Cher - Cherished (1977)

Cherokees ... and other nightmares

If Cher's reunion with Sonny on TV land in '76 had done well enough, getting back together with Snuff the following year was a disaster. Failing commercially was nothing new, but to make a bad solo album was the kind of shock Cher can no longer express these days without 3 months warning (allegedly). Her career at this point may have been bumpier than her original nose, but you could never accuse her of not sticking those vampire teeth into everything she put her mind to, which is where Cherished ultimately fails. She wasn't keen on the idea of returning to her old narrative-style pop, and told her producer "it's not my bag anymore" which could explain why the material she ended up with didn't hold much weight. Snuff himself later described the album as "a nonentity". The Harry Langdon front cover re-instated Cher as the friendly gypsy with a history next door, but no one was buying it quite literally. The singer did not enjoy making the record, and the sense of deflation is evident. The album did not chart.


Pirate was a minor return to the top 100, peaking at a respectable #93, but the backtrack track finds no treasure whatsoever and Cher fails to seize any sense of the world-conquering form of her biggest hits from the decade. Truly criminal, etc. A quick scan of all (*echoes* ALL *echoes*) the men who have been in Cher's life (except for the one that sold bagels in the late 80s) haven't exactly warranted any ballad called He Was Beautiful. Like most of those relationships, the question of bad judgement and of when it will end loom large. Cher bellows bizarre cautionary tales where a blue-eyed Cherokee rebels against "the tribal laws" (War Paint & Soft Feathers), and a secretary turned human mattress rock-star groupie who "always wakes up alone" (She Loves To Hear The Music). Clearly cut from the same cloth as Half Breed and Dark Lady, but the material was wearing out and thin. L.A Plane is more of a car crash. To offer faint praise, Love The Devil Out of Ya and Again are minor highlights. The former wakes up with someone about to do a runner on her. "Poor white trash" ballads Dixie (droppin' her hot cottons on the floor), Send The Man Over and Thunderstorm (with its porch-light sex cues) are yet more whore bore. I'm convinced Snuff Garett and his songwriters were misogynists by this point.

Cher's first attempt to turn back time was a gigantic miss-fire. The songs are pale imitations of her 70s number 1s, and simply don't warrant much discussion as far as I'm concerned. Nope, nothing to see here. I wonder if a duets album with a heroine addict will do the trick? NEXT!

Cher - Dark Lady (1974)

He hit the gass

US #69, CAN #20

The last of Cher's three solo albums that housed her 70s US #1s, and the least successful. Finally divorcing Sonny, and going public after two years of separation, this would be the start of Cher's constant press about ill-advised lovers, mysterious illnesses, divorce and custody battles. Cher remained a top draw, winning a Golden Globe that year for The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour (which would now finish). Another mixture of theatrical pop and standards, the execution is certainly slicker than ever. If the formula is predictable, Cher herself explained:

I could do a whole album with Snuffy [Garrett] in three days. I'd sing each song through two or three times and, if you got it, it was on to the next one ... We were on the road, I was recording, and we were doing the Sonny &; Cher Show, all at the same time! I was fried! I did the best that I could [fitting] each obligation into what little time was allotted.

With a voice that hits you like one, gutsy opener Train of Thought is the singer at full pelt. It's almost a straight-forward rocker, but as ever comes off its hinges somewhat as another deranged theatrical joyride. Perhaps the raspy aggression lacked the 'gypsy fatale' slant and threw too much caution to the wind for record buyers, but many Cher fans consider this a 'first class ticket' and one of her most underrated singles. The more languid I Saw A Man And He Danced With His Wife isn't quite so in your face, and was a moderate domestic hit. It will draw you in, but doesn't draw too much attention to itself, much like the jealousy of watching from the sidelines with the deflation of defeat. Make The Man Love Me is standard fare for Cher in this decade, but does the job very well. The longing Cher conveys is slightly tempestuous compared to the soul-grit of Dusty Springfield's version (recorded for a shelved 1972 album). Yet another pop love ballad Just What I've Been Looking For is certainly no grand prize, but sits well as a slightly country-tinged album track. Dixie Girl has a lush acoustic setting, the narrative is a table-waiting woman "passing herself around", but (much like 99% of her fan-base) it's far too passive for its own good.

Despite the set-up of Gypsies (1971), Half-Breed (1973) and Dark Lady being similar, the latter refined the penchant for crass dramatic flourishes on the lead single. It's lurid tale builds to a gory climax that serves as a role-reversal of sorts, where Cher herself becomes the dark lady in question after shooting the fortune teller warning and scorning her to leave town. Cher herself was embarrassed by this song, possibly because it sounded nothing like the singer-songwriter rock music she longed to sing, and perhaps because she was now keen to shed an old image tied to her connection with what's his face. It would be nearly 25 years before Cher would perform her vintage solo number ones again on tour.


The scene of a dark and morbid environment lit by candles and inhabited by women driven insane by lust and revenge is high class trash personified. The stabbing orchestra simulates the overwhelming urges of Cher's sordid tale, as if it were mere ritual, and the wanton abandon of her graphic, sharp, shuddering and bullet-proof vocal is almost too Cher to function. The image of a pair of legs wrapped in fish-nets emerging from a limousine in this ostentatious place she identifies as New Orleans always excited me as a young boy - I think it was my own version of Dolly Parton's story about admiring the glamour of her local town's prostitute as a young girl. Cher's cackling recital sounds like she's frothing at the mouth. The fade out increases the sense of doom with an open-ended finale even after the punchline. Cher has said the song is "ridiculous" and yes, yes it is!


Rescue Me. Yes, that one. Sounding like she recorded it in 15 minutes maximum, the styling has all the trappings of what you'd expect Cher to open her and Sonny's television show with, and drag queens could pick a worse song to practice their imitations with. Released as a promotional single only. Of all Cher's less than original songs chosen to cover, there is something rather special about What'll I Do. For one, the production brings into focus the same elements arranged so wonderfully on her hit The Way of Love. The voice is soft and sounds absolutely miserable. I unashamedly love this.


Bitchy tribute to Bette Midler, Miss Subway of 1952 is the most affected Cher has ever been on record, sounding like an extension of her own infamous Laverne persona. "To my idol, the Divine, let's hope it never happens to us" sounds sincere enough, but with the way their relations have plaid out over the years I'm rather fond of assuming the passive-aggression is all aimed at the Hocus Pocus star even if it clearly wasn't. The story between Cher and Bette is an interesting one. Very much peers, they were friends of sorts and Midler appeared on Cher's solo TV show to boot. 


Sticking the actual boot in, at a 1998 American awards show whilst Believe was taking its time to properly take off in America, Bette took to the stage and remarked that at least she wasn't someone who used to be be famous trying to be famous again. Cher's 1980 Take Me Home tour even featured drag queens impersonating both Bette and Diana Ross. Nevertheless, on this song Cher's voice plays to the era it pursues, and also playfully subtly mimics Midler. "She's gotten just a little saggy and her skin's a trifle baggy" is the kind of dialogue exchanged between female Hollywood rivals I love (and why Death Becomes Her is one of my top 5 films).

Bob Stone (Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves) wrote the crisp closer Apples Don't Fall Far From The Tree, and it shows. I'd have threw it off as a single. This is no sequel to the song he is known for, but the chorus is one of those blue-sky pop moments. If it's too straight-laced for some, there is the husky "hey-honey" refrain and an opening line about Cher learning to paint her face from her mother, which takes on a new resonance after the Burlesque scene Cher wrote herself that she based on her real-life mother showing her the basics in slap (with Christina Aguilera of all people playing the student).

Despite the slight disappointment of Dark Lady's eventual sales, Cher was a free woman and her next musical endeavors are arguably the finest of her entire career.

Cher - Half-Breed (1973)

'nuff said

US #28, CAN #21, NOR #18

After emasculating him for years (by letting him be seen in daylight *plays audience laughter* etc), Cher abandoned Sonny in the first area of her life, that we know of. Her solo career. She just outgrew him (*plays audience laughter* etc). This project reunited her with Snuff Garett after a whopping one album without him after the guy refused to work with her 'worser' half. With an album called Half-Breed, it's not that surprising that the reviews were mixed too. Be that as it may, she got her second solo US #1 out of it, and the album was fairly successful (selling well over 500,000 copies in 1974 alone).

Stomping hollerback anthem Half-Breed pours scorn on American racists as if they were her own husband. Nobody deserves that.  Cher's performance of her mega hit on her and Sonny's TV show all the while half-naked and on a horse remains one of her most iconic images of all time. Obviously having only been with Sonny, she'd never been with a stallion at that point before (*plays audience laughter* etc). That Carousel Man did not become a hit single is deceptive, for it was a sizeable radio hit (peaking at #11 on the airplay charts). It's one of Cher's very finest moments. The dramatic swirl of the strings, the clattering punctuation, the momentum of the fanciful narrative itself (there's been a murder, of course) and the barmy chorus are such a hoot. Cher and her label chose 3 recent US #1s to cover - Paul and Linda McCartney's My Love, the Bee-Gee's How Can You Mend A Broken Heart and The Beatles's The Long and Winding Road. All are pretty standard. Cher won't change your opinion of the songs, but for me she does make them tolerable at the very least (since I'd never go near them otherwise). 

A song by Seals and Crofts (who can forget THOSE rogues?) called Ruby Jean & Billy Lee is re-written by Cher herself and re-named Chastity Sun, and it would seem Chastity had been involved in gender-switching operation a lot earlier than most people realize. Like Chaz himself, there's not really any throbbing arousal, but one can't help but check it out just to see what on earth is going on. I've got to say though, it's gorgeous. With a song so personal, it's quite a unique composition for her.  

Doubling the amount of people actually reading this thread, Two People Clinging To A Thread is not actually the theme tune of Diva Incarnate. Revving up interest in a blog these days (the format is dead let's face it) is more of a stretch than her actual face (allegedly). Melodramatic and lavish, I'm punching the sofa just thinking about it.  One of my all-time favourite Cher songs after it turned up on one of her budget compilations that I bought, The Greatest Song I Ever Heard is tender and framed by a beautifully lilting arrangement. Because I think the song is so, well, great, I can totally forgive her for getting just a bit too carried away with all her mannerisms.

Even beard's have feelings, David's Song was written especially for her, but probably isn't about David Geffen despite singing about a connection to a would-be lover through making music. "Won't you come and boogie woogie with meh babeh" is worthy of Mel B on a 70s themed hen night coming on to the topless waiter handing out shots. Easy-listening fare of Melody moderately lives up to its name.  Cher's This God-Forsaken Day sounds a bit like Dusty's Nothing Has Been Proved in its verses, and both are rainy documents of a list of events or stages unfolding. Cher's day involved "baking a tray of muffins" and washing dishes, but with a voice so masculine I doubt feminism was even a concern.

Mostly MOR, there are enough slick-pop highlights, and it's an essential document of music recorded from one of her most popular periods. 

Cher - Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves (1971)

Cover girl

US #16, CAN #14

With a voice that hurls and hits you like a bowling ball, Cher's strike rate was at its 70s commercial peak here, becoming her best-selling album until Heart of Stone nearly 20 years, and half as many procedures, later.  After the career-saving small-screen success of The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, and quickly following the duo's hit single All I Ever Need Is You (belonging to their very best album no less), Cher completely reversed her fortunes. Her self-conscious decision to smooth out the harsh vibrato of her 60s gravelly bark, by taking what is known in the industry as singing lessons, has now reached full bloom and we have a string of solo albums all ready to showcase just how far she has came. The album was first named simply Cher, but soon chased after the runaway success of its first single by re-naming itself Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves. I would love dearly to correct the spelling, but Cher is after all one of those filthy dyslexics I guess. Although judging by the album cover, maybe she just needed to cut that fringe.

Below: The Way of Love (US #7, CAN #5)
Opening with an elegant ripple, the poised, moist and plaintive The Way of Love is a meditative waltz of lush orchestra, lyrics of a self-preservation nature and Cher's sultry foghorn that scolds as much as it laments. The key change prompts some serious gusto from the singer and it's hard to tell if her heart-felt advice is loud and emotional or just loud and resentful. Inventing homosexuality, Cher shocked the world by ambiguously singing "then what will ya do when he sets you free, just the way that you said goodbye to me?" I think we all now know why Cher didn't handle Chastity coming out as a lesbian: Chas was simply picking her mom's non-surgery wounds open, the selfish buffalo-shouldered bitch. Regardless, the song is immeasurably enriched with her dulcet tone and the soaring roar at the very end can finish anyone off regardless of any gender known to man.

The jaunty stream of slick pop sleazy tender that is the currency of Gypsys, Tramps And Thieves is a speedy riverbed of swirling rhythms sprinkled on top of one of Cher's most luxurious, absurd and sensual vocals of all time. The fact that she's singing rather dark lyrics (fondly remembering her mother stripping as men gathered around throwing money at her, with even Grandpa in on it, is more than a tad sinister) whilst tying it together in such a jolly manner is quite an achievement. Ahead of her time as always, "three months later I'm a gal in trouble" glamorized teen pregnancy decades before MTV. Smirking, sneering and shuddering ruefully "I was 16 he, was 21" with a cold horror that makes me wonder if Cher's shell-shock tale was yet another victim of a certain shell-suit BBC predator, which takes suffering for one's art to another level (he did introduce her on TOTP to sing I Got You Babe). Originally called Gypsies, Tramps and White Trash, the title was soon adjusted on the advice of producer Snuff Garrett. Without a doubt, one of her three signature solo songs (even Sonny & Cher arguably had two of those). Her mom was a mattress, her daddy legged it, but she's having a ball putting it down to experience.

Her affectionate delivery of He Ain't Heavy ... He's My Daughter is the kind of smooth transition Chaz could only dream of. The song may seem lazy or slightly corny, but I happen to think it plays to the androgyny of her grimacing croon. With her gravy-gargling chortle simmering at peak temperature, Fire & Rain is unmissable. "Oh look down upon me Jesus" sounds like a knowing comment regarding her own career resurrection. I'm imagining I'm In The Middle wasn't Diana Ross's favourite dinner party soundtrack when she, Cher and their (presumably not shared) lover Gene Simmons all lived together by the end of the decade. The sulky verses are saying "don't test me", but Cher's still the doormat on the chorus ("and it looks like a lose again"). The chorus is still sung in a happy 'too medicated to know any better' sort of fashion.

Bellowing hot and cold, Touch And Go's dream-some verses pour like wine before the anthemic chorus goes off the boil, mixing the exquisite range of her voice to beautiful effect. Her unique emotional access, or excess, makes this an easy highlight. On I Hate To Sleep Alone, time travels back to her musical beginnings and boy is it a delight. Sounding exactly like many of her 60s strokes it continues to amaze you anyway. The vocal command is a walk in the park. When You Find Out Where You're Going is worth bearing with as it really does get going. With a skipping tempo that flows into a familiar folk-pop fantasia, it's all very nice and well, but the final 18 seconds are particularly rousing. Wailing in an indescribably moving fashion.

He'll Never Know is softly deflated, and aided with a spiraling piano going around in the same circles as her emotive state of confusion. Her voice shudders under its own immense volume. Sign of the times ("the husband and the son I have built my life around"), it's not something I even try to get behind, but the full storm of her bulldozing melancholia of that awakening chorus has always been charming. The slightly corny backing vocals rain down like grated cheese, but I can't pretend I don't love the theatrical presentation. From a shy beginning, it's a heroic climb. An emphatic delivery of the One Honest Man's chorus (hollering furiously "why can't I find and honest man?" a good few times) gives a lovelorn composition a seething execution that seems to answer her own question. Sonny had better duck. The way she sings the verses, through gritted teeth or with deflated resignation, rings the emotion out of this song like a sponge.

With her career finally back on track, what could possibly go wrong?