Changing with the times keeps Cher atop charts
By Edna Gundersen
USA Today
After nearly 40 years of ups and downs in music, Cher is surprised to find herself once again climbing the charts in the Sisyphean cycle that defines her career.
Gannett News Service
"I'm surprised to be anywhere," she says. "I've been surprised with every decade. If you listen to the critics, I've been on my way out again and again. I feel the reason I'm still working is that I have a strange metaphysical get-out-of-jail-free card. Kids like me, and I'm not sure why."
When Cher was asked to do a dance album in the mid-'90s, she initially refused. But that album, "Believe," became a smash hit. Her latest album, "Living Proof," is full of dance tunes aimed to capitalize on the success of "Believe."
Cher's durability in the youth-driven pop market can be verified in a string of hits stretching back to the '60s. In the 21st century, the living proof is "Living Proof," a new album of dance tunes that's targeted to follow the path of 1998's "Believe" and its Grammy-winning single of the same name. That No. 1 hit sold 1.8 million copies in the United States; in Britain, it became the biggest-selling song by a female artist in history. The album sold 3.4 million copies, about 18 times the sum for one of the lows in her seesawing scoreboard, the 1996 disc, "It's a Man's World."
It's Cher's world now. At 55, long past the age of involuntary retirement for female pop stars, Cher continues to uncover fresh opportunities despite a history of setbacks.
"I've had really down times where I thought I'd never work again," she says. "I feel like a bumper car — I hit a wall, back up and go again."
Today, Cher is cocooning in her palatial estate, perched on a bluff overlooking the Pacific. In a luxurious living room opening to a magnificent blue-tiled pool that blends into the ocean horizon, two workers on hands and knees are snipping errant fibers from a plush carpet. Cher is upstairs, curled barefoot on a sofa and sipping iced tea amid burning scented candles. She's girlish in minimal makeup, pigtails (her own sleek dark hair, not the blond wig she has sported in public lately), silver satin hip-huggers and a sheer sweater over a tank top. Though she may look the part of a sassy dance-floor diva, Cher knows she has overstayed her welcome in some eyes.
"Young people are on the forefront of what's going on, but us old people won't get out of the way," she says. "At some point, we're forced to, I guess. When I hit 50, I thought, 'Well, this is it. It's over.' But it isn't. The rock generation just keeps going and picking up generations as it goes. All other generations — the flappers, the bobby-soxers — were gracious and got out of the way."
How does she cope with an inability to turn back time?
"I don't do it well," she says. "I'm not thrilled with birthdays."
Cher did not set out to become disco's grand dame. While she had a stab at disco during its heyday with 1979's "Take Me Home" ("when people were trying to revive my career yet again"), she always felt more connected to guitar-oriented rock and fantasized about being Elvis Presley or Bruce Springsteen. When the suggestion of a dance album came up in the mid-'90s, she flatly refused.
"The thing I worried about most was that people were going to think I was too old and that it would be stupid coming from me," she says. "I knew I could sing this music. I can sing Gershwin, I can sing rock 'n' roll. It doesn't matter what beat you put to music."
"Believe" made a believer out of her. She says she loved the song and, contrary to early reports, proposed warping the vocals and delighted in the results.
"I'd been singing for a million years, and it was not fun to hear my voice in the tired old boring way," she says. "My voice is not my favorite thing. I love to sing; I just don't want to listen to it."
Assorted vocal distortions crop up on "Living Proof," a diverse array of bubbly, beat-crazy tunes steeped in themes of loneliness, yearning and willful optimism. She sees no disharmony in upbeat tempos wed to downbeat moods. Collaborator Paul Barry, who co-wrote "Song for the Lonely" and two other "Proof" tunes, "is kind of a dour guy," Cher says. "He can be peppy, but there's something morose about him, because he always writes about loss. His melodies are very up, and his words are very sad. Yet it doesn't seem like a contradiction."
The album's opposing forces mirror Cher's lifestyle.
She's a homebody who also relishes the chaos of jet-setting.
She's equally at ease in sweats or a peek-a-boo Bob Mackie number.
"I'm very schizo," she says. "I only operate on stop and full-blast. My life outside of my work is narrow and not very adventurous. Sometimes, I feel like I'm the doll that gets taken out of the box for a really glamorous moment, then put back in the box. I've led a very isolated life. I'm always an observer. ... I have a strange view of what's going on by watching people who think I can't see them or hear them. I'm not sure it's a fun place to be, but it's interesting and strange."
