Tag: Cher (Page 10 of 12)

Fashion and Fumes

June 17, 2019 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

Cher is soon to launch a new perfume, a scent she’s calling ungendered and named Eau de Couture (not quite the sparkle the name Uninhibited had). But Cher’s got a great nose for a perfume as we know. Musty old bottles of Uninhibited are still smelling nice are still selling on eBay. Someday the liquid will run out and maybe 10,000 years aliens will find it.

Speaking for myself, my Cher she-shed shelf is stock full of Cher product. I will find room.

Cher’s been working on the project for four years with with perfumer Clément Gavarry. More info: https://wwd.com/beauty-industry-news/fragrance/cher-plots-fragrance-and-discusses-emojis-retirement-1203133815/

I love perfume. My favorite is Flower Bomb right now. Recently my friend Christopher bought me the Bob Mackie brand. It smells very strong with the following notes of pineapple, raspberry, peach, tuberose, orange blossom, narcissus, jasmine, ylang-ylang and roseand. Very floral and yet it smells very gendered to me.

When I was going online looking for a preview of the new Cher bottle (another aspect of perfume I love), I couldn’t find one but I did find this perfume called CHER. Did anyone know about this?

Shouldn’t CHER be trademarked by now…. if it wasn’t for being such a common French word?

My friend Christopher has also been sending me subscriptions to Cosmo magazine and InSTYLE magazine. A month or so ago InSTYLE magazine had a picture of Sandra Oh wearing this Gucci dress. Does it remind you of anything?

…like these Bob Mackie dresses Tina Turner and Cher wore in the late 1970s?

I was kind of shocked by that.

Stories on the Sleeve: Take Me Home

April 11, 2019 / Cher Scholar / 4 Comments

So earlier this year Mr. Cher Scholar found out about a call for submissions from the New Mexico Humanities Council. They wanted stories appreciating record album covers. I knew I could do something good with a Cher cover. I literally starred at them for hours after purchase, memorizing all the names. Cher's first inner sleeve was produced for her Casablanca album Prisoner in 1979, the album after Take Me Home.

I chose Take Me Home and the entry had to be 100 words or less and I kept to that limit (although I noticed many other entries in the show did not). Here was my entry:

I was 9 years old in 1979 when Cher released her only disco album. My mother balked buying it for me, saying the cover was too risqué. Forget side boob; this cover was all boob! She relented and I spent hours perusing the cover and credits to search musicians, like members of the band Toto she usually worked with or whom she thanked. She gave boyfriends and kids affectionate nicknames. I loved the burst of green Barry Levine used for the background of the photographs. A make-up malfunction resulted in the airbrushing of her face. Her outfit was designed by Bob Mackie with inspiration from then-boyfriend Gene Simmons from KISS. It was less a costume than a set piece, Viking plates and capes of shining gold. This was the time of backlash against disco, where angry white boys were gleefully burning piles of records. Cher sat on her fabulous cape, quarter-turned to us with her devil-may-care stare, as if to say “I’m going to outlast your hate and go on to play “Take Me Home,” (the title song went to #8 on Billboard’s Hot 100), to sold-out shows in big arenas well into my 70s.
And so she did. — Mary McCray, January 2019

Here are the front and back covers (click to enlarge):

The reception was last Thursday. My entry was first in the display but last in the discussion. Surprisingly the show was SRO. Here's what the full spread looked like:

Other albums were prestigious competition in record collecting: the obligatory Beatles, Pink Floyd and Rolling Stones covers, but also RUSH, Laura Nero, K.D. Lang, Simon & Garfunkel, Stan Getz, Jackson Browne, Iron Maiden, Jackson Browne, Deep Purple, Joy Division, Sufjan Stevens and two local New Mexican albums. There was thankfully one Dolly Parton album and one other disco album, Donna Summer's Greatest Hits.

I paid close attention to what the girl record collectors were talking about. The Dolly fan talked about growing up in rural New Mexico liking Dolly and feeling Dolly shame in front of her peers. The girl talking about Donna Summer also took pains to say her other cover submissions was a Doors cover. Girls talked about the Rolling Stones, Deep Purple, Joy Division and Sufjan Stevens entries.

The wife of the Stan Getz collector told my friend he would only listen to cool jazz and so she was unable to play her Miles Davis records. The RUSH and Iron Maiden stories were a bit intimidating in subject matter and funny presentations. But since everyone went before me, I had a chance to reconfigure my speech. Here's me talking about Cher.

I started by saying how I came from a record collecting family, including my Beatles-loving brothers and my country-and-western collecting Dad, and that when at 5 years old I decided to collect Cher records, this wasn't received well. I also retold the story of my mother not wanting to buy the album for me and what she said recently when I reminded her about it over email. She wrote me, "have I ever denied you anything?!" And I had to admit that was true…but what was the word she used? The word was "risque" and that was also true (considering I was only 9 years old and all). Anyway, I talked about the sexy viking costume design concept by Gene Simmons, who Cher was dating at the time, and how Bob Mackie made it. And how I had recently found a similar design on a Mae West dress so that cut-out boob-design wasn't anything new. Here it is from the 1933 Mae West movie, I'm No Angel:

I then talked about how record collecting wasn't easy after Take Me Home because Cher disappeared as a tab in the record bins for almost 10 years and how we all thought her career was over. But she came back to the stores in the mid-1980s and even last year at 72 her last album charted.

I talked about photographer (now movie producer) Barry Levine and the makeup snafu and how they had to do a bad, late-1970s airbrushing of her face. I also went on to talk about the musicians on the album, the three players who were part of the band Toto (and how they were also part of Sonny & Cher's backup band earlier in the 1970s and how Cher used them off and on through the early 1990s) and keyboardist Paul Shaffer.

I also talked about why I picked the album cover of all of Cher's over 40 album covers (I mentioned that every album but two have been released on vinyl). I talked about how Cher didn't want to do disco and how Casablanca talked her into it and how unpopular disco was at the time (for possibly homophobic and racist reasons in retrospect) and how looking back I think about the male gaze and how Cher is starring so strongly and defiantly back and how when I was nine (although I didn't know what the male gaze was at the time) I probably understood this as a model for how to be a confident and defiant Cher fan.

Everyone had the chance to play a sample of a song from their album. So the show ended on the song "Take Me Home."

I was most interested in the women in the show who picked artists who were very unlike them in some way. The Laura Nero album was picked by an African American woman who talked about Nero's quality of whiteness and her facial expressions captured on the cover. The Dolly Parton album was picked by the Hispanic woman from rural New Mexico. These choices opened up conversations about identity and how you relate to each other as women. The Laura Nero woman told me later she really liked my presentation, as did the man who did the RUSH cover. I appreciated that.

The Iron Maiden cover was picked by a man writing a book about Greek mythology in Heavy Metal. I will be sure to purchase it and discuss.

Cher Honored at the Kennedy Center

February 21, 2019 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

I'm way overdue to be blogging about this. I watched this show with Coolia in Los Angeles on a 10×10 foot screen but it was something I wanted to watch twice. (click all pics to view larger versions).

When the curtain came up there was an ear-to-ear grin on everyone but Wayne Shorter, who was probably conserving energy, and Cher, who seemed stoically uncertain about the whole thing. But by the end there are tears like this:

and smiles like this:

You can see Cher's sister Georganne behind her. Very sweet to take your sister to the Kennedy Center Honors!

It's tempting to fast forward to all the Cher parts but that would be bad, bad. There was a lot of stuff on this show to experience. Gloria Estefan hosted and talked about the Kennedy Center mission statement, to break down barriers, be trailblazing, a cultural phenomenon and how after all the dust of wars settles it will be those who contributed to the human spirit we remember. (Something to ponder after Adam Lambert's performance).

The Wayne Shorter tribute was a good lesson in American music history. E. Epatha Merkeson did an mesmerizing performance of Philip Glass' "Knee Play 5" from the 1975 opera Einstein on the Beach. All clips have been taken offline sadly.

Cher's tribute was last because she's…well, she's a showstopper. Remember when Cher won the Billboard Icon award in 2017, Gwen Stefani called Cher "truly the definition of an icon," praising her inspiration as a musical trailblazer, cultural influencer, humanitarian and fashion trendsetter?"

This year Gloria Estefan described Cher as a world-wide superstar, an Academy Award winning actress and social activist. Whoopi Goldberg quipped she raided Cher's closet ("and I'm award she wears it better") described Cher alongside Elivs and Sinatra, which seemed to surprise Cher herself but then Goldberg clarified that meant by one-name recognition. Oh. Almost a big compliment there. Then Goldberg went into a list of Cher's all the things, ending by saying not only does Cher "march to the tune of her own drummer, she's a one-woman band." Yeees.

The stage photos were a tryptic of Cher in 80s chainmail, a current ABBA performance, and a caricature I couldn't make out. No one has posted the montage yet. Those are always inspiring for Cher fans. In this one, Goldberg described Cher as "one of the coolest women who ever stood in shoes," an icon, a survivor, the mother of reinvention, a master of TV variety, an actress with one of the "biggest breakthrough film careers in history." Whoopi called out the powerful trio of Cher, her mother and her sister. Great, great stuff.

The band Little Big Town countrified Cher's hits, "Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves," and "I Found Someone." Women in the audience can be seen singing along, including Kristin Chenoweth. They also sang "Baby Don't Go" and the Hamilton gang were clapping along.

Amanda Seyfried also gave a tribute, talking about working with Cher recently in the ABBA movie and mentioning her LGBTQ activism. "You make people feel the world is a safe place" Seyfried said.

Then, Adam Lambert stopped the show with his version of "Believe." There were two performances that riveted people: Lambert's and Merkerson's Philip Glass tribute. This got Cher very teary and she showed visible appreciation for his big, big, big note at the end. What I love about Adam Lambert (all the way back to American Idol) is his sincere ability to move between Queen and Cher with real cajones.

And they all stood up when he finished. Cyndi Lauper then did her show-stopping tribute to "Turn Back Time." Girls really got up for this one, most notably a trio of gleefully dancing women which included Reba McEntire presenter Kristin Chenoweth and Philip Glass presenter, Angélique Kidjo. They all high-fived at the end.

There was also this strange former honoree clapping very affectedly. Does anybody recognize her?

And Lauper and Lambert closed the show with "I Got You Babe" complete with replicas of the iconic Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour set. Reba McEntire sang along and couples danced together and it was really sweet although very few covers of that song work, including this one.

My Essay: Cher and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

February 7, 2019 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

I’ve never been sure to have such a personal response to Cher. It’s probably in there somewhere. I’ve been a fan since I was 4 or 5 and I’m now 50 so…psychologically speaking…

Recently an interviewer asked me what I’ve learned personally from Cher. This was hard for me to answer. I tend to think about Cher in terms of the stuff, or more recently in terms of her impact on culture. I struggled to find something to say, like maybe a lesson about letting small things go, (from Cher’s mother’s edict: “If it doesn’t matter in five years, it doesn’t matter”) or that you should always stay friends with your exes. (If Cher can do it…) Oh, and how to fluff my hair by flipping it upside down. Yes…that I did learn from the Cher show. But that’s it.

And when I think about any Cher essay (something for formal than a blog post), it always wraps around the idea of Cher lacking proper respect in pop culture. And maybe that’s personal in some way, like maybe I had two 70s-rock-loving older brothers who disparaged my taste in Cher or all those years being self-conscious about liking the things I like. This digs to the very concept about what rock and roll is, of which the Hall of Fame in Cleveland is but a part. Whether or not Cher is in the Hall is secondary, symptomatic. She’s not part of the insider’s club and that’s the issue, Chronically snubbed. The perpetual underdog. And this has been the case for much longer than the Hall of Fame has existed.

Cher is bigger than her sequins and Cher impersonations often fail for the lack of Cher’s personality embodied in them. You can slap a gowns on very talented boys and girls, but no dice. Cher is not, as previously claimed (over the last half a century), merely a clothes horse, a hanger, a shallow tower of sequins. She embodies those things and makes meaning of them. But shallow people do not look very deep. And they see shallowness everywhere.

What gives someone rock and roll credibility? Is it an outfit? Tight pants? A scarf? A stance? Is it creation of material? Is it hit-making? Is it breaking Billboard records? Is it a greatest hits compilations? Is it longevity with live shows and ticket sales? Is it respect from critics? Is it longevity across mediums and genres? Some would say it is this idea of authenticity. But can that be possible when so much of rock and roll is a pose and a cliché, a posture of coolness, a sales job.

To me the idea of "authenticity" is a code for the real judgement: is it "cool."

Sonny & Cher weren’t accepted as authentically folk, authentically hippies, or authentically rock and roll. Maybe Sonny wasn’t but Cher was. Sonny wasn’t even considered to be a legitimate Hollywood mogul and now, ironically, Cher is considered powerful in Hollywood. What that really means though is they were uncool.

And who determines cool? Is it popular audiences, critics, cult followings? Is it a roundtable of select few who decide?

Cher has had Billboard hits in give decades, arena shows in multiple decades AND a cult, gay following, records sold, popularization of a music style (the controversial auto-tune), hits that have bled into our mainstream idioms ("the beat goes on"), a subversive influence in fashion, both in the 60s (flares and furs), the 70s (long, straight hair that thousands of young girls took to emulating with hair ironed on real ironing boards), red carpet fashion, her big circus shows are now imitated by younger pop stars, her tattoos are now ubiquitous on the ass of America…and so on.

But to me what makes Cher really cool is her otherness, her inclusion of various underrepresented cultures all in her one self. Not only did Sonny & Cher bring people of color and international cultures to their 70s television show, but Cher embodied those identities in her performances, and she did so with dignity and power.

She’s also a living example of a single woman taking control of her career in show business and having the audacity to survive and tell the story. She’s a survivor, making no apologies for any of it, crossing genres, moving from glitz to the realism (in shows and in movies). And that very realism that works in her movies is the same authenticity working in her music videos and in her live performances.

So can we stop with the authenticity thing?

Over the years my interest has gravitated to figuring out the gap between what Cher means and how she’s perceived by the rock-and-roll-establishment. Cher says it best herself: “Singers don’t think I’m a singer. Actors don’t think I’m an actor.”

Arguably there are fewer women at the top of the music business. Thus, Brook Marine points out women make up only 13% of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. There should be more.

It’s been rumored there is this issue of Sonny at play: Cher might be resisting nomination herself, preferring to be inducted as Sonny & Cher. I don’t know if this is true, but she does reference Sonny & Cher whenever she’s confronted with the lack of a nomination. It would seem a likely holdup. Cher has always felt Sonny was entirely responsible for her career. “There would be no Cher without Sonny” has been Cher’s mantra since the mid-1980s. And they didn’t call him a Svengali for nothing. He had ideas about their inception and architecture, he created their act, as well as writing some of their music.

But Cher brought things to the table, too. She had ideas about their look that Sonny was game to pursue.

Cher also had the budding charisma, the sex appeal and that “special something.”

But arguably Sonny not only discovered Cher but set her up to thrive for five decades. Can you get into the HoF for that? Orchestrating a Cher?

They were a recording team and his influence was life changing (as Cher illustrates in her Broadway musical) and life-testing (you could argue Sonny was her drug).

Cher loves rock and roll. Elvis is an obvious influence. (Someone recently called her Chelvis; but I prefer to think of her as the female Fonz.) Imagine how easy it would be for Cher to stand over Sonny’s grave and say, “Hey, I tried. They wouldn’t let you in. But hey, I got in!”

As my grandfather used to say, “she’s got the courage of her convictions” if she is, in fact, holding out for Sonny in the face of the prime accolade of one’s pop recording career. To take a stand against the defining group exercising power over the rock canon and Meriam-Webster defines establishment as “an institution or group in a society exercising power and influence over policy or taste.” The Hall of Fame as it sits in Cleveland is by definition a rock-and-roll establishment.

Yeah, she knows you don’t like Sonny & Cher even if you might begrudgingly like Cher. Standing her ground as a Sonny & Cher inductee could be showing all of her integrity and authenticity and, you could argue, an almost heroic love against the pressures of the in-crowd. To stand up for someone you love, particularly someone not many others appreciate, takes monster balls and a big middle finger to the powers that be. And even if Sonny & Cher aren't the issue and Cher is simply suffering the eternal, hypocritical debates around authenticity, to stand up for your sequins, to be apologetically who you are…if that isn’t rock and roll, I don’t know WTF we’re talking out.

Cher Scholarship in the Wild

February 7, 2019 / Cher Scholar / 1 Comment

This is a photo of Cher's latest arena tour, fifty years into her concert career.

It’s curious how many essays there were last year’s about Cher. Women and gay men have been writing stories about how Cher helped them be more assertive or survive hard times. But now we're seeing a surge of people writing about Cher as a phenomenon. There have been a few reviewing a song here or there, some reviewing her entire oeuvre, some quite-personal essay about how Cher influenced them in some way, or about how they never thought about Cher much until recently and are discovering things about her they find profoundly misunderstood or inspiring.

No one can even get at what she’s doing, really. She’s flinty and strong, hard and soft, but can we really parse the craft of it? The mystery of the mechanics of Cher? Writers are trying to figure out what Cher means.

Recently a friend of mine found a local course on Cher from a catalog called Oasis.

Oasis offers programs for senior citizens. I’m was very bummed that I missed it, but the offering, you bet I am going to cajole one of my 55+ friends into sneaking me into it. This teacher runs courses on multiple acts including Neil Diamond, Harry Belafonte, Cole Porter, Dinah Washington, Oscar Levant, Carly Simon, Bobby Darin, Sting, Tina Turner, Hank Williams (called the Hillbilly Shakespeare), and on categories like showtunes, African American music history, music and the holocaust, among other interesting topics. In the class description, she calls Cher out as a super-diva activist and philanthropist who has sold over 110 million records and has had a #1 single in each decade.

“The evolution of Cher” by Justin Elizabeth Sayre had great commentary around authenticity and bling.

“I’ve never disliked Cher or thought of her as anything other than a dynamic and talented performer. But I have long taken Cher for granted. I simply assumed that many artists have had multiple hits in multiple decades, won Oscars and Grammys and been cultural icons clad in Bob Mackie for over 40 years. Cher was just one person of note on a short but powerful list….But the truth is that there is no list. There is only Cher."

Things Sayre singled out for what makes Cher particularly authentic, her immediate sense of presence:

"Even on film, this woman was the real thing, the genuine article, poised, gorgeous, talented, brilliant — all things that mean Cher."

This is an important point because Cher has always been accused of being a false front, a clothes hanger, a fake hippie, a false singer, a false folk act and that her bling has been used simply to hide the falseness.

Sayre claims it was Cher’s authenticity that actually saved scenes of the movie Burlesque for him:

“The scenes with Stanley Tucci, who plays just the sort of gay men I like, were all funny and touching. The relationship between two friends who are deeply committed to each other, slightly in love, trying to keep a part of the world for themselves, was so genuine that my friend choked up. For the rest of the movie, Cher became a life preserver. I relaxed when she was onscreen, knowing full well that I would no longer drown in a sea of the average. It wasn’t camp, but it was good. Camp needs more of a threat. It’s always about the push and the pull; it has the frenetic energy of failure mixed with the knowing achievement of beautiful destruction. In a way, Cher can’t do camp. That may be a strange thing to say, seeing how much camp is inspired by her, but I think it’s true. There is such a sense of authority in her performing (she’s Cher, dammit!), but there is also her undeniable sense of truth. In Burlesque, the song may be outlandish, the setting bizarre, but she somehow comes off present and honest in the eye of this glittery storm…Things that would appear garish or over-the-top on a host of other divas seem absolutely appropriate on Cher, even demanded. Cher deserves lighting. And glitter. This is how her world should be. And there in that dream, Cher sits down and sings to you about the joys and sorrows of life that you both share. She’s just like you, even with all that surrounds her. And you believe it, because Cher is something real.”

At first this is what I thought might the the problem with all Cher impersonations and (before I saw it) the Broadway show: glitter without Cher just doesn't fulfill the Cherness. Gitter doesn’t hold you up even if you’re adept at doing all the Cher ticks. Because the glitter is an add-on and not the architecture.

And for those who say authenticity is impossible to apply to a career involving auto-tune or plastic surgery, Sayre has a message for you too:

“Now, of course, there will be some who say that this is not an accurate assessment of Cher: How can you call someone “real” who has had that amount of plastic surgery, or used auto-tuning as she’s done? To that I would reply, “Who told you about those things? Cher did.” Cher has never denied having plastic surgery. She’s been upfront and honest about her “work.” She’s also been forthcoming about a desire to look good. And we love her for it, so why should we be upset when she does things to make herself look and feel great? As for the auto-tuning, she used it as an effect, not as a crutch. It was a sound, a look, almost, that turned “Believe” into a huge hit. The pipes are still there, trust.”

Anna Swanson did a movie survey with some great commentary, too.

“Cher’s work on the silver screen has reached across a wide variety of genres, from musicals and fantasy films to serious dramas. She’s worked with some of the most iconic directors in the industry, often portraying women who are difficult to pin down. Her roles frequently simultaneously play up her larger than life public persona and react against it, rendering it impossible to easily define her characters or to put them in a box.”

About Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean:

“The film, which also stars Sandy Dennis and Kathy Bates, has been frequently praised for its feminist themes and for its empathetic depiction of the character Joanne (Karen Black), a trans woman….Not only is Cher’s performance integral to the film, she also received acclaim for it and was nominated for a Golden Globe ”

About Silkwood:

“In Silkwood she is stripped down and her performance is grounded in realism. In playing a lesbian character, Cher’s portrayal of Dolly offers an incredibly humane and nuanced look at the experiences of a marginalized woman.”

About Mask:

“Though the film is at times a touch schmaltzy, Cher’s performance is once again grounded and nuanced.”

About Moonstruck:

"In addition to being a romantic masterpiece, director Norman Jewison’s Moonstruck is a vehicle for Cher’s best screen performance to date, and the one that won her an Oscar. …Cher has heartfelt and witty material to work with and she knocks it out of the park….Moonstruck, though it has just the right amount of melodrama, is also honest and unpretentious, especially in scenes with Olympia Dukakis as Loretta’s mother. Between Jewison’s direction, Shanley’s script, and the performances, Moonstruck is pitch perfect. Simply put, they don’t make rom-coms like this anymore, and that is a goddamn shame.”

About Witches of Eastwick:

“What makes this film most memorable is the relationship between the three women. Just as Miller would famously go on to do with Mad Max: Fury Road, here he foregrounds these complex women and the strength of their bonds. The women have their struggles, but it’s never doubted that they are at their strongest and their best when they are committed to helping each other.”

Matthew Jacobs takes another tour through her movies…

“Of all the pop stars who have attempted to act, Cher’s track record is arguably the best…As her post-Sonny & Cher solo career waxed and waned in the ’80s and early ’90s, Cher’s movie career flourished ― a true achievement, given the ostentatious displays that had made her a walking glitter bomb since the mid-’60s.”

He breaks her acting career into eras, the beginning (1967-1985), the gold (1987), the wobble (1991-1999), the redemption (2000).

About Chastity:

Chastity, released in June 1969, tried to be a gritty derivative of the French New Wave, packing big ideas ― Bono apparently said it was about society’s sudden “lack of manhood” and “the independence women have acquired but don’t necessarily want” ― into a whiplash-inducing downer involving a lesbian romance and childhood molestation…But bad movies can be testaments to good actors’ skills. Cher is at ease in front of the camera, never letting her fame announce itself before she opens her mouth. The same qualities accenting all her best film work — a scrappy confidence that reads as a proverbial middle finger to anyone who crosses her — become the highlight of “Chastity.””

About Mask:

Mask proved her acting was bankable…. The role earned her a third Golden Globe nomination and the Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious best-actress prize, but she was snubbed by the Oscars…At the Academy Awards, she donned her infamous midriff-bearing Bob Mackie getup, complete with a cape and a spiky headdress. The look was more punk rock than Tinseltown elegance ― an oversized fuck-you to the fusty Academy and an ebullient reminder that she wouldn’t tidy up her image to appeal to Reagan-era conservatism.”

About Witches of Eastwick:

“In 1987, at the critical age of 41, Cher landed a troika of commercial hits in which she was the centerpiece, starting with the delicious lark The Witches of Eastwick,…she held her own against Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer and Jack Nicholson.”

He calls her Moonstruck performance “career-defining.”

Of the [Witches, Suspect, Moonstruck 1987] trifectata:

“In each, Cher captured a quotidian version of American life ― and what’s more transformative than Cher pretending to be quotidian?”

All the while, Jacobs reminds us, Cher was making pop-rock hits like “I Found Someone,” “We All Sleep Alone,” and “Turn Back Time,” hits that would “place her in the same league as Madonna, Paula Abdul and Whitney Houston.”

About post-Mermaids work:

“She was too decadent to disappear into the same down-home movie roles, and Hollywood no longer saw her as a profitable actress. Cher played along with the joke, though, portraying exaggerated versions of herself (see: The Player, Will & Grace, Stuck on You) even when she wasn’t actually playing herself (see: Burlesque).

The Redemption Jacobs considers as her appearance on Will and Grace:

“There’s no movie-star move more powerful than playing yourself with an ironic wink, and Will & Grace, like The Player before it, let Cher poke fun at herself in a refreshing way. She is treated as an empire, at once pointedly self-aware and deliciously aloof ― a perfect way to master her own narrative without being beholden to it.”

He concludes,

“If pop stars are meant to be mythological and actors are meant to be aspirational, Cher has mastered both domains. She did so by never shying away from how the world metabolized her iconography, and by forever laughing at the absurdity of fame.”

Abby Aguirre in Elle Magazine wrote a very good interview piece (actually a long one) with Cher in November and I thought this exchange was very indicative of Cher's attitude about achieving this level of notoriety after so many lean spells:

“Before I leave, I ask Cher why she thinks following fun and acting on instinct has, in her case, produced so many pivotal moments. “It doesn’t always,” she says. “Look, I’ve had huge failures in my life. Huge dips and ‘Oh, you’re over. You’re over.’ This one guy once said, ‘You’re over,’ every year for I don’t know how many years. And I just said to him, ‘You know what? I will be here when you’re not doing what you do anymore.’ I had no idea if I was right or wrong. I was just tired of hearing him say it.””

Cher Scholarship in Women in Pop

February 1, 2019 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

I was interviewed for the newest issue of Women in Pop magazine from Australia. The issue also features P!NK, Jess Kent and Belinda Carlisle.

Read our full interview.

Buy copies!

The Cher Show on Broadway

January 10, 2019 / Cher Scholar / 1 Comment

I’m going to see this show in a few weeks (as well as Network with Bryan Cranston!) so I’ll probably have more to say about it then; but along with many other Cher things, the real impact of this remains to be seen. I, myself, love musicals. But jukebox musicals seems kind of odd to me so I’m not 100% the perfect audience for this. Regardless, any kind of Cher bio has the potential to reveal some aspect of the Cher phenomenon (so similar to the Tony Ferrino Phenomenon) that we haven't been able to pin down yet, although many new writers are trying (which is much appreciated in Cher scholarship).

I’ll talk about all that more next week or so when I get into all the Cher essays that have been pouring out. These have been very informative, especially in how they speak back to this Broadway show and how it fails or succeeds.

But for the moment, let’s just deal with the initial reviews of the show and how it’s doing right now.

You can keep track of the show’s weekly grosses here: https://www.broadwayworld.com/grosses/THE-CHER-SHOW

Show merch is also available,

You can also follow the show on Facebook.

Jerrod Spector is also doing a video blog with very cool behind the scenes footage called It’s Always Sonny.

News

On opening night, Kayne West and Kim Kardashian made news at the show.

There was also red carpet videos with the cast and prominent audience members like Rosie O’Donnell, Kathy Griffin and Bernadette Peters doing a Cher impression (remember she was on The Sonny & Cher Show's Christmas episode of 1976). Young Cher says that Cher is a planet with gravitational pull. Cher herself says she doesn’t know what the theme of her show is beyond just entertainment:

Cher singing with the cast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpo5bo-rqfw (the cast looks starstruck performing with her).

More audience Q&A, Rosie O’Donnell calls out Cher’s Westside Story performance, Bernadette Peters says Cher took chances, is glamourous and down to earth), Tiny Fey says she watched the show growing up and wanted to work on a variety show like that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FQ4YWakLsE

Another AOL post show interview with Cher.

A Rolling Stone piece on Chaz Bono’s recent visit and speculation about the lack of his transgendering story in the show.

Reviews

One of the best early reviews was from The New York Post:

“Granted, the jukebox musical that opened on Broadway Monday night has some clumsy and dopey dialogue. The story — a 50-50 mix of narration (yawn) and not-quite-skin-deep dramatization — tracing the pop goddess’s personal and professional ups and downs won’t surprise those with even a passing knowledge of Cher. Or access to Wikipedia.

Still, it’s thrilling watching the 72-year-old diva’s rags-to-riches-and-back-again life woven by wall-to-wall hits — “Bang Bang,” “The Beat Goes On,” “Half-Breed” and “Believe,” among them….Between director Jason Moore’s flashy, fleshy, fluid staging and choreographer Christopher Gattelli’s high-energy and ridiculously sexy dances — wait till you see the steamy “Dark Lady” — the production is light on its feet, too….“The Cher Show” merits a bright, shiny, bedazzling “B.” Joe Dziemianowicz

Weeks later, this better review appeared (as a second review) in The New York Times.

Laura Collins Hughes calls the show “analgesic fun” (analgesic means painkiller) and that it “doesn’t meant to be highbrow; the constraints of the genre don’t allow it….it’s a genre with a quantity of cheese baked in….[but the show] takes Cher seriously. She liked that the creators didn’t follow the colon template for jukebox musicals (i.e. Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Summer: The Donna Summer Musical, Tima: The Tina Turner Musical, Gloria: A Life). And although she can’t quite call it a feminist musical, she says “women…[including the supportive mother] dominate.” And says it’s about “how a famous American came defiantly into her power in a culture that expected demure acquiescence, and who along the way discovered herself….[with] clothing being one of the ways that she rebelled.” She says the Cher musical is less tighter in focus than Beautiful but gives Cher Show props for being “spikier” with “more bantering humor.” And she likes the convention of the three women with their tender tributes between each other and the small moments of historical revisionism (baby Chastity being wrapped in a blue baby blanket). She claims the musical “strips away her masks to reveal a person underneath.”

But that said, most of the reviews have not been good. But not good for very interesting reasons (all involving what Cher brings to the table as a performer, but we’ll get into that on a later day). Biopics or bio-theater is really hard to pull off. The movie Bohemian Rhapsody is an exception and succeeding primarily for its exceptional casting and for the fact that it contained its narrative into a finite period of dramatic time. You still can’t argue with Aristotle. And arguably, the creators made their bio-story-challenge even harder than it had to be when they tried to run the gamut from Cher as little kid to Cher as old lady. But if you were to ask me what period or Cher-time or what story line in her life is indicative of the whole, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. Big challenge this one. And quite possibly Cher’s life a survivor is due to the fact that her life was spread out over 50 years and not a flame-out or a salacious bit of gossip in a small set of time.

But anyway, here we go…

The New York Times

“There’s a fine line between tacky and spectacular. In creating costumes for Cher over the years — costumes that often tell the story of a shy woman emerging triumphant from a chrysalis — the designer Bob Mackie has kept on the right side of the line by making sure the level of craft supports the extravagance of the gesture.

Sadly that’s not the case with “The Cher Show,” the maddening mishmash of a new musical that opened on Monday at the Neil Simon Theater. Except for the dozens of eye-popping outfits Mr. Mackie gorgeously recreates for the occasion, it’s all gesture, no craft: dramatically threadbare and surprisingly unrevealing. That’s too bad because, reading between the paillettes, you get the feeling that the 72-year-old singer-actress-survivor is a good egg: self-mocking, plain speaking and a hoot. Whether that’s enough to build a Broadway musical on is another question, one “The Cher Show,” striving to be agreeable, never gets close to answering. Rather, its energies are waylaid in trying to solve the puzzle of its own concept, of which weird vestiges remain after a tryout in Chicago. …you can’t distinguish scenes meant to borrow comedy-hour elements from those meant to be taken at face value. Complicating matters is the decision to confine such an unconventional figure as Cher in the straitjacket of the biographical jukebox musical [Unlike Funny Girl] “The Cher Show” falls into all of them. It wastes so much time hammering its biographical bullet points and tunestack into place, despite logic or chronology, that it never seems to notice the unintelligible result…Though Jarrod Spector gets Sonny’s Napoleon complex just right, he also gives him an adenoidal honk so exaggerated as to render him cute and harmless. Must a musical intended for popular consumption defang the anger of its powerful subject and, in doing so, whitewash her most interesting problems?…This is where the jukebox problem and the star-splitting problem converge with the craft problem. With too many character arcs and agendas to serve — three Chers, several careers, 35 songs or parts thereof — the show’s creators can serve none well…Yes, it argues way too hard for Cher’s significance — a significance it would be better off merely assuming and then complicating. And yes, it gets whiny just when you want it to get fierce.” Jesse Green

In all fairness, we find out in this review that the Jesse Green hates jukebox musicals and so was a very problematic choice to review this one. He duly notes this in his review and links to a conversation among theater critics about the flaws of the jukebox genre. It’s worth a read and a chance to note that Mr. Green hates jukebox musicals more than any of the other critic in the conversation: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/29/theater/jukebox-musicals-broadway.html

Variety

“Choosing to recreate the spirit of the television variety shows that Sonny and Cher — and then Cher sans Sonny — headlined in the ‘70s is a choice that lands as flat as the jokes in Broadway’s latest jukebox bio… the script never quite finds a satisfying style — or a genuine heart — as a winning stage musical. As Cher might say: Broadway’s a bitch….echoing the threesome approach of the soon-to-be-shuttered Donna Summer musical. Here there’s a bit more banter in Rick Elice’s sketchy, every-scene-is-a song-cue script….What “The Cher Show” rarely does is get real, despite the tell-it-like-it-is attitude of its subject. It only takes itself semi-seriously, keeping genuine emotion at arm’s length. The audience witnesses all of Cher’s struggles — including the dip into infomercial-land — and triumphs, but is not especially moved by them, since it’s filtered through the obviousness of the script and the cool aloofness of its protagonist….The pleasures in the show come from individual performances…” Frank Rizzo

Time Out

“…the show whirls through six decades at a dizzying pace that disguises, up to a point, that it doesn’t have much to stand on.” Adam Feldman who give it less than a star

Entertainment Weekly

“Into the jukebox musical tent pitched by Beatlemania, and since populated by pop stars from Frankie Valli to Gloria Estefan, comes The Cher Show….If you love Cher there is probably nothing I could write here that would keep you away from The Cher Show. No discussion of thin plotting, of costumes changes subbing for character development, or of retro har-har jokes will dissuade true believers looking for a bedazzled good time. Except perhaps this: Why not go see Real Cher who, at 72, looks and sounds at least as much like her younger self as Block does?…the magnetic Block who, it is worth noting, got her break portraying Liza Minnelli inThe Boy From Oz)… At this moment The Cher Show feels less like storytelling than like the pop goddess staging her therapy sessions. Other times it seems like her Wikipedia page set to music. What it rarely achieves is becoming a fully realized evening of theater. But it is, in the tradition of the American jukebox musical, a fair simulation. B” Allison Adato

The Daily Beast

“And yet, and yet. Cher is one of the producers of this show, and so what we see on stage of her has been approved by her. This is a personal, curated musical. The dish, such as it is, is strictly portioned. The storylines and phoenix-from-ashes arcs are subject-approved. So, what would Cher like us to know about her life? This the musical, very truthfully, never resolves…relationships with Gregg Allman (Matthew Hydzik) and Rob Camilletti (Michael Campayno) are also surfed through with TV-mini series speed….As this critic left the show, two people, uninvited, shared their views on the show. One older woman, with a friend, said, “I love Cher. I’ve grown up with Cher. That isn’t Cher.” I asked her why. “It was like watching a drag act,” she said. “And Cher is still alive. That wasn’t… Cher.” And then outside, a man said he had loved every minute, that is was a worthwhile and fun night out. It was all he had hoped it would be. Eyes lit up, he said he had loved the music, the spectacle, the camp, the jokes. Both were Cher fans, and both summed up my own split feelings about The Cher Show. It’s an enjoyable circus of spectacle and music and familiarity; and it’s also not the same as having the star itself in a big room entertaining everyone. In fact, the most lacking thing is the real story about how, after all the downturns and fallow periods, she did come back to fame. The actual mechanics of those career-re-energizing moments go unexplained” Tim Teeman

Rolling Stone

The link includes a video of Cher with cast.

“The tao of Cher runneth over…After having seen so many jukebox musicals over the years, I’ve inoculated myself to the knee-jerk criticisms that came easily with so many poor attempts to translate an iconic artist’s songbook and circuitous career to the stage. Up until this point, however, I’ve never witnessed such impressive impersonations — which is meant as a compliment. Because if the very talented women cast as Cher didn’t give us that, then there would be moms and millennials and a mob of gay men with pitchforks outside the theater calling for producers’ heads. But I’m still left wondering what The Cher Show is exactly. At times it feels like glitzy Las Vegas revue that, if you were to squint, could easily be the best drag show of all time — although it lacks any actual drag queens. And then, in the second act, it eventually veers into something resembling a clip reel as Cher’s Oscar looks are quickly ticked off and other poor decisions (yes, even the informercials) are exposed until it explodes into a joyous cacophony of sentimental, shameless nothingness. Maybe the production is just a vehicle intended to fulfill a desire to tour forever and to assure us Cher shall never disappear from our lives. Ultimately, I don’t hate The Cher Show since, despite all of the mess, it leaves you wanting to Believe!” Jerry Portwood

The Hollywood Reporter

The link includes a video montage.

“The indestructible Cher managed to escape with her dignity intact earlier this year from the Greek Island shipwreck that was Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, thanks largely to her powerful shield of self-irony. That armor, along with her talent and charisma, has cocooned the decades-defying supernova throughout her epic career, even helping her make the embarrassing sketch writing on The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, back in the early '70s, pass for funny. Her characteristic sleepy-eyed drollery is all over The Cher Show…The Cher Show also has the distinct advantage of the boss being behind the beaded curtain as a producer, lending a personal investment that carries it through the rough patches and choppy storytelling of Rick Elice's uneven book. …Is the show good? Certainly not in the sense of traditional musical-theater craft. Would I see it again? Duh, already planning on it. …The baby gay millennial sitting a couple seats down from me could not stop fist-pumping, whooping and "yas kween"-ing through the entire performance. That was annoying for a minute but eventually became part of the experience. For all its flaws and unapologetic excesses, I had a blast at The Cher Show, as will any fan.” David Rooney

The Guardian

“Together they describe the evolution of Cherilyn Sarkisian from southern California ugly duckling to the black swan entertainment queen. This is a straightforward story of female empowerment, though, as crafted by an all-male creative team, it sometimes feels more like a compilation of girl-power pep talks than an individual woman’s singular journey.Mashing song and story together is the great problem of the genre. The Cher Show doesn’t solve it. Rick Elice’s book relies heavily on exposition, with Block often stepping out to narrate key moments or to summon her other selves for a consultation…It’s so garish and delirious and literally show-stopping, that it highlights the lack of imagination elsewhere and the show’s need to gloss over – sequin over, brilliantine over – anything too uncomfortable or hard.”

Towerload

“It’s a paradox of the biomusical that reducing an iconic life story into a tidy two acts necessarily flattens its subject. When that subject is a living producer of the show, experiencing a career renaissance at age 72, you can count on seeing the version of that story she would like you to consider her legacy….It’s a testament to the knockout talents assuming the lead role that the lavish designs don’t swallow them whole.It’s a testament to the knockout talents assuming the lead role that the lavish designs don’t swallow them whole…The Cher Show doesn’t venture too far outside the box — doing so runs counter to the project of self-mythologizing inherent to the form. By this point, celebrity narratives are familiar enough in their common course that we recognize the shorthand — from big break and the spotlight’s harsh glare to fall and final redemption. It’s all here, insofar as the musical’s subject wants to reveal more than what we already know, or may have guessed. As for a deeper understanding of the artist, it’s always been right there in the music.” Naveen Kumar

(Wha???? Cher’s music is rarely biographical.)

Vulture

This is the best written of the negative reviews so I’ve included a lot of it.

“Is it possible to be brainwashed by sequins? I was so addled by the finale of The Cher Show that I began to imagine a tiny, spandex-and-spangle-clad devil on my shoulder, poking me behind the ear with a diamond-studded pitchfork and murmuring, “Shhh … You’re having a good time. Just … believe.” Nice try, but not today, sparkly Satan. The Cher Show is not good. It’s extravagantly, almost triumphantly not good. It’s such a garish, obvious pastiche, such an unabashedly soulless explosion of wigs and trite memoir wisdom, that somewhere in the midst of its overinflated two and a half hours — probably during one of its dips into stodgy, life-lesson-y sentiment between showstoppers — you start to wonder: Is this gusher of shamelessness the only thing that could have happened here? Is the show so ludicrous that it’s somehow transcended itself? Is it a victory for camp? It’s Cher, after all. As one of her onstage iterations says to her second husband, the strung-out folk rocker Gregg Allman (or, as this millennial kept thinking of him, Legolas with sideburns), when he tells her she “doesn’t understand excess”: “Have you seen my costumes?” Yes, yes we have. And if the screams in the audience every time another Bob Mackie getup takes the stage are any measure, the clothes are 90 percent of what we came for. They’re like King Kong’s big monkey. Is it wrong — or at best, useless — to critique a fashion show with musical numbers as if it’s actually a play?…Is this three-body-diva thing like, a thing now? When are we getting the Madonna musical, complete with Blonde Ambition Madonna, Kabbalah Madonna, and Rebel Heart Madonna? But The Cher Show feels awkwardly stuck between blowout jukebox concert — a triple-your-pleasure cover act for one of the superstar’s endless farewell tours — and schmaltzy bio-play. And there’s way too much of the latter. but the moments have a sappy, oddly insular effect, like watching someone else’s life-coaching session. That’s the thing about “Behind the Music” stories: It’s not actually as fun as we think, and it’s hardly ever revelatory, to have pop icons humanized. ..The funny thing is, I have no argument with the legend status of actual Cher. Her creative gambles, non-stop reinventions, and reigning queen status in a testosterone-soaked industry are incredible feats and speak of a human being with more than everyday ambition and endurance. ..It’s the show’s blithely formulaic nature that drags things down. Elice’s book is a string of easy punchlines and hoky teaching moments …Jason Moore’s direction is blandly splashy, the paint-by-numbers approach to this kind of material. The ensemble throws themselves gamely into Christopher Gattelli’s choreography, though Gattelli’s work only comes to life intermittently, …In the time I’ve been writing this, I’ve gotten more real enjoyment out of watching old Cher videos as research than I did in the theater. And I think I’d probably get a kick out of seeing her in concert, where I have a feeling the ceaseless, high-gear pop-splosion, unburdened by autobiographical platitudes or pretensions toward plot and character, would somehow feel more honest. I’m okay with the real thing, and even with nostalgia in YouTube-size bites — but not as the only fuel in the tank when you’re trying to do a play….you’ve also got to try to make her into, well, theater. And that requires more than costumes, even costumes by Bob Mackie. It requires more than several good Cher impressions (Diamond, Wicks, and Block are all doing their best Janice-from-the-Electric-Mayhem voices, and Block especially sounds great belting out the brassy, vibrato-heavy hits). It requires more than wigs and wings and sailors and celebrities and tango-ing gypsies and hoedown-ing cowboys. The problem isn’t that it’s all too much. It’s that, when all the glitter’s swept up, it’s not nearly enough.” Sara Holdren

The Fordham Observer

Another good one.

“Cher could never be contained in a Broadway musical. Let’s start there. If the makers of “The Cher Show,” among whom the real Cher is a producer, thought the pure divadom of its subject, dressed in all the gloriously gay, sequined and campy stylings of our favorite dark lady, could save the bio-musical from itself, they were holdin’ out for love.

[The show is]…disappointingly guarded and directionless attempt to squeeze Cher’s many lives into a bordered, formulaic dramatization of her career. Frantic in its attempt to distill five decades of stardom into three hours, “The Cher Show” careens from spotlight to spotlight, shag rug to shag rug, and speeds from striped bell bottoms to autotune, London to New York, Broadway to Hollywood, illegibly.

By the way, had the musical followed its inclination to focus on Sonny and Cher, choosing that narrative rather than some biopic haze, the musical may have saved itself from the depths of jukebox hell. [The Fanny Brice]

But I refuse to be a total cynic. We finally have a star-studded Broadway musical about Cher, and there are things to celebrate…

Stephanie J. Block, who is, as far as I’m now concerned, a Broadway treasure we must protect at all costs. Not one bit buried by her throaty evocation, that characteristic voice which Block pulls off with as little caricature as possible, she is ever a match for the dominating personality of Cherilyn Sarkisian, portraying the diva (or star, as her character name suggests) with grace, reverence, and the best voice you can hear on Broadway right now. Only a drag queen could do it better.

…Micaela Diamond as Babe is an enthralling new actress,

…Bob Mackie, albeit a fashion show set to music, which doesn’t really equate to theater.

…The Cher Show” succeeds in inoculating its audience with a wistfulness for the sounds and fashions of this diva should be no gold star. Surely that’s the bare minimum.

But there’s something to be said for the first seconds of “I’ve Got You Babe,” Jarrod Spector’s Sonny a remarkably uncanny evocation of the iconic voice that’d be mostly hilarious if not braced by an incredible tenor. There’s something to be said for that loving feeling, returned to an audience however caked in glitter. Maybe it’s shmaltz and maybe I’m a fool, and it’s certainly not enough to make “The Cher Show” good theater. But it’s fine enough as the first chords of an iconic song ring in, a small comfort to be momentarily in the presence of what makes Cher great: her music, not some hopelessly humanizing Broadway creation.” Michael Appler

You can read more reviews here:
http://www.playbill.com/article/read-reviews-for-the-cher-show-on-broadway

The Cast

There have also been stories about the cast, who everyone claims is the right stuff:

About the Three Chers: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/theater/the-cher-show-broadway-stephanie-j-block.html

Below is an article about the actress playing young Cher and the actor playing Sonny, both from Philadelphia. Jarrod Spector is called the King of the Jukebox Musical, as he played Barry Mann in Beautiful and Frankie Valli in Jersey Boys. This show was Micaela Dimond’s first part and she wasn’t even born until a year after Believe was a hit!

http://www.philly.com/arts/cher-show-broadway-micaela-diamond-margate-germantown-academy-jarrod-spector-20190103.html

Their review: “The show is a lot of loud, bright, over-the-top craziness, with tree-top performances.”

That's a lot to process. More to come…

Mama Mia 2: Here We Go Again

January 7, 2019 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

I know. I know. The movie is like a half a year old already and BluRay and DVD are already out with awesome features, very Cher-flattering stuff on the extra features, not to be missed (more on that later)!

But literally, this is where I left off blogging last year during all the drama that was last year. So we have to start here so I can catch up. But I have to admit, complaining or genuflecting for Mama Mia last season just felt wrong, even when I tried to do it. While we were going through the U.S. midterms, the constant shootings and hate crimes, kids dying at the border, it just felt extremely not-kosher to be discussing whether or not the movie Mama Mia 2 was high art or cotton candy.

Similarly, I’ve been reading a lot about lost American languages, mostly American Indian languages, especially the work of writers like Mohave poet Natalie Diaz, and it came up that Yiddish was another dying language. I’m not Jewish but I love Yiddish so I decided to start reading more about the language. But then the Synagogue shooting happened and it didn’t feel right to be interloping into a language that wasn’t mine and I felt this way for a few months.

Pop culture can be helpful in dark times but it can also be a distraction. And I don’t claim to know where the borderline is there but…

Could I stop thinking and writing about poetry and Cher. I think I would go crazy maybe. (Too late!) Besides, 2018 was the wrong year to give up Cher scholarship. It was the busiest Cher year since 1987 or 1975 before that or 1965 before that. This was finally the year everyone realized the cultural work that Cher product does, what Cherness is. And we’re all beginning to realize how it might work on some level, thanks to the failures (and successes) of the Broadway show ironically. We’re all beginning to figure out how the Cher effect works outside of the mediums and products they spin out on. Bigger than the music and the movies and the merch. Bigger than the costumes.

But I’ll get more into that in the next few weeks when we start to talk about Cher essays and the Broadway show.

Today I just want to catch up on that little movie that was Mama Mia 2, what interviews came out around it, what critics said and what I thought about it.

General Interviews

So Cher did a lot of press for the movie and some general interviews about all things Cher (which included discussions around the new album, the Broadway show, and her latest “I swear this is my last” tour.

She appeared on Ellen. Watch this funny clip they did at the salon. You can also find more show excerpts on Youtube.

The Today Show appearances

https://www.today.com/video/cher-opens-up-about-career-and-new-abba-album-1314064451541?v=raila& Cher makes a comment about having a favorite shirt for 40 years and of course everyone wanted to know, what shirt is that? People Magazine found out: https://people.com/style/cher-wears-same-tshirt-for-30-years/

https://www.today.com/video/-it-shows-women-being-in-control-of-their-life-cher-talks-mamma-mia-here-we-go-again-1278419523965

The New Zealand Herald: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=12088673

With Kathie Lee Gifford: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-KMgR39Eck&feature=youtu.be

With Lorrraine: https://youtu.be/ZSEvcvcImls

Interviews even happened about Cher interviews: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8aEhHAEvyU

An interesting panel discussion with the Mama Mia 2 cast and creators: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfEHEiIKPQM&feature=youtu.be

A story about her wig in the movie: https://www.dailystar.co.uk/showbiz/719705/cher-mamma-mia-hair-wig-film-musical-abba-fernando-super-trooper

Why We Love Cher

The Press Junket

Cher’s part of the press junket involved her in an interview-duet of sorts with Andy Garcia. I didn't like him at all at first but he grew on me. The first few interviews I watched, he seemed bored and irritated with all the gay men interviewing and genuflecting for Cher. When one obviously Cher-happy interviewer asked him if he had a Cher impression in him, he expressed mild alarm and Cher defended him by calling him a serious actor.

Which reminds us of Cher's famous moment blowing about the definitions of the conflation of words serious and actor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ptvz4DGrK4

So ironic, that. And then the fact that maybe he is a serious sort o factor, except that he just made Mama Mia 2.

But things got better and who knows what the interviewing sequence was. Maybe he was just getting irritable before his lunch break. Anyway, you can imagine them sitting there all day while tens of tens of interviewers floated by with hundreds of questions. Here are some of the clips:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umxvXGuKQhE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X1xsgm_e0w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgQzOzT1wVs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_FxK0RMBdM&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2Fpt92qkdA&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXuTvE3bKPo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcax9AHHmWI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMbG1987k9M (Garcia says he is very happy with her version of "Fernando), "Talk about strong women! She’s next level." Indeed.

Alternatively, look how Meryl Streep behaves during at the premiere, much more befitting the tone of the movie: https://dorothysurrenders.blogspot.com/2018/07/my-my-how-can-i-resist-you.html

Which brings us to…

The Red Carpet Premiere

Cher by the Cast

“She’s the funniest, most honest person I’ve ever met,” Seyfried said of her legendary co-star. “I was so nervous; I was so intimidated that the first day I met her, I didn’t want to be in her way.”

'She was amazing, there was a crackle of anticipation on the set when she was coming in.” Piers Brosnan

The cast geeks-out for Cher: https://variety.com/2018/film/news/mamma-mia-here-we-go-again-cher-meryl-streep-1202874414/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GvVI6x5pHw (Boranski & Walters in Cher awe)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta3nablnCMA
http://www.newnownext.com/jessica-keenan-wynn-mamma-mia-2/07/2018/
https://www.tnp.sg/entertainment/movies/cher-was-nervous-joining-cast-mamma-mia-sequel
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/07/mamma-mia-2-cher-christine-baranski
https://www.star2.com/entertainment/2018/07/12/cher-mamma-mia/
Producers Tom Hanks & Rita Wilson: http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/mamma-mia/news/a847398/tom-hanks-mamma-mia-meryl-streep-graham-norton-show/

Behind the Scenes

How Andy Garcia was hand picked: http://www.vulture.com/2018/07/why-mamma-mia-here-we-go-again-cast-cher-as-meryls-mother.html

You can get these on the DVD/BluRay too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6sJ3M2H2Xo&feature=youtu.be

The Reviews and Box Office

Rotten Tomatoes compilation of reviews: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/mamma_mia_here_we_go_again/

Box Office overview (#2 in opening week!):

The reviews were almost a whiplash-inducing gamut in their range from good to bad…

Dazed Digital, the best review, mostly about Cher:

“Like God, or time, Cher is a concept so ineffable and expansive she cannot be fully encapsulated by the imperfect semiotics of human language. If Madonna and Lady Gaga and Kylie and Cyndi Lauper were playing football, Cher would be the stadium they played on, and the sun that shone down on them. Explaining his decision to cast Cher, 72, as the mother of Meryl Streep, 69, in Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again, despite a mere three-year age gap between the two actresses, writer-director Ol Packer explained simply that “Cher exists outside of time”. A fascinating hypothesis. Perhaps she finally found a way to turn it back…You’ll notice I referred to Cher as an ‘actress’. This is because there are two great injustices of our times: firstly, the machinations of late capitalism, which allows the labour of the weak to be exploited by a narrowing group of a global super rich elite, and secondly, the cultural tendency to acknowledge Cher merely as a ‘singer’ despite the fact she has appeared in several critically acclaimed film roles.” Shon Faye

The New Yorker

“…for all its faults, has a musty charm and even, for reasons that involve Meryl Streep, a hint of heartbreak. There’s also a secret weapon. Not the special effects, which include the worst fake moon in modern cinema, or Colin Firth’s dancing, but the appearance—one might call it the annunciation—of Cher, who steps from a helicopter and takes control of the film. In the role of Sophie’s grandmother, and in a voice still throbbingly low and lusty, she belts out “Fernando.” For the first time in two installments of “Mamma Mia!” I plucked the cotton wool from my ears and found myself doing something quite extraordinary. I listened.” Anthony Lane

Chicago Reader

“Cher is the cherry on the sundae”

The Globe and Mail

“Yes, Meryl Streep has left the building and only appears in a cameo at the finale; her energy is much missed. Instead, we get Cher as Sophie’s supposed grandmother, and you have to at least admire the chutzpah – and laugh happily as the script finds an excuse for her to break into Fernando (the lady looks as though she’s mistaken a taxidermist for a plastic surgeon).” Kate Taylor

Ouch!

Alternate Ending

“a deeply inorganic Cher cameo much too late in the movie for the marketing team to feel like they've done good work by pretending she's a major character – also, fuck the hell out of the sound team for mixing Cher so loud as to suck all the texture out of my favorite ABBA song, for no other reason than because she is Cher – and a Streep cameo so ill-motivated that it goes back around to being funny. All this being said, Here We Go Again is hardly the grueling misery that the first film was, and while I still don't think that watching people being this strenuously gleeful is "fun", the new film is trying much less hard than its predecessor to be a karaoke party. It's trying to be a musical, and while I don't think that's a particularly good one, that important shift in emphasis is very much appreciated.” Tim Brayton

Newport This Week

“The new addition to the cast is Cher, as Sophie’s long-lost grandmother, a Vegas showgirl. When she finally appears, it’s a movie star entrance on the order of Rita Hayworth in “Gilda.” But with her Lady Gaga platinum hair and her waxworks face, it’s a bit too campy and a distraction. Sure, it’s fun to hear Cher belt out “Fernando” opposite Andy Garcia, whose presence is purely a plot point for Cher’s character, but it’s wholly unnecessary.” Loren King

Film Inquiry

“On the other end of the spectrum, latest cast member Cher essentially plays herself, which effectively balances the sadness with a healthy amount of whimsy, particularly during her performance of Fernando.” Zoe Crombie

The LA Times

“And what of Cher? Let’s just say that like any diva worth her salt, she takes her time — first by arriving late into the proceedings and then by drawing out “Fernando,” her indisputable musical highlight, with a deliberation so breathtaking that even the accompanying fireworks seem to be erupting in slo-mo. In these moments, the honey-toned pop artifice of “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” becomes so overwhelming, you forget all qualms, all appeals to reason and logic — which is not to say your inconvenient questions won’t resurface later. What year is this taking place again? Couldn’t they have given Colin Firth a boyfriend? Why cast Cher as Meryl Streep’s mother? I understand that Cher, not unlike ABBA, transcends such petty concerns as time, space, age and physics, but that’s one mysterious parental back story I’d pay to see. Can we get a third movie out of this? Honey, I’m still free. Take a chance on three.” Justin Chang

NPR

“Cher is in this thing, playing the late Donna's mother, and Sophie's grandmother. That's no secret; it's in the trailer. (As a thought experiment, try to imagine how much money they must have thrown at Cher to portray Donna's mom, given that she is just three years older than Streep. Go ahead, try — you will find the puny human brain insufficient to the task.) What may not be clear is that her screentime clocks in at just over sixteen minutes. Also, according to a passage of Streep dialogue in the 2008 film ("Somebody up there [point to the heavens] has got it in for me. I bet it's my mother.") Cher's appearance at the film's climax should logically inspire, among the other characters, a good deal more existential dread, if not screaming terror, than it does here. Look, it's no secret that Cher is a supernatural force. But if we accept that line of dialogue as Mamma Mia! canon, she may in truth be a Vampyr. The script is not forthcoming, but what other conclusion is possible? She does get a number to do, though, and it's really pretty great. So, you know: undead, schmundead — at the end of the day it's Cher singing in a exquisitely tailored pantsuit, so it's a win.” Glen Weldon

Glen Weldon also muses on when in the movie he should pee to not miss Cher.

Time Magazine

“Late in the movie, Cher–the only soupçon of tinsel you could add to this already extreme glitter-platform fest–appears as Sophie’s diva-times-10 grandmother Ruby. The finale of Here We Go Again is a go-for-broke version of “Super Trouper” in which every cast member gets to don a shiny silver space outfit and go wild. The young actors shimmy up to their older counterparts, the past meeting the present in one glam hootenanny. Everyone has a sense of humor about everything. Cher emerges, singing in that dusky, magic-hour voice and wearing a pair of bell-bottoms so extreme, she looks like a psychedelic upside-down lily. So yes, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is atrocious. And wonderful. It’s all the reasons you should never go to the movies. And all the reasons you should race to get a ticket.” Stephanie Zackarek

Roger Ebert.com

“And then Cher shows up. Now, it would seem impossible for this superstar goddess ever to be restrained. But as Sophie’s frequently absent grandmother, Cher seems weirdly reined in. Again, it’s the awkwardness of the choreography: She just sort of stands there, singing “Fernando,” before stiffly walking down a flight of stairs to greet the person to whom she’s singing. (As the hotel’s caretaker, Andy Garcia conveniently plays a character named Fernando, which is an amusing bit.) But if you’re down for watching A-list stars belt out insanely catchy, 40-year-old pop tunes in a shimmering setting, and you’re willing to throw yourself headlong into the idea of love’s transformative power, and you just need a mindless summer escape of your own, you might just thoroughly enjoy watching “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.” Don’t think, and pass the ouzo.” Christy Lemire

Slate

“And to the audience’s whoops of glee, there is the Velveeta-layered revolutionary anthem “Fernando,” delivered by Cher with a pleasantly tuneless assist from Andy Garcia as the smoking-hot hotel employee Señor Cienfuegos—with whom Cher’s character, the resolutely ungrandmotherly Ruby, apparently shared a sultry night many years ago. One disappointment of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again: In a musical as gay as the last gay train to Gayville—and one that takes a Shakespearean pleasure in pairing up all its characters by the final scene—there should be a romantic storyline for Colin Firth’s Harry, who came out to both himself and the world at the end of the first film. The most he gets is the suggestion of a missed connection between his younger self and a gruff security agent at the island port. Given the amount of cash queer audiences are likely to pony up to escape the summer heat in this pleasure-loving, sex-positive, Cher-starring Ramos gin fizz of a movie, it seems like the least the writer-director could have done to provide Harry with his own fair share of island lovin’.

Enjoying musicals is a necessary but not sufficient condition for appreciating the Mamma Mia! movies. You must also believe in the foolish yet empowering myth a good musical propagates: the notion that you, given a backup track and enough time to rehearse, might plausibly star in a musical yourself. Among my daughter’s and my favorite moments in the original Mamma Mia! is a line in the song “Super Trouper” that Donna, performing onstage in her full glitter-pantsuited glory, delivers directly to her daughter: “ ’Cause somewhere in the crowd, there’s you.” In this sequel’s reprise of that song, the line is delivered directly to us, the audience. It’s enough to send you out of the theater singing, imaginary feather boa held aloft, ready to grab a few friends and dive off the nearest pier.” Dana Stevens

Vogue Magazine

“I can’t tell you about the ending of Mamma Mia 2 without actually spoiling it, but I can tell you that we finally do see Cher, as Sophie’s grandma/Donna’s mom, and that she is decked out in silver with platinum hair like a tall chrome Dolly Parton, and that she sings, her beautiful moonlit face wholly unmoving except for her mouth. And that there is a subsequent scene that brought me to tears even as I thought to myself, This is so incredibly absurd. And that the film’s curtain call is one of the finest showstopping musical numbers and general feel-good fan pandering since goddamn Grease. If I sound passionate, it’s because I’m not used to feeling anything anymore. I await Mamma Mias 3 through 10.” Briget Reed

Leonard Maltin.com

“One by one, all the familiar characters from the first movie show up, uttering dialogue out of the Cliche Handbook and joining in song. But it doesn’t add up to much. The much-heralded arrival of Cher at the end is treated like the Second Coming, and the superstar gets to warble two songs, one with a surprise lover from her past, the other as a kind of curtain call for a film that doesn’t really have a finale.” Leonard Maltin

The Boston Herald

“In a snow white wig, Cher, the only genuine pop star in the cast, belts out “Fernando,” a number culminating in onscreen “woos,” applause and fireworks. In addition to being a musical with many of the same songs as the original film, “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” features a cast that ,for the most part, is made up of actors not known for their singing and dancing skills. The result is kind of like 114 minutes of plodding footwork and the aforementioned karaoke without the cocktails, although you will need a drink afterward.” James Viniere

Rolling Stone Magazine

“Not even the mighty Cher can keep this jukebox-musical from from feeling like an S.O.S.And finally it comes, in the ab-fab person of Cher, basically playing herself in the role of Ruby, Donna’s livewire mom. The Dancing Queen enters the movie as if on a magic carpet, wearing a platinum wig and attitude for days, aghast about becoming a great-grandmother. “I’m not putting that part in the bio,” says Ruby, and Cher…brings out every ounce of sass in the line. With the singer/icon on screen, the audience enters kitsch nirvana. She imbues the essence of Cher into “Fernando,” making the Abba song soar and flirting outrageously in a duet with a moonstruck Andy Garcia, who plays Rudy’s great love from the past. Naturally, his name is Fernando. The last part of the movie, which brings the whole cast together on “Super Trouper,” is almost worth the price of admission. Millions will happily get drunk on the film’s infectious high spirits. For the rest of us, who can’t get with the program, Here We Go Again will go down as more of a threat than a promise.” Peter Travers

And this funny piece by Daily Mail that asks, "isn't Cher's character supposed to be dead?

“One major inconsistency pointed out by fans on Twitter was that one of the film's integral characters appeared to have returned from the dead. Cher makes a cameo appearance in the sequel playing Sophie's grandmother Ruby. However, viewers took to social media to point out that she, Donna's mother, was listed as dead in the first film.”

My review from seeing the movie one measly time, (I feel like Charlie from the Chocolate Factory buying only one candy bar), and after never finding the time to see Mama Mia 1 is that I enjoyed parts of the movie without fully enjoying the whole. I did appreciate the visual transitions between the scenes and the dance numbers were more more fun and inclusive than those found in Burlesque. Also, the music felt more organic to the story and itself than the soundtrack of Burlesque. Let’s face it, it was a better musical.

However, some things took me out of the fantasy. It seemed like too much of a nod to Cher when Christine Buranski’s character said “have him washed and brought to my tent.” This alludes to the famous rumor that Cher once said this very thing upon first seeing boyfriend Robert Camiletti. The quote has been attributed to Cher whether it happened or not. And including it in the movie felt like Cher-pandering and something possibly stolen from a rehearsal of the new Broadway show. It was completely out of place and took us away from the idea of Cher playing another character beyond herself.

I found the flashbacks completely confusing (and that’s saying something because the flashbacks in Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean actually made sense to me). This might be cranky old lady of me but the young actresses looked so similar I needed some persistent date labeling to stay on track.

In some numbers, the dances and blocking seemed stiff and over-architected. Actors over-acted like someone was behind the camera yelling “Smile big, Donna!!” and therefore the hyper, fun-loving story was performed to an annoying pitch.

Image three young, sexy men…without any charisma. It wasn’t their fault. Charisma just wasn’t written into it. We got generic boys who became generic men. Only slight efforts were made to differentiate them. And yes, on some level maybe this is karmic payback for all the generic female leads strung as boy toys in a plethora of Hollywood films, but two wrongs have never made a right.

Right at the moment when “Knowing Me Knowing You” was played, Mr. Cher Scholar leaned over and gave me an Alan Partridge impression. So that was fun.

But we never did learn or understand why Donna was living at the abandoned house in the first place, who owed it, and who owned that horse. Explanations came around later but they felt very unsatisfying and underwritten.

Jessica Keenan Wynn performed a miraculous impersonation of Christine Buranksi and I would have bet my shirt that the lead actress, Amanda Seyfried, was long lost kin to Veronica Cartwright.

Cher’s main scene was brief and stoic. If you remember the study I did of Cher tapping in movies from Cher Zine 1, you’d have recognized some new Cher tapping with Cher and her glass of booze. Cher also tears up in one small shot (when Meryl is singing) giving us Cher tears in almost 100% of Cher movies.

Someone in the movie describes the voice of Cher’s character as being "sweet like sugar cane." That didn’t seem right. Sugar cane seems more like the voice of Snow White: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45r2t1pGGyQ

Cher’s a party crasher but she didn’t seem to be in any of the wide shots of the party.

Cher also calls her granddaughter Soph, short for Sophie, employing the Cher tendency to nickname everyone, another Cherism that took me out of the story. Cher also calls Soph pitchy, reminding us of her guest appearance on The Voice. She also does her Cher walk. I'll be the first to admit, this a very cool walk, but it's still more Cher than something else.

Cumulatively, this makes you wonder whether this is just Cher onscreen or a character in a fictional story? Because it can’t be both. Either Cher is not "in character" or there wasn’t any character for Cher to be in.

And I’m not arguing that the character of Cher herself makes a movie necessarily bad, but there have been so many (Good Times, Stuck on You, Sonny might say Chastity, arguably Burlesque, those two Robert Altman bit parts) that those appearances might actually be staring to overshadow Cher's actual character work. And that would suck.

So the movie was too derivative of Cher, stiff and the set was distractingly pretty. I wanted to vacation there but without all these singing, smiling people. The next time I watch the movie, it will most likely be for travel planning and interior decorating ideas. The set was literally a scene-stealer.

I did laugh out loud during the appearance of "the most interesting man in the world" as brother of Fernando. But then I felt cheap afterwards. But then I watched it again on the DVD extras and laughed again.

But I loved listening to Cher sign Fernando and Super Trooper. Those were highlights for sure.

Mixed Bag of Honors and Accomplishments

October 23, 2018 / Cher Scholar / 5 Comments

First of all Cher's Believe album will be out on vinyl in December.

In Music

A few weeks ago Cher's album Dancing Queen made its debut on the Billboard album chart at #3. This felt disappointing as Cher and the fans were aiming for #2. Although the album did hit #1 in the list for Top Album Sales. And the song "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" reached #5 on the Dance Club Play chart. And the Gimme remixes were recently released.

So it felt a bit short at the time but my Billboard guru friend tells me I was off my meds to think this way:

"For me, I am super impressed with her position on the chart. The year is three-quarters done, so for her to have the largest week of sales for an album in 2018 by a female pop artist is a major achievement. It means she sold more albums in her debut week than 20-something Ariana Grande, who is the hottest female pop star in the U.S. currently, when she released Sweetener a few months ago. It means that the only female in any genre to post a larger one week tally this year is Cardi B. Were this released four years ago, before they started incorporating streaming into chart calculations, she would have debuted at #1 on the Top 200 chart, rather than #3 (and #1 on the sales chart). The last female pop artist to exceed this level of sales in a single week was none other than 20-something Taylor Swift who remains the biggest U.S. female artist of the last ten years. Not shabby company to keep. The fact that it is a sales sum that has only been surpassed by one other pop artist this year (Justin Timberlake) is truly remarkable.

Mary, please think of it this way–over 50,000 albums across genres are released in the U.S. each year and our 72-year-old beloved can in 2018 sell more in a single week than literally any other pop artist on Earth except one, and more than any other female artist on Earth except one. That is stupendous."

So that perspective was great. But then in week two the album feel from #3 to #43.

In Movies

Anyway, there was another Billboard list that made me feel better again: Billboards list of 100 top musician performances in movies. Cher ranks #1. J. Lynch has this to say:

Cher’s Oscar-winning turn in the 1987 romcom Moonstruck remains the standard by which you mentally check all others. Cher brings that mixture of reluctance and romantic recklessness to the screen with a self-effacing realism and millisecond-sharp comedic timing. Few performances are this irresistible, hysterical and believably low-key — and the fact that it came from one of the 20th century’s biggest pop stars leaves us unable to snap out of loving Cher in her deservedly Oscar-winning performance more than 30 years later."

The Kennedy Honor

And then there's the incredible Kennedy Honor. Maybe not in and of itself but for the fact that fans and Cher-watchers have been lobbying so long for Cher's simple induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. To be beset with yet a larger honor was fully unexpected. And a bit disorienting quite frankly. But what a big deal. As my friend Christopher described it, “the government's highest form of recognition for artists…its official intention is to identify and honor artists for their lifetime contribution to the culture of the United States. That is no small potatoes.”

Especially since nobody's been noticing Cher's lifetime contribution to the culture of the United States.

The awards will be televised on December 26 on CBS at 8 p.m. Eastern.

Some articles about the honor:

The New York Times
W Magazine
Malibu Times
KennedyCenter. org
Wikipedia on the honors and past recipients

Here is the 2016 batch with some unsmiling Eagles (I take that back, 2/3 unsmiling Eagles), James Taylor, Martha Argerich, Mavis Staples, and the incomparable Al Pacino.

Cher Conquers Music Again

October 4, 2018 / Cher Scholar / 3 Comments

Before we get into the new album, it should be mentioned Cher’s placement on Billboards Top Female Artists of All Time list.

My Billboard sensei, Christopher, sent me this explication of the list’s meaning:

In celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Hot 100, Billboard posted the list of the Top 60 Female Artists of all time on the Hot 100. You will be glad to see Cher ensconced all the way up at #16, (and right beside P!nk, which I thought was a nice, appropriate coincidence). It's for real; no opinions factored in. The ranking was calculated based on how many weeks each hit spent on the chart and at which positions. It's a cumulative inverse point system. So, if you have a song at #23 on the chart, it is awarded 77 points for that week. If the following week it climbs to #19, for that week it earns an additional 81 points, and so on and so on. This system thereby rewards both longevity and ascension. It is the same system they use when determining the year-end charts.

The Dancing Queen Album

So this all happened really fast. Mid-year, we found out Cher was recording a new album of ABBA songs and by September, here it was.

Full disclosure: everyone has their own ideas about music they like. Methods are either cold and mathematical (example above) or infinitely subjective. There seems to be no in between. Even Cher fans have different inclinations. My personal favorite albums are: With Love (1967), Backstage (1968), All I Ever Need is You (1971 and for highly sentimental reasons), Stars (1975), Take Me Home (1979), It’s a Man’s World (1996), Believe (1999) and Living Proof (2001). I could go into my predilections for melody or unity but blah-blah-blah, who cares.

Cher’s last album, Closer to the Truth, was good but not great. It charted high (on the backs of concert ticket sales) and a few songs played on adult contemporary radio ("I Hope You Find It") but there was not a breakout hit. I'm liking this album much better. But I'm finding it hard to say why. Could it be outside cultural influences are working on me, (although don't we all feel like we loved Stars in a vacuum?). For sure, the advanced interest in this album was very high. Even Billboard predicts another high-chart debut, again possibly on the backs of merch and concert tickets sales.

On the other hand, you can’t really miss recording these ABBA songs. Are some arrangements are more original than others? Sure. Are some critics going to accuse Cher of being an opportunist,? Yes. But it would seem hard to sing ABBA songs (as Cher herself has admitted), so here is where the effort sits in my mind: in the stretch to do it. Cher could have picked easier opportunism.

What’s interesting to me, reading all the reviews, is how trends are showing up around who likes which songs. Dance clubs are already springing to the beats of “Gimme Gimme Gimme,” other fans are gravitating to Cher's more original take on “Chiquitta. ” I also love the novelty of hearing Cher sing “The Winner Takes it All.” Not everybody does. Boys seem to like the “SOS” track. “One of Us” consistently stands out as a critical favorite. Trends like this show this album has gems on it. I don’t remember any similar consensus around “Closer to the Truth.”

And the critical reviews are mostly favorable, which is an odd thing to experience with a Cher album. I tend to want to deconstruct those things. Why is it happening? Is this really Cher’s best album of all time? You’d think so by the reviews. I break it down to three aspects of the current Cher phenomenon: (1) old white reviewers are all retired or dead and women and gay men are in positions of reviewing albums, (2) Cher has been canonized lately (a sub-phenomenon we can't get into right now), (3) the concept of this album is so juicy, it’s immediately lovable, (4) the album has one producer for the most part and feels very unified, and (5) during these political times, we crave "the happy, happy."

But what do I know? I do know this: Believe was a very good album with a magical-single attached to it and Entertainment Weekly still dissed it. Music critics were not inclined to like Cher circa 1999. And that means everything because reviews are perceptions always based on the trends of a larger culture or sub-culture (which makes decoding "good" all but impossible). Culture is arbitrary, capriciously suggestible and apropos of nothing true. I can both hide behind that convenient fact, as a much maligned Cher fan, but it also makes my many rationalizations about it meaningless. Ah, what fun.

So the good reviews feel amazing, no doubt. But they’re so packed with so much unrelated, Cher love going on right now, it’s hard to know how good the new album really is. Do I overthink it? Yes, but that’s what cultural study is. You can make the claim that these songs are just cotton candy to give us a respite of happiness, (a point made in many Mama Mia 2 reviews), but I hate to think that way. It short-shrifts the album and our human capacity to deal with bad political times.

I love that Cher dedicated the album to her mom. I love that she thanked her bffs and her long-time assistant. And I dearly love “Chiquita.”

I have three ABBA greatest hits collections: one double LP, one cassette tape, one compact disc) and I still missed all the visual ABBA references in the “SOS” video and on the album cover. I had to read about video references in articles about the video and Mr. Cher Scholar pointed out the album cover similarity as we looked at a CD prominently displayed at Target last week.

The album is predicted to debut at #2 on Billboard's album chart. “Gimme Gimme Gimme” is now at #8 on the dance chart. “Fernando” (the Mama Mia 2 version with Andy Garcia) made it to #22 on the Adult Contemporary chart.

More Chart News:

As I said, the announcement of this album was big news, the track listing was big news, the single releases were news:

More on this later, but Cher has also done general interviews for The Today Show, The New York Times and the L.A. Times. All the songs have attracted a bee swarm of re-mixes. Search album song titles on YouTube and you'll find some, including a fabulous Madonna mashup with "Gimme Gimme Gimmie."

Gimmie News:

The mashup guy even got his own interview. One funny quote about the mashup from a fan, “This mashup has cured my diseases, watered my crop and saved my soul. This mashup has turned me 200% gay.”

And then the “SOS” video made news:

Here's the original ABBA video to compare to the Cher version. A good scholarship project would be to do screen-capture comparisons. No time for that right now but someday. Cher also performed the song on Ellen. And Cher is performing "Waterloo," "SOS" and "Fernando" in her latest New Zealand and Australia shows.

The following are excerpts from the reviews so far.