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The CHER mega-thread
- Thread starter G-Lexington
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Cher, Wu-Tang Clan Collaborate for Two Songs on Secret Album
'The Wu - Once Upon a Time in Shaolin' features unlikely vocals from iconic singer
By Jason Newman
May 7, 2014 8:55 AM ET
Cher has contributed vocals to two songs on Wu-Tang Clan's upcoming "secret album" The Wu - Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.
A representative for Cher declined to make the singer available for comment, but confirmed the collaboration to Rolling Stone. "She recorded her parts separately, so I don't believe there was direct interaction," said the rep.
In a video posted by Forbes on Tuesday, writer Zack O'Malley Greenberg traveled to Marrakesh, Morocco to "become the first civilian" to hear the album, of which the group is only pressing one copy and selling to the highest bidder. Tarik "Cilvaringz" Azzougarh, the album's producer, played one song on-camera featuring Ghostface Killah rhyming over pounding drums, dusty organ and a repeated female wail. At the end of the track, Cher improbably sings, "Wu-Tang, baby. They rock the world."
Cher's appearance had been hiding in plain sight since at least March, when the album's website noted that it "includes special guest appearances by Bonnie Jo Mason." In 1964, Cher released "Ringo, I Love You," her first solo single without Sonny Bono and a tribute to Ringo Starr, under the pseudonym of the same name.
'The Wu - Once Upon a Time in Shaolin' features unlikely vocals from iconic singer
By Jason Newman
May 7, 2014 8:55 AM ET
Cher has contributed vocals to two songs on Wu-Tang Clan's upcoming "secret album" The Wu - Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.
A representative for Cher declined to make the singer available for comment, but confirmed the collaboration to Rolling Stone. "She recorded her parts separately, so I don't believe there was direct interaction," said the rep.
In a video posted by Forbes on Tuesday, writer Zack O'Malley Greenberg traveled to Marrakesh, Morocco to "become the first civilian" to hear the album, of which the group is only pressing one copy and selling to the highest bidder. Tarik "Cilvaringz" Azzougarh, the album's producer, played one song on-camera featuring Ghostface Killah rhyming over pounding drums, dusty organ and a repeated female wail. At the end of the track, Cher improbably sings, "Wu-Tang, baby. They rock the world."
Cher's appearance had been hiding in plain sight since at least March, when the album's website noted that it "includes special guest appearances by Bonnie Jo Mason." In 1964, Cher released "Ringo, I Love You," her first solo single without Sonny Bono and a tribute to Ringo Starr, under the pseudonym of the same name.
SFLMAN
JUB Addict
I saw Cher on her "Dressed to Kill Tour" last Saturday with opening act, Cyndi Lauper. What a great show! I saw them both on Cher's Farewell Tour in 2002. Cher gives one of the best concert performances that I have seen. I saw both concerts in Ft Lauderdale, FL.
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Cher Claims Top Spot on Hot Tours with $15.5M in Revenue
NEWS
By Bob Allen, Nashville | May 29, 2014 5:01 PM EDT
Cher performs onstage during her 'Dressed To Kill' tour opener at US Airways Center on March 22, 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona
Getty
Cher takes her Dressed to Kill tour to No. 1 on the weekly ranking of Hot Tours with more than $15.5 million in revenue reported from the legendary entertainer’s ongoing North American trek. Sold out performances from April 23 through May 17 are included in this tally that adds another 177,239 sold tickets to the tour’s overall attendance total which now tops 340,000. Since launching in March, gross sales from the tour’s 27 shows have surpassed the $30 million mark.
Pop star Cyndi Lauper joined the show as the opening act beginning with the performance at First Niagara Center in Buffalo, N.Y., the first date in this week’s report. Among the 14 arenas in this tally, the top gross and attendance counts are claimed by two different venues. The Izod Center in the New Jersey/New York metropolitan area drew the largest crowd with 14,893 fans present on May 10, but Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center produced the top gross of $1,570,731, $17K more than Izod. The highest sales total since the tour began belongs to Toronto’s Air Canada Centre with $1.7 million in revenue from an April 7 performance.
The Dressed to Kill tour will continue its first North American leg through July 11, closing with a concert at San Diego’s Valley View Casino Center. After that performance Cher will be off the road for two months, but a second jaunt through the U.S. and Canada will kick off on Sept. 11 in Albany, N.Y. The second leg will stop in 11 U.S. cities during September and October and wrap with a return engagement to Toronto on Oct. 4 and 5. Veteran rockers Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo will return to provide support for the fall leg, just as they did for the tour’s first 13 concerts.
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Hugh Durrant's client: the one and only Cher.
His predecessor: the beloved Bob Mackie.
His assignment: Design 14 costumes for the pop superstar to wear for her lavish comeback tour — whose name, "Dressed to Kill," promises killer costumes.
And his time frame: only six weeks.
"It was a big task, I must say," costume designer Durrant, 67, said in a phone interview from London with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, ahead of the Dressed to Kill tour's stop Friday at the BMO Harris Bradley Center. "Coming up with 14 ideas for Cher is not the easiest thing to do. She has done everything.... I don't think I had a day off, and I was very, very tired by the time we opened."
It was a gig that was a lifetime in the making. Bitten by the theater bug when he was a child (actor Alan Rickman was a classmate), Durrant realized he was a terrible actor, but he was good at drawing and at 13 aspired to be a costume designer.
After 25 years of professional work, largely for theater productions, he met Cher's choreographer in 1994 while working on the West End musical "Copacabana."
"For (Cher's) Farewell tour (from 2002 to 2005), I was asked to do the dancers' costumes," Durrant said. "At one point when I was doing a fitting, I told Cher, 'When I first started in this business, I did plays by Shakespeare, Ibsen, (George Bernard) Shaw.' She said, 'Were all those costumes covered in beads, too?'"
Aside from one outfit, Cher's costumes weren't Durrant's work, but Mackie's, practically her sole designer since 1972. Mackie's flamboyant and often shimmering ensembles — most famously exemplified by the ornate black headdress and showgirl-inspired two-piece Cher wore at the 1986 Oscars — were nearly as responsible for her superstar status as the music itself. And they continue to inspire: London's the Independent just published an article about Cher's influence on new runway fashions, and Miley Cyrus wears vintage Mackie pieces on her current Bangerz tour.
"Bob is a great showman, and Cher is a great showman," Durrant said. "And neither of them are afraid of going out on a limb, but both of them are superb craftsmen in their own way."
So when Mackie dropped out of "Dressed to Kill" at the last minute ("My professional and business commitments were just too great," he told US Weekly), Cher was so distraught, she took to Twitter to tell fans she was "crying" and that her "heart was broken." Then the gig went to Durrant, who had already been designing the dancers' outfits.
"My first thought was panic," Durrant confessed. "Bob has been dressing that body for 40 years. He knows that body very well.... We were all starting from scratch, really, which is a bit frightening."
Beyond filling Mackie's massive shoes on a limited timetable, Durrant was expected to top him.
"I remember meeting Cher and her manager and asking, 'Why 14 (outfits)? The Farewell tour only had 11,'" Durrant recalled. "Cher said, 'You think I'm going to have less?'"
Between Cher and her backup dancers, the show has a whopping 150 costumes, with minimal duplicates.
"I think I probably did 500 drawings," Durrant said. "Just for her opening outfit, I did 10 or 11 different headdresses.... I thought there weren't enough beaders in Los Angeles to do this show. We were really up to the last minute. It was frightening."
At least Durrant had four assistants, "which is more than I've ever had on anything," he said. "And he had plenty of direct and honest input from Cher herself.
"It's her taste that you're working to all the time. Everything that is on that stage has been passed by her personally," Durrant said. "She has a very left-field way of looking at things, which is great fun. She stretches you. She doesn't hold back. She's always looking for how to make it more interesting and more extraordinary."
Despite incredible challenges, Durrant felt he ended up with some extraordinary pieces. Cher's outfit for the encore was the most difficult to make.
"I had this idea of making a very complicated cut," Durrant said. "It's meant to look like a long skirt that drapes in front, and frankly, what I drew fabric doesn't want to do," Durrant said. "We tried various fabrics, and the only fabric that worked was a double silk crepe. It's very heavy and it looks nice when you drape it, but it's an unusual fabric to use for a show like that.... It did cause the cutter nightmares."
While Durrant said he's proud of everything he did, his variation on Mackie's American Indian-inspired outfit for "Half-Breed" stands out.
"Bob's design had every color under the sun, but (for 'Dressed to Kill') the whole scene is meant to be a 1920s circus sideshow,... and Cher wanted it all to look faded," Durrant said. "So I used washed-out pinks and washed-out greens, these very passive colors. Really, it's a bit of a shock when you see that costume in those colors. But I think it's rather successful."
As are all of Durrant's designs, many critics have said.
"The reviews have all been lovely, and they've all mentioned the costumes, so presumably I haven't been a complete disaster," he said.
His predecessor: the beloved Bob Mackie.
His assignment: Design 14 costumes for the pop superstar to wear for her lavish comeback tour — whose name, "Dressed to Kill," promises killer costumes.
And his time frame: only six weeks.
"It was a big task, I must say," costume designer Durrant, 67, said in a phone interview from London with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, ahead of the Dressed to Kill tour's stop Friday at the BMO Harris Bradley Center. "Coming up with 14 ideas for Cher is not the easiest thing to do. She has done everything.... I don't think I had a day off, and I was very, very tired by the time we opened."
It was a gig that was a lifetime in the making. Bitten by the theater bug when he was a child (actor Alan Rickman was a classmate), Durrant realized he was a terrible actor, but he was good at drawing and at 13 aspired to be a costume designer.
After 25 years of professional work, largely for theater productions, he met Cher's choreographer in 1994 while working on the West End musical "Copacabana."
"For (Cher's) Farewell tour (from 2002 to 2005), I was asked to do the dancers' costumes," Durrant said. "At one point when I was doing a fitting, I told Cher, 'When I first started in this business, I did plays by Shakespeare, Ibsen, (George Bernard) Shaw.' She said, 'Were all those costumes covered in beads, too?'"
Aside from one outfit, Cher's costumes weren't Durrant's work, but Mackie's, practically her sole designer since 1972. Mackie's flamboyant and often shimmering ensembles — most famously exemplified by the ornate black headdress and showgirl-inspired two-piece Cher wore at the 1986 Oscars — were nearly as responsible for her superstar status as the music itself. And they continue to inspire: London's the Independent just published an article about Cher's influence on new runway fashions, and Miley Cyrus wears vintage Mackie pieces on her current Bangerz tour.
"Bob is a great showman, and Cher is a great showman," Durrant said. "And neither of them are afraid of going out on a limb, but both of them are superb craftsmen in their own way."
So when Mackie dropped out of "Dressed to Kill" at the last minute ("My professional and business commitments were just too great," he told US Weekly), Cher was so distraught, she took to Twitter to tell fans she was "crying" and that her "heart was broken." Then the gig went to Durrant, who had already been designing the dancers' outfits.
"My first thought was panic," Durrant confessed. "Bob has been dressing that body for 40 years. He knows that body very well.... We were all starting from scratch, really, which is a bit frightening."
Beyond filling Mackie's massive shoes on a limited timetable, Durrant was expected to top him.
"I remember meeting Cher and her manager and asking, 'Why 14 (outfits)? The Farewell tour only had 11,'" Durrant recalled. "Cher said, 'You think I'm going to have less?'"
Between Cher and her backup dancers, the show has a whopping 150 costumes, with minimal duplicates.
"I think I probably did 500 drawings," Durrant said. "Just for her opening outfit, I did 10 or 11 different headdresses.... I thought there weren't enough beaders in Los Angeles to do this show. We were really up to the last minute. It was frightening."
At least Durrant had four assistants, "which is more than I've ever had on anything," he said. "And he had plenty of direct and honest input from Cher herself.
"It's her taste that you're working to all the time. Everything that is on that stage has been passed by her personally," Durrant said. "She has a very left-field way of looking at things, which is great fun. She stretches you. She doesn't hold back. She's always looking for how to make it more interesting and more extraordinary."
Despite incredible challenges, Durrant felt he ended up with some extraordinary pieces. Cher's outfit for the encore was the most difficult to make.
"I had this idea of making a very complicated cut," Durrant said. "It's meant to look like a long skirt that drapes in front, and frankly, what I drew fabric doesn't want to do," Durrant said. "We tried various fabrics, and the only fabric that worked was a double silk crepe. It's very heavy and it looks nice when you drape it, but it's an unusual fabric to use for a show like that.... It did cause the cutter nightmares."
While Durrant said he's proud of everything he did, his variation on Mackie's American Indian-inspired outfit for "Half-Breed" stands out.
"Bob's design had every color under the sun, but (for 'Dressed to Kill') the whole scene is meant to be a 1920s circus sideshow,... and Cher wanted it all to look faded," Durrant said. "So I used washed-out pinks and washed-out greens, these very passive colors. Really, it's a bit of a shock when you see that costume in those colors. But I think it's rather successful."
As are all of Durrant's designs, many critics have said.
"The reviews have all been lovely, and they've all mentioned the costumes, so presumably I haven't been a complete disaster," he said.
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Some sketches of Hugh Durrant's designs:
http://www.jsonline.com/supergallery?id=262006061&ddd=y&item=159756551#
http://www.jsonline.com/supergallery?id=262006061&ddd=y&item=159756551#
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- Jul 3, 2011
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I'm so tempted. But I don't want to have shitty seats.
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What I Know Now
Cher Gets the Last Word
Reveling in a hit album and a sold-out tour, the superstar opens up about her staying power, her private world and why she avoids mirrors
by Alanna Nash, AARP The Magazine, August 5, 2014
Late at night, she gets social, holed up in the bedroom of her eye-popping Moorish-castle-meets-Venetian-palazzo high on a bluff in Malibu. Stretched out on a bed that once belonged to the wife of Rudolph Valentino, Cher turns to Twitter to share what's on her mind. Nothing seems off-limits. (An example: "How did you celebrate Madonna's birthday?" someone asks. Cher's answer: "I got a colonic.")
Late at night, she also chats by phone with reporters. "I'm eating while talking to you," she says in that famous throaty contralto that long ago made her the Goddess of Pop. A giggle. "Peanut butter. Crunchy, of course!"
Cher's unabashedly frank attitude endears her to millions of fans. She's as witty as she is physical — and always, always sexy. An intriguing blend of Armenian-American and Cherokee, she's also extremely adept at staying in the game. Her reign as an undisputed diva is among the longest in show business. Now 68, she was just 19 when she hit the national stage with then-husband Sonny Bono. She has won a best-actress Oscar, an Emmy, three Golden Globes and a Grammy. And she has scored a No. 1 record in each of the past six decades. Her 26th studio album, Closer to the Truth, released last fall, was her first in more than 11 years and entered the Billboard 200 chart at No. 3, making it her highest-charting album ever. As she rightfully boasts, "I'm so the phoenix."
Though she swore that her 2002 Living Proof: The Farewell Tour would be her last, she's back with her Dressed to Kill Tour, with headdresses as tall as buildings and elaborate costumes that cast her as a Greek gladiator, a gypsy queen and a Byzantine divine being. She attributes her success to her perfectionism. "I'm not a confident person," she says, "and I'm really not a Cher fan. But I want to make sure I'll do a great job, so I go balls to the wall and try to do every single thing I can."
Says Stanley Tucci, a costar of her 2010 film Burlesque, "The most remarkable thing about Cher is that she constantly reinvents herself but maintains a strong sense of identity."
Becoming Cher
She's been her own person almost since her birth as Cherilyn Sarkisian, in El Centro, Calif., the daughter of a truck driver with a drug habit and a struggling actress-model-singer. Cher's parents divorced before she was a toddler, and her mother, Georgia Holt, briefly placed her child in an orphanage. Holt remarried several times and produced another daughter, Georganne; stepfathers were rarely in the picture, and Cher routinely flirted with trouble. "When I was a kid, my friend and I ran away and hopped a train," she says. "I was always this strange child who wanted more adventure than was allowed. I think I learned a lot from my mother," Cher adds. "She really didn't take s--- from anybody."
Yet the two often butted heads. Holt was fine with Cher's dating Warren Beatty at age 16, but hit the ceiling when her daughter dropped out of high school and moved in with Bono, a married songwriter and record promoter 11 years her senior. Says Cher, "She kept going, 'Why are you going to throw your life away on him? You have so much potential, and you're so special.' "
Sonny & Cher
But Bono saw Cher's talent and focused her "scattered energy," she says. They married in 1964. The duo's infectious pop hits cut across all strata, and they captured 30 million weekly viewers with The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour. But the marriage came unwound in 1972, largely, according to Cher, because she grew up, literally: "He didn't like me older, and I mean, like, 25." He cheated on her, and when they dissolved their business partnership, he sued her. Still, she forgave him, she says, "because we had a relationship that defied all kinds of things."
When Bono died in a skiing accident in 1998, it was their daughter, Chastity, who informed Cher, out of the country, via telephone. "I have never heard my mom as devastated by anything," says Chaz, 45, as he is now known. "Their core bond and that first-love thing just kicked in for her."
Even today, Cher sometimes feels Sonny around her: "I have this fabulous chandelier in my sitting room, and it goes off and on all the time for no reason. I always think it's him messing with me, because that is what he would do."
Cher, the Mother
Chastity had come out to her parents as a lesbian before Sonny's death, and Cher did not take it well at first — though she has long been revered as an icon in the gay community. She eventually found acceptance, even after Chastity underwent gender-reassignment surgery, a process finalized in 2010. Cher remembers, however, the sadness she felt one day when she phoned Chaz. "He'd forgotten to erase his old outgoing message," she says. "I thought, 'I'm never going to hear my daughter's voice [in person] again.' " Today, Cher advises parents with children wrestling with sexual identity to "have faith and hold on. It's scary because you don't know how you're going to feel."
She refuses to comment on her relationship with Elijah Blue, 38, her musician son from her marriage to rocker Gregg Allman in the '70s, but the two are reportedly estranged. Yet, Cher notes, she and Allman have stayed in touch. In fact, she says she has remained friends with almost all her old beaux. She now dates occasionally but keeps it quiet because "being Mr. Cher" is hard on a man's ego. In answer to why she often dates younger men, she says, "Older men rarely liked me. If it wasn't for younger men, I would never have a date."
Pushing Past Insecurities
She concedes that she isn't always easy to be around. "Depression just gallops through our family," she says. Eating right and exercise give her stamina, but, she adds, "Every once in a while I think, 'Jesus, you're so old! How did this happen?' I haven't looked in the mirror in years. The only time I was happy with the way I looked was when I was, like, 40 to 45."
Yet she pushes past her insecurities because she is still full of creative ideas. There's a play about her in development, in which she just might take a turn as herself. "I'm also writing this thing that starts with my grandmother's life," she says, "and ends with my mother getting off the table, because she was going to get an abortion with me." Her voice leaps with excitement. "It should be a film!
"Diane Warren wrote 'You Haven't Seen the Last of Me' for Burlesque," Cher continues, "and that's the closest to who I am. I don't intend to step aside. This is the first generation that's said, 'We're not going to roll over and play dead because we're a certain age.' It's like saying to the Rolling Stones, 'OK, you've had your time in the sun. Now go put on some plaid shorts and play golf.' " A beat. And then hysterical laughter.
The old joke has it that when a nuclear holocaust destroys the world, the only things to endure will be cockroaches and Cher. She's stopped asking herself why she's such a survivor, but she knows she is. And we do, too.
Cher Gets the Last Word
Reveling in a hit album and a sold-out tour, the superstar opens up about her staying power, her private world and why she avoids mirrors
by Alanna Nash, AARP The Magazine, August 5, 2014
Late at night, she gets social, holed up in the bedroom of her eye-popping Moorish-castle-meets-Venetian-palazzo high on a bluff in Malibu. Stretched out on a bed that once belonged to the wife of Rudolph Valentino, Cher turns to Twitter to share what's on her mind. Nothing seems off-limits. (An example: "How did you celebrate Madonna's birthday?" someone asks. Cher's answer: "I got a colonic.")
Late at night, she also chats by phone with reporters. "I'm eating while talking to you," she says in that famous throaty contralto that long ago made her the Goddess of Pop. A giggle. "Peanut butter. Crunchy, of course!"
Cher's unabashedly frank attitude endears her to millions of fans. She's as witty as she is physical — and always, always sexy. An intriguing blend of Armenian-American and Cherokee, she's also extremely adept at staying in the game. Her reign as an undisputed diva is among the longest in show business. Now 68, she was just 19 when she hit the national stage with then-husband Sonny Bono. She has won a best-actress Oscar, an Emmy, three Golden Globes and a Grammy. And she has scored a No. 1 record in each of the past six decades. Her 26th studio album, Closer to the Truth, released last fall, was her first in more than 11 years and entered the Billboard 200 chart at No. 3, making it her highest-charting album ever. As she rightfully boasts, "I'm so the phoenix."
Though she swore that her 2002 Living Proof: The Farewell Tour would be her last, she's back with her Dressed to Kill Tour, with headdresses as tall as buildings and elaborate costumes that cast her as a Greek gladiator, a gypsy queen and a Byzantine divine being. She attributes her success to her perfectionism. "I'm not a confident person," she says, "and I'm really not a Cher fan. But I want to make sure I'll do a great job, so I go balls to the wall and try to do every single thing I can."
Says Stanley Tucci, a costar of her 2010 film Burlesque, "The most remarkable thing about Cher is that she constantly reinvents herself but maintains a strong sense of identity."
Becoming Cher
She's been her own person almost since her birth as Cherilyn Sarkisian, in El Centro, Calif., the daughter of a truck driver with a drug habit and a struggling actress-model-singer. Cher's parents divorced before she was a toddler, and her mother, Georgia Holt, briefly placed her child in an orphanage. Holt remarried several times and produced another daughter, Georganne; stepfathers were rarely in the picture, and Cher routinely flirted with trouble. "When I was a kid, my friend and I ran away and hopped a train," she says. "I was always this strange child who wanted more adventure than was allowed. I think I learned a lot from my mother," Cher adds. "She really didn't take s--- from anybody."
Yet the two often butted heads. Holt was fine with Cher's dating Warren Beatty at age 16, but hit the ceiling when her daughter dropped out of high school and moved in with Bono, a married songwriter and record promoter 11 years her senior. Says Cher, "She kept going, 'Why are you going to throw your life away on him? You have so much potential, and you're so special.' "
Sonny & Cher
But Bono saw Cher's talent and focused her "scattered energy," she says. They married in 1964. The duo's infectious pop hits cut across all strata, and they captured 30 million weekly viewers with The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour. But the marriage came unwound in 1972, largely, according to Cher, because she grew up, literally: "He didn't like me older, and I mean, like, 25." He cheated on her, and when they dissolved their business partnership, he sued her. Still, she forgave him, she says, "because we had a relationship that defied all kinds of things."
When Bono died in a skiing accident in 1998, it was their daughter, Chastity, who informed Cher, out of the country, via telephone. "I have never heard my mom as devastated by anything," says Chaz, 45, as he is now known. "Their core bond and that first-love thing just kicked in for her."
Even today, Cher sometimes feels Sonny around her: "I have this fabulous chandelier in my sitting room, and it goes off and on all the time for no reason. I always think it's him messing with me, because that is what he would do."
Cher, the Mother
Chastity had come out to her parents as a lesbian before Sonny's death, and Cher did not take it well at first — though she has long been revered as an icon in the gay community. She eventually found acceptance, even after Chastity underwent gender-reassignment surgery, a process finalized in 2010. Cher remembers, however, the sadness she felt one day when she phoned Chaz. "He'd forgotten to erase his old outgoing message," she says. "I thought, 'I'm never going to hear my daughter's voice [in person] again.' " Today, Cher advises parents with children wrestling with sexual identity to "have faith and hold on. It's scary because you don't know how you're going to feel."
She refuses to comment on her relationship with Elijah Blue, 38, her musician son from her marriage to rocker Gregg Allman in the '70s, but the two are reportedly estranged. Yet, Cher notes, she and Allman have stayed in touch. In fact, she says she has remained friends with almost all her old beaux. She now dates occasionally but keeps it quiet because "being Mr. Cher" is hard on a man's ego. In answer to why she often dates younger men, she says, "Older men rarely liked me. If it wasn't for younger men, I would never have a date."
Pushing Past Insecurities
She concedes that she isn't always easy to be around. "Depression just gallops through our family," she says. Eating right and exercise give her stamina, but, she adds, "Every once in a while I think, 'Jesus, you're so old! How did this happen?' I haven't looked in the mirror in years. The only time I was happy with the way I looked was when I was, like, 40 to 45."
Yet she pushes past her insecurities because she is still full of creative ideas. There's a play about her in development, in which she just might take a turn as herself. "I'm also writing this thing that starts with my grandmother's life," she says, "and ends with my mother getting off the table, because she was going to get an abortion with me." Her voice leaps with excitement. "It should be a film!
"Diane Warren wrote 'You Haven't Seen the Last of Me' for Burlesque," Cher continues, "and that's the closest to who I am. I don't intend to step aside. This is the first generation that's said, 'We're not going to roll over and play dead because we're a certain age.' It's like saying to the Rolling Stones, 'OK, you've had your time in the sun. Now go put on some plaid shorts and play golf.' " A beat. And then hysterical laughter.
The old joke has it that when a nuclear holocaust destroys the world, the only things to endure will be cockroaches and Cher. She's stopped asking herself why she's such a survivor, but she knows she is. And we do, too.
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Rewinding The Charts: In 1965, Sonny & Cher 'Got' To No. 1
ARTICLESCOLUMNSCHART BEAT
By Keith Caulfield | August 14, 2014 2:05 PM EDT
Sonny and Cher in London at the HIlton Hotel on August 3, 1965.
Douglas Miller/Keystone/Getty Images
The couple's signature ode to devotional love topped the Hot 100 on Aug. 14, 1965
Sonny & Cher's "I Got You Babe" may have been their debut hit on the Billboard Hot 100, but it wasn't the first time they were heard on smash singles.
Sonny Bono was working for producer Phil Spector in the early 1960s, and, after meeting Cher in 1962, the pair sang background for Spector on the Ronettes' 1963 hit "Be My Baby" and the Righteous Brothers' 1964 chart-topper "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'."
The couple soon signed with Atco Records and released "I Got You Babe," written and produced by Bono, in 1965. The tune topped the Hot 100 on Aug. 14, 1965 – 49 years ago today – and spent three total weeks at No. 1. It was the first of 18 hits for the duo, who, according to Bono's memoir "And the Beat Goes On," didn't marry until 1969.
The pair's onstage banter turned the twosome into variety TV show stars in 1971 with CBS TV's The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour. The same year, Cher notched her first solo No. 1 with "Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves."
By 1977, however, the couple – which had divorced in 1975 – was off the air and went its separate ways. Bono became the mayor of Palm Springs, Calif., from 1988 to 1992 and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994, where he served until his death in 1998 following a skiing accident.
Cher sailed on to a spectacular solo career, earning six straight decades of No. 1 singles on Billboard's charts. (She's also collected an Academy Award, Emmy Award and a Grammy Award.) She celebrated her highest-charting solo album ever on the Billboard 200 with Closer to the Truth, which debuted and peaked at No. 3 last October.
Though Bono is gone, some of that old Sonny & Cher magic can still be seen on stage every night during Cher's current tour: she sings a virtual duet with him on "I Got You Babe."
ARTICLESCOLUMNSCHART BEAT
By Keith Caulfield | August 14, 2014 2:05 PM EDT
Sonny and Cher in London at the HIlton Hotel on August 3, 1965.
Douglas Miller/Keystone/Getty Images
The couple's signature ode to devotional love topped the Hot 100 on Aug. 14, 1965
Sonny & Cher's "I Got You Babe" may have been their debut hit on the Billboard Hot 100, but it wasn't the first time they were heard on smash singles.
Sonny Bono was working for producer Phil Spector in the early 1960s, and, after meeting Cher in 1962, the pair sang background for Spector on the Ronettes' 1963 hit "Be My Baby" and the Righteous Brothers' 1964 chart-topper "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'."
The couple soon signed with Atco Records and released "I Got You Babe," written and produced by Bono, in 1965. The tune topped the Hot 100 on Aug. 14, 1965 – 49 years ago today – and spent three total weeks at No. 1. It was the first of 18 hits for the duo, who, according to Bono's memoir "And the Beat Goes On," didn't marry until 1969.
The pair's onstage banter turned the twosome into variety TV show stars in 1971 with CBS TV's The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour. The same year, Cher notched her first solo No. 1 with "Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves."
By 1977, however, the couple – which had divorced in 1975 – was off the air and went its separate ways. Bono became the mayor of Palm Springs, Calif., from 1988 to 1992 and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994, where he served until his death in 1998 following a skiing accident.
Cher sailed on to a spectacular solo career, earning six straight decades of No. 1 singles on Billboard's charts. (She's also collected an Academy Award, Emmy Award and a Grammy Award.) She celebrated her highest-charting solo album ever on the Billboard 200 with Closer to the Truth, which debuted and peaked at No. 3 last October.
Though Bono is gone, some of that old Sonny & Cher magic can still be seen on stage every night during Cher's current tour: she sings a virtual duet with him on "I Got You Babe."
IceColdLover
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Saw her back in April with my mom. Pat Benatar opened for her and she was electric. I get to see both of them again with my best friend next month since he missed out on the April date. Can't wait.
IceColdLover
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Favorite Cher song?
Pick a song from the poll or specify which one you like in a comment.
Pick a song from the poll or specify which one you like in a comment.
IceColdLover
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Re: Favorite Cher song?
"Save Up All Your Tears" is one of my favs, as well as the 1987 version of "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)".
"Save Up All Your Tears" is one of my favs, as well as the 1987 version of "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)".
Maklaar13
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Re: Favorite Cher song?
I think Cher is brilliant, though I am not her biggest fan. Her album "It's A Man's World" is by far my favorite, it is so underrated by many though I feel is amazing. From that album is almost impossible to pick just one song, so I give you my favorite three songs, One by One, Angels Running and the super amazing The Gunman. Every once in a while I have to play The Gunman because is such a beautifully crafted song, her flawless singing and the equally flawless orchestration by Anne Dudley, go get it!
I think Cher is brilliant, though I am not her biggest fan. Her album "It's A Man's World" is by far my favorite, it is so underrated by many though I feel is amazing. From that album is almost impossible to pick just one song, so I give you my favorite three songs, One by One, Angels Running and the super amazing The Gunman. Every once in a while I have to play The Gunman because is such a beautifully crafted song, her flawless singing and the equally flawless orchestration by Anne Dudley, go get it!
