  at the 13.12 mark (credited to S. Christy on Go).

Rush:

  • And Discogs also has a Rush label single “I’ll Change” at the 28.03 mark with “Try It Out on Me” at the 30.17 mark (S. Christy credit).
  • Discog’s also matches “Little Miss Cool” at the 33.12 mark (credited to S. Christy and arranged by Jack Nitzsche) with “Glass of Tears” (also arranged by Jack Nitzsche) at the 35:35 mark.

Prince Carter

Sonny doesn’t mention this but he also recorded under the pseudonym Prince Carter.

Ronny Sommers

There’s probably even more. And I couldn’t find much on release dates. Like I said, we need a Sonny Scholar to fully sort this out.

According to the forum chat, “There were three more records as by ‘Don Christy’ before’ ‘Ronny Summers’ entered the picture, and on three different labels: Go, Fidelity, and Name. All were apparently 1960. The Sommers issue was in 1961 on the Swami label. (This info also gotten via Goldmine.) His first release as by Sonny Bono was on the Highland label in 1963 (again, Goldmine).”

In any case, the credit is never “Christie” on the record labels as Sonny has it, always “Christy.”

It’s at this point that Sonny & Cher meet each other.

Sing Until the Twelfth of Never

May 20, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Cher has a lot going on right now it seems: family stuff, elephant stuff, professional-sounding stuff. More on that in later weeks.

For now I want to talk about an announcement Cher made back in January of this year (2025) as reported by The Cher World:

“Cher just announced in VEJA that her upcoming album will be her last: ‘I’m almost certain that this will be my LAST ALBUM because there simply comes a time when the voice is no longer fit for singing. My voice is not the same. That’s why I’m trying to record the new album as quickly as possible. But anything can happen. I will give my best and I hope people will like it.'” 

I just saw this last week and thought for a few days Cher had just said it. So I was mulling it over the last few days, what to think about the idea of a final Cher anything. And like many fans I feel both understanding about it and yet inevitably crestfallen. On the one hand, it’s probably hard to belt out power ballads after you’re 80. On the other hand, who cares?

Frank Sinatra (The Voice himself) sang for years after he famously lost his voice to vocal-chord hemorrhaging in 1950. And if he had stopped we wouldn’t have the iconic songs “Love and Marriage“(1955)  or “It Was a Very Good Year” (1965) or “Strangers in the Night” (1966) or “That’s Life” (1966), “My Way” (1969) or the “Theme from New York, New York” (1977). Truly, he didn’t sound as good. But lesser-than Sinatra was still very interesting.

I have noticed Cher singing differently in some most recent live appearances. But everyone is still loving her doing it. And besides, Cher has sung differently in almost every decade over the last seven. It’s part of this whole, long journey.

While I was thinking about all this, I was finishing up a review of the Farewell Tour TV special (which took me many, many weeks to finish due to its many lengths in all directions and a sudden fourteen day illness). In the interviews for that special, Cher talks about wanting to finish touring while she’s performing at her best and not wanting to hear people say the last tour was better. But then D2K was even better (I thought) in many creative respects. So I’m glad she didn’t stop touring two decades ago.

And then I started watching Dear Mom, Love Cher again (the next TV special I need to document) and in that special Cher is telling her mother, Georgia Holt, she will have to get out there and work to support Georgia’s new album. And Georgia says no, she can’t sing anymore like she used to. (And Georgia is 86 at this time.) But Cher is not having it. She retorts that Georgia was singing with her just now and she could hear her singing just fine. To underscore her point Cher tells Georgia that she (Cher) been in this business for 47 years  (and Cher and Georgia and Paulette Howell, who is offscreen, argue about how many years it really has been and they come back to 47) and Cher knows a thing or two about what she’s talking about.

It seems like the same juncture.

On the special, Cher and Georgia lip sync “I’m Just Your Yesterday” together (a song they recorded in the late 1970s) and for years I’ve been trying not to unhear the post-millennial-Cher singing that song in the track. With earphones on while listening to the DVD this time I could finally hear the late 1970s Cher voice. And  I have always believed that era was her peak voice (for me), the clearest, most confident and free-sounding Cher voice. What if she had stopped singing after that? God help us. We would have missed the Geffen records, the Warner UK records, the later-day duets, the Abba thing, the Christmas album. There are albums I love after the late-70s and even songs I love on albums I don’t fully love.

Earlier in the special Cher also states she does care what people think, just not enough to not do what she wants to do. And to take her at her word at this is to give  much less weight to what anyone thinks about her singing now or at any time.

Then if we go back to one of the Farewell concert special speeches, there a point where Cher is telling young people to “just do it,” to not get hung up in “should I? should I?” I struggle with this myself, quite honestly, but it sounds like sound advice to me (unless to rape and pillage is your thing).

By Cher’s own rubric, she should do the f**k she wants to. She’s done the work; she’s done the time and if she wants to retire and sail around the Riviera (or whatever it is legends do nowadays when they’re not entertaining), she should do it. If she wants to keep belting out loud power ballads or sing soft country numbers or earthy folk songs or whispery Billie Eilish knockoffs or just sing for herself in the shower and the devil-may-care about the rest of us, she should do it.

I, for one, will stay on the train to the end of the line and I’m pretty 100%-sure most of her other fans will, too, come hell or high water.

The Farewell Tour kind of reinforced how impossible Cher self-predictions are anyway. She’ll cross the bridge of her “My Way” when she gets there and so will we then too, when she finally decides we have heard the last song of her.

But I hope Cher is still signing until the very end of the line, until the twelfth of never. And that’s a long, long time.

Because it’s Cher’s 79th birthday today and Georgia is on my mind, let’s revisit the t-shirt her mother Georgia was once spotted in, the one that has Steve Jobs saying “I made Apple” and Bill Gates saying, “I made Microsoft” and Mark Zuckerburg saying, “I made Facebook,” all below a picture of Georgia saying “Bitch please, I made Cher!!”

Happy birthday, Cher.

Cher Kids and Story Songs

May 13, 2025 / / 0 Comments

This year has found me reading a lot of Cher scholarship from very young fans (by definition new fans) and journalists. When you grow up with something, it’s easier to remember the details of it. I notice this a lot at work. New people have a hard time understanding the complicities of the systems. But three of us have been there forever and saw the complexity added bit by bit and we can keep it all rolling around in our heads.

In Cher’s case it’s like which pictures go with which eras, details of chronology, trivia. Casual and new fans often miss this.

An example: the older fans, we see a lot of AI photos of Cher being posted now online, from photo sessions that never were. They’re weird and disturbing.  Another fan I know recently used the word “discomfiting” which is a good word to describe a really well written and positive review that will get some major facts wrong, like Cher’s band’s name or the first of something that wasn’t the first of that thing or they hate whole categories of things because they’re not used to the sound of that time. There’s a dissonance there for older fans to grapple with.

But anthropologically speaking, listening to new fans is still very interesting. Because Cher’s old work is being remediated and meaning is being created by people in the context of another generation. Their point of view is invaluable. And their excitement is nice. We didn’t grow up with that either, us older fans, so many people writing about their love of Cher.

So after I read this article by college student James Fitzpatrick from a column called No Skips, it reminded me that this Greatest Hits LP was one of the first Cher albums I ever owned (of my own anyway, after wearing out my parents two Sonny & Cher LPs). I brought it home from the record stacks of the Styx Baer & Fuller department store in St. Louis at Chesterfield Mall (an at-the-time new shopping mall that is now demolished). I bought it with the other LPs Cherished and Stars, all discounted for a few dollars each, which was money I had to finagle out of my parents who had dragged me along on a shopping trip (fully not expecting to have to buy any Cher records). These were Cher’s latest releases and Take Me Home hadn’t come out, so this must have been 1978. I didn’t have, or even know about, the studio albums from which all these songs came, Cher (1971), Foxy Lady (1972), Half Breed (1973) and Dark Lady (1974). I was 8 years old and for me these songs belonged together on this Greatest Hits album.

The 1974 Cher’s Greatest Hits Fitzpatrick listened to was a bit different. On the streaming and CD versions “Dixie Girl” was added to the end and the songs were displayed in a different order on the album cover (on the CD/streaming album cover the songs are listed in the correct playing order; the LP doesn’t list them in the correct playing order).

Reading essays about fan behavior over the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking about how music comes to you and how the track listing and the album covers are really formative extra features of music, maybe even more so in the old days before the distractions of smart phones. You’d sit and listen to an album while staring at the album cover in total immersion with the thing. And how the songs played alongside each other affected some deeply subconscious part of how you understood them.

These songs belong together in my head and heart because this is how I first heard them and its this gathering of tracks that has the most meaning for me when emotionally considering Cher’s early 1970s solo music. It deeply affected my views of these songs and of Cher herself.

On the NPR interview a month or so ago, I was telling Robrt Pela about how I came to be a Sonny & Cher fan because they were glamourous and charming and never boring and how Cher has carried on this tradition very well over the years. But also that I am now able to enjoy fandom on two levels, an academic level and still on a very nostalgic, childish level. I love this album quite sentimentally. It takes me back to my childhood self tout de suite, back to my living room in St. Louis singing along with the songs over and over again. The evening street lamp shining into the big front windows.

The format of these old MCA greatest hits was meaningful too, the big block lettering listed down two sides of an iconic photo. Think of Neil Diamond’s Greatest Hits. (We had that album in the house, too.) Sonny & Cher had their version of it too (seemingly naked!). Seeing the songs on the cover gave them some kind of extra weight. And songs became associated with the left side or the right side of the universe, as much as they fell to side A or side B of a physical disc of vinyl.

The picture itself was impactful, Cher with the deepest 1970s tan she would ever sport, the beautiful casually hanging hand, the bare foot and ankle bracelet (still trading on something indigenous). The gauzy flowing dress. Is that her nightgown, I wondered. She’s obviously not in a bedroom though, with that pink background.

Her look is both serious yet a smirk of friendliness. Not the Cher stare of other albums. Kid friendly. Very kid friendly. Even the pose, as if she were bending down just to see what we were doing. We were listening to her Greatest Hits album a gazillion times on repeat, that’s what we were doing.

A Side

Dark Lady: The album starts with this quietly exotic intro and I remember landing the needle on the vinyl every time. The song was completely without the context of the Richard Avedon cat photo for me, the song’s studio album cover. This was just one of the characters Cher played. The Cher I saw singing it was the Cher in the gauzy, white dress. Not quite so serious, in other words. Singing with the same smirk she gives us in the picture. (This is why album covers are important.)

Barbra Streisand often talks about ‘performing’ songs (sort of acting through them) in ways Cher never does, even for these narrative songs, as if they weren’t even worth the trouble to discuss how she sang them. To Cher they just seem uncool end stop. But I could still understand the narrative conventions. I didn’t fully understand the complicated drama of this song. I certainly didn’t know there was a MURDER! Or even register the danger of the gun.

Fitzpatrick talks about this being his favorite Cher song (“I’d argue it’s Cher’s best song”) due to the “theatrical performance [that] blows me away during every listen.” He even compares this to Liza Minnelli’s 1972 performance in Cabaret! Not a comparison a 70s kid would ever dare to make but an interesting one to think more about.

I would like to say one final thing about these story songs. No one else could have pulled off this material. No one. No one else would have been able to perform the song with the same cool commitment, let alone even lift the darn thing. The song would have fallen on its face in any other hands (or throat). The song would have died an unknown death.

The Way of Love: We get a breather now from the carnage. Time to catch our breath. A very quiet, pulsing beginning that evolves to pure, cry-to-the-sky bombast. The torch song to end all torch songs. I grew up on these studio drum fills, these horns that go marching off like horses running another race.

Fitzpatrick calls it “orchestral swell” and does not mention the accidental gender entanglement of the song (“then what will you do when he sets you free, just the way that you said goodbye to me”) but admits that even though “she’s had two divorces now, I’d take relationship advice from her any day of the week.”

“Keep your heart out of danger, dear.”

Don’t Hide Your Love: A break in the drama. Yes. But this was some musical toxic-positivity when I was a kid. A little too pert. A bit milquetoast. However, old age has beaten me down and I now find the song very relevant. Oy. “Come let’s be fair with one another.” There’s some solid relationship advice hiding a bit too playfully in this one.

Cher even does her own backups here.  There are some interesting orchestral touches and moments where vocally the song falls endearingly out of Cher’s reach.

Fitzgerald calls the song one of the albums “weaker performances,” possibly indicating it contains everything but the kitchen sink.

Half Breed: Like “Dark Lady” and “Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves,” no one else could have pulled this off. This is a hill I’m willing to die on. Okay, the chuggy chanting does not age well. And okay, the “Indian drums” are not great. But my vinyl album was spent pretty quick and our phonograph wasn’t great so I barely even noticed these things. It felt very multicultural at the time.

When Cher sings “but I can’t run away from what I am.” That’s still a moment. (I just scrolled back on the streaming bar to relisten to it and guessed exactly where it was. High five.)

Fitzgerald mistakenly labels this song as “where Cher begins her various instances of singing as a character.” This was officially “Gypsys” two years earlier. But you could argue she was singing from characters going all the way back to the “fallen woman” songs of the 1960s. Fitzgerald does note that the song was “pushed…to the wayside” and was noticeably missing from her recent Forever compilation. I think the modern-day Cher Enterprises might be quietly trying to retire this one.

Train of Thought: And then the whistle blows and we’re off on the train of more drama! Like I said, I grew up on Jeff Porcaro’s drumming and it gets me every time, holding his own with these big, crazy productions. Cher sings with a very, very slight southern drawl that is put to use very fluidly through parts pop-screech and parts bluesy gospel. This is just a very exciting thing, start to end.

And silly too: “Wooh, wooh!”

In his review Fitzpatrick mentions the “deeper register” and the “tempo of a train chugging along” being “an immersive experience.”

B Side

Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves: What a way to start side two. The unforgettable staircase sound of a cimbalom.

This was a veritable “old song” for this compilation. Critics are now calling this song one of the best songs of the century. Annie Zeleski asked Cher about this viewpoint (as told in her new book) and Cher did not agree.

But just think of the speed at which she and Snuff Garrett recorded these songs. It’s pretty impressive. The song’s texture and the ingenuities of its production. It doesn’t sound dated at all. It still sounds quality.

Fitzgerald calls this song “a banger.” (Kids today.) “Her performance—namely on the bridge—is immaculate.”  And it is.

He adds, “thankfully, this one wasn’t removed from Forever despite its similarities to “Half Breed.”

The problem of the Cancel, right there.

I Saw a Man and He Danced with His Wife: This has been one of my favorite songs since childhood. Surprising to me now considering how “adult” it seems. The tragic, slow torch open and how it widens into a big-band midtempo dance-hall song.

The sweeps and punctuations of Cher’s vocals on all of these songs were (and still are) so delightful to me. The syrupy parts. The gravely parts, too. The way she sings “saw me” showing how young she still was.

Fitzgerald says this one “comes painfully close to being a big band song,” but that Cher somehow saves it. He links the narrator to the one in the song “Gary Saw Linda Last Night” by Gary Wilson (“an artist you wouldn’t expect in a Cher review,” he says) so I had to follow that rabbit trail and he’s right; this is a category. “Is She Really Going Out With Him” by Joe Jackson and “Misunderstanding” by Genesis. But those songs don’t end well and this one does for Cher and her fella.

And every time I listen to it, it feels like a surprise.

Carousel Man: The sad love continues with this little whirlwind.  I loved this dizzy song when I was a kid, its whole pop tragedy. Beware of the older man/carnival barker, kids! I took the song very literally, not as an extended metaphor. I now think the song is about showbiz girlfriends.

Fitzgerald calls this “the third head of the hydra” of best Cher songs. Another song about “traveling shows and carnivals” like “Gypsys,” a song that “hides innuendos,” that is explosive yet subdued in the right places.”

Living in House Divided: And then even more tragedy in the song about a domestic breakup. These songs have great opening parts. And this is a song like no other. What is this thing? A bombastic, deadpan melodrama is what it is. And yet it works. Cher belts it out and the schmaltz just forms into a good thing somehow.

Fitzgerald writes about the “brass fills and tambourine hits on the cinematic chorus” that “compliment the marvelous vocals…Cher sounds especially liberated here.”

See what a generational perspective will do? Younger fans can’t help but see the modern-day Cher now when they listen to her older songs. How could they? I don’t hear liberation here. I hear pure torch melancholy.

Melody: I would usually hop off at this point. I had no use for the meandering melody-lessness of this. I kept losing the thread each time. And who was Melody anyway? A kid? A doll? A dog? It was a doll, a ‘dolly’ to be precise. And Cher already had another dolly song I did not much care for as kid. (I’ve since come around to it, too). These are both definitely innocence-to-experience songs, very similar to “Bang Bang” in their use of childhood toys to express the hard facts of life. But what 8 year old had the information to perceive this?

This song has stray lines I find much more poignant these days: “Three days crying took its toll./This typing and crying’s getting old.” This is another ruined-woman song (a whole other blog post). But the music is still aimless and dull to me.

Fitzgerald called it a “tame cut…with no chorus.” (Hence my girlish problem.) He says “it could’ve functioned better as a palate cleanser a few songs ago.” But “not a skip,” he says. I disagree. It’s a whole song of an album fade-out. My 8 year old self would have been annoyed to have had to do the hard labor of skipping it.

Fitzgerald’s album version (the later-day CD or streaming version) also had “Dixie Girl” which he doesn’t elaborate on and neither will I. He says Cher still sounds excellent on her Christmas album and that “she and Elton John are built different” which explains their longevity.

 

When I made a mix of this album for myself on Tidal and it finished playing, the algorithm served up immediately next “Indian Reservation” by Paul Revere & the Raiders, which is not okay on so many levels. And no, Cher never ever covered that song. (Sigh.)

These Greatest Hits songs as they played for me in this order while I was staring at this particular album-cover photograph described a kind of Cher personality to me, one that I wouldn’t have formulated from listening to the studio albums first (which I found later, all in used record stores). I would recalibrate my idea of those songs in context of those other listening experiences.

And only today am I reminded of how I first encountered them and how lovely that was.

Being a Cher kid during this lush period of music was what I would call almost magical. (Do we all say that about the music of our youth?) It was not just glamourous, charming and interesting, it was sparkling, dramatic and fun.

Three (Four) New Cher Books for 2025

April 30, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Is this an embarrassment of riches? (More like tender mercies, tbh.)

We have three new Cher books on the horizon (at least), not to mention part 2 of Cher’s memoir, if she meets the deadline. She has many more years of her life to cover in part 2 (the years 1980 to 2025) but less family history…so who knows what that word count will be. If it’s a real juicy part deux, maybe cooler heads will prevail and we’ll get a part 3.

A girl can dream.

I Got You Babe, A Celebration of Cher by Annie Zaleski, forward by Cyndi Lauper

Cyndi Lauper will be writing the forward. That’s good news. We’ve been waiting for this new picture book for a while. Zaleski wrote Cher’s essay in the 2024 RnR HoF program and she did a good job so I’m looking forward to this.

The book will be released next Tuesday, 6 May 2025 and it also happens to be the last thing I had pre-ordered from Amazon, thereby ending my final purchase with that website.

If you haven’t yet ordered the book, consider ordering from bookshop.org, which also does extensive mail-order but while helping to support a local bookstore of your choosing.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/i-got-you-babe-a-celebration-of-cher/b5acb2df9906d224?ean=9780762489800&next=t

Style Codes: Cher, A Guide to Dressing Like a Fashion Icon by Natalie Hammond

I found this one today while looking for the other two books on the list. This one comes out 14 October 2025. The description says the 196-page book contains:

“inspiration and practical advice garnered from the many looks and bold wardrobe of Cher….[her] timeless glamour, unique sense of style, and famous long dark locks have inspired generations. From statement bell bottoms to studs and embellishments to her signature leather looks, Cher’s star quality is unmistakable. In each chapter, you will learn how to develop your own personal style, guided by interviews and fabulous photographs that capture the quintessential aura of Cher’s fashion legacy. Embrace the power of taking risks with artistic makeup, bold colors palettes, and avant-garde designs. Style Codes: Cher is more than just tips and tricks to help elevator your wardrobe. It’s a call to believe in and fully cherish who you are and who you want to be.”

So “a call to believe in and fully cherish who you are and who you want to be” if who you are and want to be is exactly like Cher. Oy.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/style-codes-cher-a-guide-to-dressing-like-a-fashion-icon/45495626904a3280?ean=9781419785535&next=t

There’s also edition out already on David Bowie if that’s who you want to be:
https://bookshop.org/p/books/style-codes-david-bowie-a-guide-to-dressing-like-a-fashion-icon-natalie-hammond/21706541?ean=9781419779886&next=t

And you can be like Dolly Parton soon in May:
https://bookshop.org/p/books/style-codes-dolly-parton-a-guide-to-dressing-like-a-fashion-icon-natalie-hammond/21706538?ean=9781419779879&next=t

Cher: A Little Golden Book Biography by Candice Ransom, illustrations by Laura Catrinella

This is exciting, a new children’s bio on Cher coming out 2 December 2025. I love these!

https://bookshop.org/p/books/cher-a-little-golden-book-biography/76ef8446844ba43e?ean=9798217029884&next=t&affiliate=2186

 

Rock and Roll and Sex

April 29, 2025 / / 0 Comments

We were recently talking on this blog about the Australian Uber Eats commercial and the image of Cher on the cannon (which just made me check the spelling of that word which made me think about the other word and how Cher is so often not considered “part of the canon,” any canon; but in fact she is often commandeering it). But anyway, that image is famously a phallic symbol for many people, although ironically she is dressed casually in that scene and not scantily.

It doesn’t matter. The cannon pulls focus.

Anyway, this reminded me of when Mr. Cher Scholar and I were talking about Cher in the Half Breed outfit (which is his go-to outfit to describe Cher’s sex appeal). Apart from the problematic eroticism of the performative Indian-ness, Cher was just revealing so much skin. Howard Stern also commented on this in his interview with Cher last year, how it was literally embarrassing for him to see Cher perform in this outfit on her TV show while Stern was watching it in the same room with his parents.

Mr. Cher Scholar added something important though: it was also the fact that she was singing astride the horse. And we’re back to the canon again. I began to think this Half Breed moment was more universal for boys and teens who saw it in 1974.

We talk about sex appeal from time to time, Mr. Cher Scholar and me. What stars can tap into that sexuality better than others? Lady Gaga vs. Cher has come up a few times. “I get no sex off her,” says Mr. Cher Scholar, which sounds worse that it is. He means sex-appeal or rather “I don’t find her very sexy personally.”

So what is that mysterious thing that emanates sexuality on screen?

If I’m being honest, the Cher images I find sexier than phallic cannons and horses are from the Take Me Home album front cover or the I’d Rather Believe In You back cover (which showed the shadow of a naked breast!) because they seemed more playful in their sexuality, either because of the costume or the action.

But that’s the difference between human triggers, right there. Some people, like David Letterman, were turned on just seeing her big butt tattoo.

But that shot almost seemed too clinical for me. And the ink itself was not a factor in sexiness, in and of itself. Although her willingness to dip into her drawers to show them struck me as very sexy.

Those acting-era, pubic-adjacent photos felt defiantly daring to me. I never forgot them. I got tired of the whole tattoo thing, especially now that they’re ubiquitous. Besides, my Dad has one. Automatically out of the sexy category forever. (More on this below.)

Cher can be effortlessly sexy, even in paparazzi shots and unstaged photos and I think that’s no small part of her appeal:

Women artists are often accused of selling sex with their music. And there’s a whole fleet of women artists who either keep the makeup on and fight it (Pat Benetar) or lose the makeup and go gritty with maybe only eyeliner if anything (Patti Smith, Chrissy Hynde) or women who take it to a drag-queen level but still maintain street cred (Dolly Parton) or women who try to have it both ways, their lipstick and their badassery (Madonna, Cher). Women who are somewhere in the mix of all this (P!nk).

While I was trying to sort through all this I was also reading some academic anthologies about fandom and the kinds of fans (for a larger Cher project). I’ve been re-reading my marginalia to try and zero-in on how the material relates to Cher specifically (and fandom generally). One book was called The Adoring Audience, a book of essays edited by Lisa A. Lewis. And there I was reminded of the double standard around displays of sexuality for both the artists and their fans.

Women are accused of playing the sex card more often than men (which doesn’t feel true) and female fans are also accused of focusing on sexuality more often than male fans do, what with their love of boy bands, their focus on shirtless, pinup pics (which also doesn’t feel entirely true).

You could argue women face more pressure to display sexuality in performances but you can see just by perusing any teen magazine that most of the pinups are men…marketing their sexuality happily, without much pressure to do so.

As Sonny’s TV show character Alvie might say on Sonny & Cher’s later-day variety show, “turn to any Tiger Teen Hit Beat Bop Parade Magazine” and you’ll see all those male pinups. And sure, those magazines may cater to the girls but I saw plenty of college dorm rooms with pinups and posters of sexy ladies that were gotten somewhere. We all had ‘em.

By the way, I think Sonny understood the value of those teen magazines, which is why maybe Sonny & Cher were in so many of them, embedded into them in some cases. And at the same time you might argue he often tried to tamp down the sex appeal of Cher (as his wife), watering it down in things like the movie Chastity or maybe just not watering her blossoming sex appeal at all. So then Richard Avedon in Vogue Magazine and Bob Mackie had to come along and sexploit the situation. Cher seemed grateful about it. She said before Avedon and Mackie, no one considered her to be sexy.

In the book of essays mentioned above there are a series of excerpts from Cheryl Cline from Bitch Magazine and she goes into the selling of the male sex in those teen magazines.

“Rock stars are sexy. Surely this is not a novel idea? Men can mumble in their beards about the ‘goddamn Tom Jones syndrome’ all they want, but I ask you: isn’t there a hell of a lot of good material for sex fantasies in rock’n’roll?…Playgirl pales by comparison….peddles a narrow assortment of universally handsome, clean-cut, well-formed male model types. Nothing as weird as Ozzy Osbourne, or as sinister as Billy Idol, or as fat as Meatloaf, or as misshapen as Ian Dury, or even as, ahem, old as Mick Jagger.”

I would have to agree with her about Playgirl, which I had to buy surreptitiously as a teen in order to read a Cher interview in it. (I swear, Mr. Paperback Bookstore Sales Clerk, I’m buying it for the articles!!) Like male strip shows designed by men, the magazine was not very sexy. But I did spend a lot of time drawing that conclusion…you know, to be really, really sure.

Cline continues, quoting Lori Twersky:

‘”Many rock star crazed girls have a wide variety of desires. It’s not unusual to find pictures of Shaun Cassidy, Roger Daltrey, Meatloaf, Pat Simmons, and Mikhail Baryshnikov on the same wall.’

.…And what does Playgirl serve up? Tom Selleck. Look at any copy of the sleazier rock magazines and you’ll find at least as many real hot photos of the men as you would in Playgirl. Rock stars are hardly averse to playing the sexpot in the pages of magazines, in posters, in ads, on stage, in videos…it’s all soft core porn, to be sure, but hey, it’s pretty good soft core porn.”

So female pop stars aren’t the only ones who traffic in sexpot. And aren’t we all the better for it? So why are we giving men more agency in this activity? Women are the pressured ones, men are not?

This reminds me that a few years ago I wrote a poem (or part of a poem) about how my mother used to make my bed every day while I was in high school and in doing so she had to face the 3D crotch of a certain rock star on a poster every morning while she was making that bed. What she must have been thinking as she did this? I compared it to me as an adult first viewing a picture of my Dad while he was stationed in the Philippines, out in the sun wearing some low-slung pants and his very fit shiftlessness. What feelings did this picture evoke in my mother? I even asked my mother, did she find this picture sexy? The poem was about how each of us had been forced in this way to experience the unpleasantness of having to consider the other’s sexuality and gaze of desire.

Later Cline goes on to talk about the idea of class, foreignness or ethnicity, something outside of the “clean cut,” something unruly and she uses Elvis as an example of one person triggering all these fantasies in women:

“What made a rock music sexier than Tab Hunter was transgression.”

(It is now very ironic to me that the board game Mystery Date has only one sexy man behind the door: The Dud.)

I would argue that a similar thing was going on with Cher: a hint of ethnicity, not your blonde, clean-cut girl, the symbology of all that hair, and the essential unrulyness. The mysterious, possibly slightly-dangerous, untamable Cher.

And speaking of the female artists who revolted against selling sexiness and reverted instead to playing with the boys, adopting their cultural cues, there are also the female fans who do the exact same thing, the ones who take great pains to appear as if they’re “one of the boys” by focusing more on the music than the performative bodies. They would never squeal, for example, these girls. They have internalized all the criticism of female fandom and co-opted the culture of reserve.

So as a female audience you’re enticed to get turned on by the performance but then you’re disparaged if you do.

In fact, you’re disparaged if you like sexy artists at all. Because isn’t it supposed to be about the music?

But that’s the sad little secret. If one has to distance themselves from their own sexuality, how rock and roll is it?

I like to see a full spectrum of human (consenting) sexuality on display, from tomboy to full-on glam girl, from effeminate to macho, and different looks for different occasions because (and beyond the gender-academics, didn’t Drag U teach us this?) all sexuality is performative. And, in its best display, playful.

Which goes back to why some stars aren’t sexy. As Mr. Cher Scholar would say, “they’re trying too hard.”

Cher’s movie career and television career have given us a little bit of Cher in many different sexualities. And it’s been fun. She’s never been locked into anything. Which is very, very sexy.

As a female fan of both male or female artists, I refuse to check my squeals or trump up much respect for those who do.

As a friend of other fans, many who are people in marginalized groups, people who are vulnerable to this kind of dismissal for freely expressing what they are turned on by, I want freedom for them. They should be allowed  to show enthusiasm for the human body without being disparaged as unserious fans, especially when sexuality is completely baked into the whole shebang.

Here is Cher as the very sexy showgirl. And how very seriously sexy she is, too.

Cher Scholar and Substack

April 16, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Due to recent events starting a few years ago, I started moving from X to Facebook. Then I completely cancelled my X (its owner has been trolling my family members; I really couldn’t stay) and moved to Facebook, knowing that wasn’t a very good alternative. But at least Bluesky (a more healthy place for former Tweeters) was a viable space for short form posts. Facebook really has no similar space out there in the world and many people rely on it for their businesses.

I, however, don’t. So I didn’t have a good excuse to stay there. Especially after hearing details from the the book Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams and the international malfeasance Facebook is causing worldwide. So I have now given up Amazon, X/Twitter and am far down the path of extricating myself from Google and Facebook. It’s not like we didn’t once live our lives without them.

Change is hard but it can also be fun. More on that below.

This is all to say I won’t be posting notices about Cher Scholar Blog on Facebook anymore. I’ll be doing that on Bluesky and Substack. I’ll also be publishing Substack-only articles, longer-form pieces that don’t fit either on Cher Scholar or Big Bang Poetry. Previously, I’ve had no space for that kind of thing.

I’m very happy with Bluesky and so far Substack feels almost like a clearing of the mind when you consider its interface compared to the noise of Facebook. It feels refreshing. The first thing I did there was to type in “Cher” to findcontent. That’s always how I learn a new research or technology tool. I type “Cher” into it.

I found some very good things. And some sassy, good writing, like the early pre-2000s Internet.

Unlike Bluesky, Cher fans were on Substack years before I got there. (I’m still waiting to find my Cher people on Bluesky.) A few pieces are about fans discovering Cher media for the first time.

Like her music. Trevor Gardemal has started working through Cher albums this year: https://substack.com/home/post/p-155592386

Mostly he doesn’t like the 1960s stuff.  He calls Look at Us “among the longest 36 minutes of my life” and after that he would try no more S&C records, But the 1960s solo records also sound “monotonous” to him and he didn’t know the covers on those albums He does like the “musical spaghetti” of “Bang Bang” and he says, “Cher always kills a story-based song.” The first album he likes much is With Love, Cher because it’s where Cher is “really starting to sound like herself.” He also likes “You’d Better Sit Down Kids” which is “fun, sad and a little kooky.”  He likes the artwork of Backstage and a few of the songs there. But the Jackson Highway album, he feels, is where “Cher is free from Sonny’s production…everything [he did] felt so flat prior to this.”  He really likes “the twang” on that album.

Oh and Cher Scholar gets a shout-out there so that’s nice.

Like her movies: novelist Kerry Winfrey had a Cher Summer of Movies in 2024. She describes her experiences watching the movies (and other Cher things) with her husband and son. I particularly like the irreverent way she writes movie reviews, which is very funny and knowledgeable both. And she’s a novelist so the writing is good.

Silkwood: https://substack.com/home/post/p-145674456
Winfrey marks the beginning of Cher’s career here. But Cher would say it was the preceding film version of the Broadway play Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean. I would put the beginning at Good Times and Chastity a few decades earlier. Why leave them out?

Winfrey talks about how hard Silkwood is to find (life-hack: she gets them from the library). Her “gentle roasting” style is very addictive. She describes it as “when you love something with your whole heart and are also making fun of it just a little bit.” But the Cher love comes through loud and clear, which makes these reviews a very good example of audience reactions to Cher in these movies, especially a woman’s reaction.

“This movie was harrowing and emotional…and still quite fun in parts,” she says and then she talks about the great cast and Cher’s role as “a butch lesbian,” (a soft butch I would say). “This is a pride month watch for two reasons: Cher in general and Cher as a lesbian.”

This paragraph is typical of Winfrey’s style:

“Kurt Russell is, as always great. Have you ever seen Kurt Russell in a role and thought, “no thanks,” because I certainly haven’t. I’m always happy to see him. He wears very low=slung jeans and, at one point, pours a beer over his head….He’s a flawed character and he’s a character that knows the importance of reduce/reuse/recycle.”

That’s adorable film reviewing right there. She also sees things in the movies that I’ve missed. Like Meryl Streep’s mullet.

“Like, what a cast! The tree of them together [Streep, Russel, Cher] light up the screen! There’s just so much hair!”

She talks about Craig T. Nelson’s work as a heavy in movies and I didn’t even realize E. Katherine Kerr is the same person who is in Suspect. Playing different social class of character, too. How amazing. Winfrey catches the cross over of John Mahoney in Suspect and Moonstruck. But if she watches Come Back to the Five and Dime, she will see the cross-over of Sudie Bond there and in Silkwood.

Her reviews are also full of empowering Cher asides, which I will catalog here.

“At one point Cher starts dating a makeup artist but it turns out she’s a makeup artist at a funeral parlor and she’s making Cher look like a corpse. Hollis was like, “What was that whole plot in there?’ and listen, he’s my husband and I love him, but sometimes I don’t know what he’s thinking. Why wouldn’t that little detail be in there? Why wouldn’t I want to see Cher date a funeral home makeup artist?”

I love reviews like this.

She quotes Roger Ebert’s review at the time expecting the film to be a predictable, angry political expose but that it was really an unpredictable character-driven story where the villains are mysteriously drawn and not cartoonish.

Then there’s an aside about Winfrey working out to Cher music. “Have you ever power-walked to ‘Song for the Lonely?’ Because I have and it was beautiful.”

Winfrey’s son was shocked at seeing Cher’s entire butt in the “Turn Back Time” video. and she says, “it’s never too early to start talking about Cher.”  Her son also asked,

“why did that sailor grab Cher’s leg?” and I responded, “I guess he just loves Cher.” But then I remembered that we need to teach our children about the importance of consent, so I added, “but you shouldn’t grab someone’s leg, even if it’s Cher…especially if it’s Cher.”

I could read this stuff all day.

Mask: https://substack.com/home/post/p-146339849

She begins this review talking about how all the moms who are hot for Sam Elliott. She says she didn’t watch Mask in high school “because I would have, as they say, made it my entire personality.” This tracks with my behavior after seeing the movie, how I went out to find white sleeveless t-shirts and shoelace necklaces.

She focuses on the mom aspects of the movie which I only half-considered on previous viewings, how the kids are mean to Rocky but “he has something all those other jerky kids don’t have: a biker gang as a family.” She compares these bikers to the romance novel trope where a group of “traditionally very masculine guys is actually made of up romantic softies.” She also highlights Rocky’s transitioning from a little boy who collects baseball cards to a teenager who likes girls and how touching and precious she finds this. Very interesting point there.

You can tell from the review that she’s watching the director’s cut because the scene with Cher singing at the camp site is back in and Bruce Springsteen songs are on the soundtrack (which was Rocky’s favorite artist). Of Rusty, she says, “She is such a tough, take-no-shit, badass mom at times (I mean, she’s Cher, of course she is) but does she have a job?

I’ve thought about that too. How do they pay the rent? Cher is always “making morning smoothies while listening to what sounds like my Spotify yacht rock playlist.” And also, Rusty also cannot drive a car….whenever there’s a a lawn or a curb, she’s gonna drive over it. She can’t even park in her own driveway–diagonally on the front lawn it is!…No curb can contain her.”

And Winfrey claims “You’ve never seen a more attractive biker couple.” And then she makes fun of one of Gar’s t-shirts in the movie, the one that says “Mustache Rides” (which was lost on me in 1986. Winfrey says, “literally anyone else in this shirt would look like a drunk frat boy.”

Other good sentences:

“In my experience, knowing a lot about the Trojan War was never a ticket to popularity in high school.”

Upset when Rusty ignores Rocky’s new poem, Winfrey says, “I know she doesn’t’ have time to read parent books….but come on.!”

She does respect Rocky figuring out how to ride all day on the bus across Los Angeles to get to see Laura Dern again: “Things were so much harder in the time before cell phones and Google.”

She says some say the movie is too long. I didn’t realize this. I hadn’t heard. But that “art doesn’t have to be efficient” and she makes a case for Nothing Happens cinema.

Winfrey is surprised this role did not earn Cher an Oscar win, not to mention just a nomination. She feels this is a better role than Moonstruck. I’ve been saying that for years. It’s more of an emotional tour-de-force. Winfey notes that Rocky’s puppy grows bigger in the background while the story plays out, which is a nice touch.

This was also a hard movie to find, Winfrey says. The library again.

“I know we have a lot going on right now as a country, but at some point we need to look at why so many Cher films are almost impossible to watch. Something’s not right here. I think Cher is being silenced, you guys.”

And she leaves us with this bombshell at the end, artist Jens Lekman having songs about this movie. Who knew this factoid?

From Wikipedia:

Gradually, he adopted the pseudonym Rocky Dennis, a name he borrowed from the protagonist in the movie Mask. Under this name, he began releasing limited edition CD-R discs, the first of which was 2001’s The Budgie. In the early 2000s, he sent a collection of the songs to the American record label Secretly Canadian, who contracted him.

From 2000 to 2003, Lekman recorded and released much of his material privately on CD-R. Because one of his songs during this time was titled “Rocky Dennis’ Farewell Song to the Blind Girl”, inspired by the movie Mask. Lekman was mistakenly referred to as “Rocky Dennis”. Lekman says that it was a “mistake”: “someone thought that was my real name cause I had a song about him, and then radio picked up on it, and I never had a chance to change it,” He put the confusion to rest with his Rocky Dennis in Heaven EP (2004).

We will have to check that out.

Suspect: https://substack.com/home/post/p-144841303

“I wish Cher was my lawyer” Winfrey says and I had to think about that for a minute. Would this be good or bad?

“Yesterday, May 20th, was Cher’s birthday. A national holiday, if you ask me!”

She compares Suspect to the courtroom drama And Justice for All but :instead of Al Pacino being hot, we got Cher being hot.”

Winfrey notices a lot of the outfits Cher rocks in this review: “absolutely rocking a beret,” and she “looks amazing in all her oversized sweaters” (she totally does), and “Cher looks amazing in glasses” and how great she looks between the library stacks talking to Dennis Quaid, “and at the end “where she’s sitting at her desk and looking like the baddest bitch in town.”

Cher as a character: “beleaguered and tough.

D.C. as a character: “the D.C. of Suspect is a nightmare. We’re, like, five minutes in and we’ve already had a suicide, a murder, and a carjacking.”

So true.

She makes over Cher’s bad chalkboard handwriting and about Liam Neeson, “this hostile murder suspect [who] is just betting hotter and hotter” with every progressive clean-up scene.  And Winfrey tracks all the ethics violations, including Dennis Quaid having to sleep with E. Katherine Kerr: “That’s honestly so much work. Good for him.”

Instead of jury-tampering there’s Cher-tampering and about Quaid, “no sequester can hold him.

“I screamed when he grabbed her and scared my son…I had to be like, “I’m sorry, someone was hurting Cher in a movie, but everything’s okay, go back to bed!”

About Cher’s solving the mystery at the end: “I don’t really know, but I believe she can do just about anything so I’m willing to overlook any gaps in logic.” Winfrey affirms Cher was believable as a lawyer and I do too.

She reminds us Cher “was in Suspect, The Witches of Eastwick and Moonstruck all in the same year. “We used to be a proper country.”

She caught this movie for free streaming on Tubi.

Moonstruck: https://substack.com/home/post/p-147964693

This is the last movie I could find that Winfrey reviewed.

“I’m not sure this is her best performance (she’s been great in everything, and different in everything…we love a queen with range), it’s certainly her biggest performance. I’d say her star-making performance, if Cher wasn’t already a star….the quintessentail Cher role…she’s luminous, lighting up the screen with that husky voice and je nais said Cher.” No one else could play this role.”

Winfrey talks about how Cher can play an Italian character (and notes the other non-Italian actor, Olympia Dukakis) and that Cher “can play any identity. She basically wrote a song about it.”

What is this song she speaks of?

She talks about love in New York City movies in the 1980s and mentions Crossing Delancy. I was once at my local tearoom on a book club night and I sat with two New Yorkers now living in Albuquerque. I asked them what movie they thought most reminded them of New York City and they answered Crossing Delancy. We talked about me living there in the late 1990s and I said the movie that most reminded me of my co-workers and my landlord was Moonstruck (especially the plastic runners and the plastic on the couch and the way they were less broadly Italian than I had been led to believe Italians were from the movies.)

I didn’t notice this before but Johnny asking Loretta to invite Ronny to the wedding was kind of pushy. “This is so much emotional labor to foist on Cher and she’s not even your wife yet!”

Winfrey goes into great detail about the “meet cute” (which is a ROM-COM term I had to look up) at the bakery. Chrissy and all the cast reacting to Ronny in great detail. She says this is one of the “greatest lines in the history of cinema”: “I lost my hand! I lost my bride! Johnny has his hand! Johnny has his bride!”

Winfrey says she taught her son to memorize those lines because “I do think it’s important for children to learn at least one Nicolas Cage monologue while they’re young, and if they don’t hear about Moonstruck at home, they’ll hear about it on the streets.”

When Loretta makes Ronny a steak, “we should all be so lucky as to have Cher makes us a steak.”

Winfrey then talks about the knocking over of the table in this scene: “Today’s romances could never. Point me to one single romantic comedy made in the last ten (fifteen?) years that has even on-tenth of the raw sexual chemistry that Cher and Nicolas Cage share in this scene”…and then she talks about male desperation in movies.

She then compares Ronny’s hotness (“He’s already knocked over multiple things”) to Johnny’s boringness (“I seriously doubt he’s toppled a table even once.”)

Winfrey then talks about characters who have to make tough ethical choices (Olympia Dukakis’s character) and Cher’s makeover.

“It’s pure elation whenever we get the chance to see Cher get glam again. It’s her natural state….she loses the gray hair and puts on some blood red lipstick, buys a new dress, and BAM! She’s Cher!…and she looks like a million bucks. And do you know what Ronny says when he sees her dress? He says “thank you.” This is the correct response.”

Back at Ronny’s place, Cage delivers what Winfrey says,

“I swear to you, the best monologue I’ve ever heard…this one is a romance novel….He has his little bowtie on. It’s snowing. Cher’s crying. Show me a better scene in cinema, I dare you.”

She then recites the whole monologue. Which is great indeed.

“Cher walks home in the morning looking the absolute hottest she’s ever looked, kicking a can down the street with the city…Name a better romance. You can’t. This one has it all: New York, Nicolas Cage, Italian food [that egg dish alone], opera, Dean Martin singing ‘That’s Amore,” a lot of dogs, and Cher..”

I quoted Kerry Winfrey a lot here just to show how she is very adept at showing us why Cher is so likable in the movies. So check out her other stuff on Substack and her novels at Goodreads.

Cher vs. Dolly (https://substack.com/home/post/p-136055950)
Troy Ford wrote this 2023 (and since I’m having a Dolly-easter party this weekend, this is very timely).

Ford does random smackdowns of artists (Liza v. Aretha) with topics like Plastic Surgery of which he says you can look weird or old. but that “weird is people too.”

I like that he writes his way into his thoughts. As he begins she says, “Monocles in.”

He says there are only two movies of consequence for each of them, (Winfrey would beg to differ, as would I), Moonstruck, Witches of Eastwick, 9 to 5 and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. He says he didn’t make it through Silkwood and Mask. And of Mermaids and Mama Mia 2 he says, “Meh” which actually does map to my feelings. He says considering Burlesque would sink “the SS Mrs. Bono” and I wonder if he knows Christina Aguilera is about to be made that into live show. He happens to love Moonstruck.

He also reminds how great the 9 to 5 cast was. He scores Dolly and Cher evenly here. “It’s tight. Let’s move on.”

Of The Witches of Eastwick, he loves the polyamory aspect in a movie “before everyone was doing it, Jack Nicholson, in a role no other actor could have played” and he loves the Veronica Cartwright cherry scene. (I saw the movie with my high school friends and this was one of our favorite scenes as well.)

Ford also reminds us about Dolly’s two Golden Globe nominations.

Musically, Ford says Dolly and Cher are like peaches and pomegranates.

“Cher’s musical repertoire spans folk rock, disco, pop-rock, dance-pop; she put Auto-Tune on the map; and has died and risen from the ashes so many times, she might be our closest living embodiment to a phoenix ever….she has sold 140 millioin records (including 40 million with Sonny) and has had #1 singles in six consecutive decades.”

But he says he didn’t “become a believer until ‘Believe.'”

“Dolly is country music,” he says. “When she bleeds, Southern Comfort gushes out.” He notes Dolly’s monster songwriting credentials: about 3,000 written and 450 reordered. Dolly also has 11 Grammys to Cher’s one. But he equates Cher’s breadth to Dolly’s depth. Another tie.

Next is Philanthropy: Dolly’s Imagination Library (200 million books donated), The Dollywood Foundation.  He says they both donated 1 million to Covid research. Dolly got publicly vaccinated and for doing so, “she’s a hero,” for setting an “example among demographics who [maybe wouldn’t].” Cher has contributed to AIDS research, poverty initiatives, solders and veterans, LGBTQ+,

“and then there’s the elephant….excuse me for just a moment, I have an onion to chop.”

The last contest is for “America’s Grandma” which was inspired by Betty White.

Betty White really did feel like America’s Grandma. Dolly is more like a fabulous Aunt. Cher is not even a family member, in my mind.

Ford says, “Dolly would be delighted; Cher might be annoyed.”

Yes and No. She would like her own grandchildren. She doesn’t need to be yours.

He reminds us they are in the same age. “Our two divas are class itself,” he says and note that on Cher…Special (1978), they “clearly like each other.”

He ends with, “Dolly is still America’s Grandma, but Cher will probably outlive us all and reinvent herself anew as singer babe mother gypsy tramp thief TV star mother KISS-groupie lesbian mermaid service member tarantula infomercial queen witch Italian-American Jewess nightclub owner singing grandmother Empress of the Universe.”

Amen.

There’s also an article in Portuguese by Victoria Haydee who does Albums of the Month.  (https://substack.com/home/post/p-145360935)

She reviews Joni Mitchell’s Blue, Marianne Faithful’s Broken English (it has a blue cover) and Madonna’s True Blue. She then, for some reason, moves over to Cher’s Heart of Stone. She talks about Cher’s look, her “striking countenance and deep eyes,” “unforgettable clothes, her eras and styles, “the folk style, soon she would become a mysterious gypsy, a powerful witch with her black cat, matured into a daring rocker in the 80s and the futuristic version at the turn of the millennium.”

There are two Believe articles:

Matt Fish commemorated the 25th anniversary (2023) for a series on Numbers Ones (2023)
https://substack.com/home/post/p-136856438

“Like it or not, Cher’s Believe irrevocably changed the face of modern pop music.” He notes it topped the charts in over 20 countries and moved “upwards of 10 million units independently” and “is best know as the first certifiable smash shaped around autotune.”

He tells how the producers lied initially, said the song used the vocoder, “a technology pioneered by Kraftwerk in the 1970s. But that Autotune is in the average producer’s toolbox now. He calls out Daft Punk, Dua Lipa, Kanye West, and T-Pain for their work in Autotune.

“Music snobs can decry its ubiquity and gripe about how it’s “not real” singing, but the fact remains that much of the 21st century’s catchiest songs wouldn’t exist without Cher.”

He says, “there’s more to this record than “Believe” and goes on to talk about that.

“In an era where too much pop music takes itself too seriously, Believe is a fun, nostalgic antidote” and you can “sing along to that iconic warble.”

#1 Believe (https://substack.com/home/post/p-135794943)

Another treatise on the song is found in Italian by Canzonette.

“There are songs that change the course of music history, and it almost always starts from an accident.”

“Cher’s career at the end of the century was (given for) over,” he says and he goes through her highs and “then oblivion again.” He talks about  Brian Higgins’ years of (re)writing the song for demos and how Mark Taylor and Brian Rawling get involved, Then goes into the invention of the technology by Andy Hildbrand who was an electronic engineer and who developed algorithms for sonar to locate oil deposits and the seismic acoustics that led to Antares Technology, or the early version of the plugin “which would change the history of world music and which will cause huge fights between the old and the new generation.” (Canzonette positions the problem generationally. He might be right.)

He delves into it (and this is a Google auto-translation):

“Is using autotune right? Is it an effect or is it like doping in sport? What is the use of splitting singing lessons [if] there is a machine what intones you? (Now to be honest, I don’t believe the false myth that Autontune can fix anyone: you need a half idea, even a vague one, a rudiment of intonation so that the algorithm works as it does best. Of course, the more out of tune and the more you hear the correction, which then becomes a habit, a stylistic element, an identifier, an almost perennial color of the modern drifts of rap and pop–but this does not change the reality of the facts: it cannot fix all.)

There have been countless debates on the matter, a single truth or a solution that would please everyone has never surfaced because it is impossible, even just for an ideological reason, for two distant generations to find themselves…on common ground on something as fragile as technological progress. This is how systematically every x weeks we witness the format Singer From Another Era Who Says His Own Against Those Who Use Autontune, rightly or wrongly, independently.

Note 1: in all fairness, these fingers have the duty to underline how even in the 60s the guitar amplifier and  distortion pedals were seen as the devil.

…

Setting zero sounds very robotic…in the following years the Autotune manual will call the Setting zero ‘Cher effect.’

He says Cher suggested trying a Roachford vocoder effect. Mark Taylor decided to try the new plugin…

“that thing that instantly makes Cher’s voice intonatissima in an algorithmic, cold robotic way. It looks like the vocoder, but a vocoder it is not….. we could talk about…how, even today, the piece sounds fresh and innovative, despite the sound of Autotine is now absolutely everywhere, from trap to new records crooner like Bublé.

“…there are passages, fore example the initial one ,”I can’t break through,” in the first verse in which Cher’s voice breaks, she becomes roboticfor the first time in the history of music in an audible and desired way and at the same time is extremely emotional…”

He notes when Kayne West  “abandons the alpha male character” to use it, suggesting the use of Autotune is gendered and feminine. Which judging the amount of male rappers who use it…

“If you want to know other and further modern evolutions of the Autotune: turn on the radio.”

Feisty!

Cher, The Original It Girl by Vee (https://substack.com/home/post/p-153684192)

This is a style and fashion article from an Armenian perspective. Vee calls the 1970s Cher’s “defining decade” and she recalls her first Cher impression, “watching my mom get ready in Armenia” while listening to “Believe” and “Heart of Stone.” She says Cher is one of Armenia’s few international stars. She traces her quirky, counterculture style of the 60s,to the TV star and fashion icon of the 70s.

“(Sonny was also there.)”

Here is her gallery of Cher 70s fashion kills:

She then mentions that the solo spots of Cher’s variety shows became increasingly, elaborately staged. Here is her gallery of looks from the TV shows:

She remarks about how Cher thrived in “predominantly white entertainment industry” and mentions the work of Bob Mackie and she makes what is probably the most astute summary of Cher’s impact of the fashion culture:

“She became a walking revolution in fashion, redefining what it meant to be glamourous, edgy and unapologetically individualistic…an aesthetic that fused Old Hollywood grandeur with a daring, futuristic edge. Her style wasn’t about looking good–it was a statement of self-expression, definance and liberation.

Cher rejected the understated norms of the the time in favor of extravagance and risk. Her looks weren’t just clothes–they were moments of performance art, each outfit telling it’s own story….with her sharp cheekbones, almond-shaped eyes and long black hair, she embraced her erotic features which stemmed from her Armenian heritage…a powerful act of self-empowerment.

Her wardrobe inspired generations of artists and designers. From the daring cut-outs seen on modern runways to the maximalist red-carpet looks seen on our favorite stars.

Her story encourages to embrace change, own your unique identity…she proved that beauty, success and identity are not one-size-fits all…true icons don’t just reflect the culture, they shape it.”

Wow. That was great!

 

As I said on a recent Substack article, the days of us all being on the same social platform are probably doing away for all of us, Cher, herself, isn’t very active on X/Twitter anymore, where she used to be one of everyone’s favorite Tweeters. Or as much on Facebook either (she even removed her account there for a time) and now she’s more on TikTok or Instagram maybe, but those platforms have their own issues. Cher has never been very good at posting her news from her own sites anyway. Fan clubs and sites tend to get their news elsewhere. Who knows how long those fans will stay on their platforms. The winds of change are afoot.

The Wonderful, Surprising, Funny Uber Eats Commercial

April 12, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I’ve been talking to some Cher fans who believe we’re in a new golden age of Cher, starting from the release of the Funko Pop dolls to the record re-releases through the Christmas album, the Forever compilation, the Hall of Fame moment, the memoirs and now this year’s out-of-the-blue Uber Eats commercial, which was smarter and more self-depreciating than anything Cher has done in a while. Not to mention being hip and well made.

If we digress a moment and go back and count the prior golden ages:

  1. New Artist Phase: 1965-66, Sonny & Cher are the latest music fad
  2. Sonny’s Killer Comeback Phase: 1971-76, TV star and Cher becomes one of the most photographed women in the world
  3. Strong Woman Comeback Phase: 1985-89, Cher becomes a popular and respected actress and charts with a new string of MTV-era hits
  4. Breaking-Age-Records Comeback Phase: 1998-99, I would argue that “Believe” was more of an intense blip (based on one hit song) but it was the most intense of worldwide, culture-dominating blips so it counts
  5. And so this would be the fifth golden age, the Icon Phase (and with humor; so nice we don’t have to deal with all that self-seriousness!)

I’ve been waiting so long to talk about this ad campaign but we had so much else to do first. Here we go…

The Original Ad (from Uber Eats YouTube)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UUz5R4FsX0

We are at Cher’s house presumably with many depictions of international luxury, the ornate walls with hidden cupboards, gold records hanging, one of Cher’s iconic pirate outfits on a mannequin (very Australian choice), portable racks of clothes (not something normal people have), high ceilings, jewels hanging randomly off things.

In the second shot we make out that we’re in Cher’s bedroom. She’s looking at herself in the mirror and we see her bed behind her. She’s wearing a now-iconic Cher outfit, the short skirt, embellished leather jacket (in this case studded holes), big hoop earrings. Her own song, “Turn Back Time,” is playing in the background and she’s humming along. We see a closeup of her ordering from Uber Eats, with gem-glued nails, on her smartphone. She types “Time Machine” and you can see her last search was for “antiaging cream.” (Psst! She’s just like us; this is also a foreshadow of the claims of her agelessness to come.) She turns around when the doorbell rings (it’s here already?!). We see her mirror is strewn with jewels.

(click to enlarge)

Cher exits ornate doors. Uber Eats has a diminutive green bag waiting there with a time machine inside. (The foley on her books is too much and not synced, but that’s my only single quibble.) She wistfully asks to be taken to the 80s. (Cher herself is like a time-machine and so this is the most magical of scenarios.) She blissfully awaits the time travel.

But when the time machine is done we see that Cher should have been more specific in her request. We get the best sight gag of the commercial: Cher sitting astride a cannon being pulled by men. It’s the 1680s not the 1980s. It’s now a fish-out-of-water gag with Cher dressed like modern Cher (but with some 80s-throwback references) interacting with technically Restoration Period (I looked it up and asked around) villagers.

This is a big joke about an iconic moment in her 1980s video for “Turn Back Time.” The villagers are caked with grime, exhausted-looking and very perplexed. Cher exclaims, “This isn’t the 80s!” A villager says “Tis the 1680s.” Bad weather looms in the background. A woman looks at Cher closely and with disgust and says, “She’s both young and old…at the same time!” This is a joke about Cher’s face, a joke somewhere between her genetic youthfulness and plastic surgery controversies.

In the background an old woman stuck in a pillory (presumably for being deemed a witch) screams, “She’s a witch!” (After all, only a witch could stay so young looking.) A Ye Olde music band gasps in dismay. Cher defends herself badly, “I’m not a witch, I’m an icon.” (This is funny because Cher is always dismissive about her status as an icon. So she often jokes sardonically about being an icon.)

A somewhat flamboyant judge deems Cher a witch immediately without much of a legitimate trial. (There are a lot of bits in this ad about projection or a sort of defensive judging outward; Cher is also being scapegoated for appearing so strange to them). The band furiously plays “Turn Back Time” which is the second funniest piece of this commercial. That they would know the song, that these performers throw themselves into playing it so enthusiastically.

Immediately Cher finds herself being burned at the stake before the song is even finished. Cher shows no fear while being burned. She just wants to know if one of the villagers has taken her boots. “Are those my boots?” They pan up from the bedazzled knee-high boots as worn on a 1680s man (which is a nod to the first Cher drag moment). Note the man next to boots-guy. He is falling in love with Cher and will appear in a later extension of the commercial. The judge is dancing in his chair to the spectacle, (an early gay male Cher fan?) and the “witch” lady is out of the pillory and the first one to light the straw. Cher just looks annoyed. “This is ridiculous,” she says.

Cher is then back in her kitchen with an Uber Eats bag full of Thyme. The tag reads, “Time Machine No Thyme Yes.” Cher is cooking and humming her song.

In a season full of nostalgic celebrity Superbowl-era ads, this one stood out. Not a false note in it.

Since then, at least three shorts have come out, which is great because these are all fabulous characters to spend time with. For some reason these shorts are not on the Uber Eats YouTube account.

The Turn Back Time Short (posted by Cher World)
 https://www.facebook.com/reel/647856634558628

Maybe it finally rained, extinguishing the stake-burning, or maybe Cher won over the villagers but in these mini-ads she has escaped. In this short she is trying to teach the 1680s musicians how to play “Turn Back Time” but they go crazy with embellishments. They’re actually pretty good but Cher doesn’t like it and and is deflated at the end, saying just “No.”  The tag at the end says, “Band No Bandages Yes” showing a bag full of bandage boxes.

The Uber Eats App Short (posted by CherWorld)
https://www.facebook.com/reel/2082878045459781

Cher is in the middle of explaining to the “she-looks-young-and-old-at-the-same-time” woman what Uber Eats app is. Of course the woman has no cultural context for any of this and Cher is not explaining it very well and getting frustrated. “What’s a phone?” “It’s used to call people!” The woman calls out “Call people? Like ‘Good Morrow!'” Cher gives up and says. “I hate this place.” (as you would imagine Cher would). The ad ends with the tag, “Get almost almost anything.”

These shorts hint that Cher is somehow stuck in this era (maybe the time machine broke) and these frustrating conversations are ongoing.

It’s brilliant because it sparks your own imagination.

17th Century Courting (Cher posted this one on her Facebook account)
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1594724681206784

During the stake-burning, one of the villagers was falling for Cher. Let’s call him bad-teeth guy. He tries a pick-up line on Cher: “Dost thou have a map? For I keep getting lost in thine eyes.” (I can imagine the writer’s room full of these joke pitches: 1960s pickup lines!) And then he raises his eyebrows and winks at her. Cher says, “never gonna happen, honey” looking annoyed. The door bell rings. Off-screen we hear Cher say, “not a snowflake’s chance in hell” and the final tag reads “Romance No Roma Tomatoes Yes” with a bag full of fresh and canned tomatoes showing.

There’s eternally bad weather in this place.

Australian Today Show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKvk7Qe0fWU

Australia’s Today Show did a behind-the-scenes interview with Cher in January with Reid Butler and they talk about Cher being called an icon. Cher says (endearingly), “I’m just a working girl.” (A lot of this commercial is about common perceptions of Cher.) Butler sees the commercial as full of “Ozzy humor…being not afraid to make fun of yourself.” Did that draw her to the ad? Cher says no but she loved the humor in it. She talks about her mother’s sense of humor.

They don’t answer the question of what drew her to the ad. Probably the money I would guess.

They talk about the canon-moment of the ad. “It was crazy. Look, it was silly and it was fun.” With a time machine, Cher says she would go back to her 40s (the 1980s) and how that was a great time for her. She says she felt like she was 20 and went from doing a play on Broadway to Silkwood and how things “just fell into place by accident.”

They then talk about Cher’s newly published memoir. And then about how rough 2025 has started and did Cher have some words for those of us who have been feeling down. Cher references her town in California and they show an image of the then-ongoing Los Angeles fires. Cher says she admires the LA spirit and “we’ll come back but people will have to work really hard.” Cher says she missed out on one of the benefits because she wasn’t decisive enough. They show footage of the devastation. She talks about the unfortunate national vs. state politics. “I can’t imagine how terrified people are,” she says.

They then move over to discussing Bob Mackie. They talk about Cher’s two favorite dresses, the 1986 Oscar F.U. dress and the 1974 Met Gala dress. The Australians call her “feisty and fabulous” and “every inch the icon.”

I keep fantasizing that I have moved to Australia and Cher is already there.

Sigh.

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