Music

Their early hits “I Got You Babe,” “Baby Don’t Go” and “The Beat Goes On” brought the spirit of contemporary pop/rock to the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. (Sonny Bono wrote all three of these fine songs.) Sonny & Cher may have been on the pop side of pop/rock (compared to such contemporaries as The Byrds), but with both their sound and their look, they were definitely on the pop/rock spectrum.

Cher’s version of Dylan’s “All I Really Want to Do” peaked at No. 15 on the Hot 100 in August 1965 (with “I Got You Babe” was No. 1). The Byrds’ version peaked at No. 40 that same week. Cher had a top 15 hit with a Dylan song before Dylan did (!) – though he made the top 15 the following week with “Like a Rolling Stone.”

For the record, Peter, Paul & Mary were the first artists to have a big hit with a Dylan song (“Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”). Then came The Byrds with “Mr. Tambourine Man.” And then Cher.

The biggest hurdle to Cher being taken seriously for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is probably the smash success of The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, an instant hit when it premiered in 1971. As a high-schooler at the time, I enjoyed the “Vamp” song she sang every week, but some of the sketches were not exactly comedy gold.

But the show (and solo spinoffs for both Sonny and Cher and an inevitable reunion series) gave airtime to a lot of rock artists. Elton John, Bette Midler and Flip Wilson were the guests on the pilot of Cher, which aired in February 1975. That’s a pretty hot lineup for a variety show of that era. Of this foursome, only Wilson, whose variety show was a smash hit in the early 1970s, did not have a decades-long career. Linda Ronstadt, Ike & Tina Turner, David Bowie (in his U.S. television debut), The Jackson 5 and Patti LaBelle were also guests on the Cher show.

Cher was making big money playing Las Vegas in 1981, but gave it up to go to Broadway and appear in the ensemble of Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, which played for six weeks in early 1982. Her decision to bet on herself paid off right away: Director Mike Nichols caught the show and cast her in Silkwood, which opened the following year.

Cher won an Oscar for Moonstruck in April 1988, but she was equally focused at the time on her recording career, and specifically on recording pop/rock material rather than the pop story-song novelties (“Half-Breed,” “Dark Lady”) that had given her her biggest solo hits. One month before she won the Oscar, she had a top 10 hit with the rock ballad “I Found Someone.” The very week she won the Oscar, she entered the Hot 100 with the follow-up hit, “We All Sleep Alone,” co-written by Rock Hall members Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora.

Her other rock-edged hits of this period were “I Found Someone,” “If I Could Turn Back Time” (the quintessential Cher hit, and one of Diane Warren’s best songs, too), “Just Like Jesse James,” “Heart of Stone” and a cover of Betty Everett’s 1964 smash “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)” which Cher recorded for her Mermaids, her first film after Moonstruck.

In later years, Cher commented that her hit years on Geffen Records (1987-91) had been especially meaningful to her, “because I was getting to do songs that I really loved … songs that really represented me, and they were popular!” 

In 2018, Dazed‘s Shon Faye put it this way: “If Madonna and Lady Gaga and Kylie [Minogue] and Cyndi Lauper were playing football, Cher would be the stadium they played on, and the sun that shone down on them.”

At the 2017 Billboard Music Awards, Gwen Stefani presented Cher with the Billboard Icon Award, calling Cher “a role model for showing us how to be strong and true to ourselves [and] the definition of the word Icon.”

In her 2019 music video for “You Need to Calm Down,” Taylor Swift has a framed copy of a Cher quote, “Mom, I am a rich man,” on the wall. The quote comes from Cher’s 1996 interview with Jane Pauley on Dateline NBC in which Cher related the story of her mother asking her to “settle down and marry a rich man,” to which Cher replied, “Mom, I am a rich man.”

In 2018, Cyndi Lauper, Little Big Town and Adam Lambert performed when Cher received the Kennedy Center Honors. It’s very easy to see Cher’s imprint on the versatile Lauper and the flamboyant Lambert.

In 2021, Cher guest-starred as God in P!nk’s music video for “All I Know So Far.” The two stars have some history. P!nk told Billboard in 2019 that she started studying aerial silks after watching Cher’s dancers perform on them in Living Proof: The Farewell Tour in 2004.

Cher has headlined seven major concert tours, including Living Proof: The Farewell Tour (2002-05), which was one of the top 10 highest-grossing tours of that decade, according to Billboard Boxscore. For the first half of the decade, it was second only to The Rolling Stones’ Licks Tour in total grosses.

Initially scheduled for 49 shows, the worldwide tour was extended several times. By October 2003, it had become the most successful tour ever undertaken by a female headliner. The 236-date tour finally ended in 2005, after having played to more than 3.5 million fans and earning more than $250 million.

A tour stop at American Airlines Arena in Miami on Nov. 8, 2002 formed the basis of a TV special which aired on NBC five months later. The special attracted nearly 17 million viewers and brought Cher a Primetime Emmy for outstanding variety, music or comedy special. She joined an impressive array of women who had won in that category for one-woman concert specials, including Liza Minnelli (Liza With a Z), Barbra Streisand (Barbra: The Concert) and, in the years since, Adele (Adele: One Night Only).

Despite the claim implicit in the tour’s title (The Farewell Tour), Cher has since headlined two more tours – Dressed to Kill Tour (2014) and Here We Go Again Tour (2018-20).

In 2019, Rolling Stone‘s Rob Sheffield stated that “there are no other careers remotely like hers, [particularly] in the history of pop music” and referred to Cher as “the one-woman embodiment of the whole gaudy story of pop music.”

In 2014, James Reed from The Boston Globe noted “Along with David Bowie, she is one of the original chameleons in pop music, constantly in flux and challenging our perceptions of her.”

Billboard‘s Joe Lynch wrote in 2017 “…It seems odd to say anyone as famous as Cher is under-appreciated: the woman has five No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100, an Oscar for best actress and has remained a household name for half a century. Even so, Cher’s impact as a musical force is unfairly disregarded or minimized. … Years before David Bowie toyed with gender-bending, Cher brought her deep contralto voice to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 with Sonny Bono on ‘I Got You Babe’ in 1965, and in the ensuing slew of TV appearances, she brought her defiantly androgynous looks into households across America.”

In 1996, Jancee Dunn wrote in Rolling Stone, “Cher is the coolest woman who ever stood in shoes. Why? Because her motto is, ‘I don’t give a shit what you think, I’m going to wear this multicolored wig.’ There are folks all over America who would, in their heart of hearts, love to date people half their age, get multiple tattoos and wear feathered headdresses. Cher does it for us.”

Writing in The Advocate in 2003, Alec Mapa noted: “While the rest of us were sleeping, Cher’s been out there for the last four decades living out every single one of our childhood fantasies … Cher embodies an unapologetic freedom and fearlessness that some of us can only aspire to.”

When we spoke to John Sykes, chairman of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, in May, he said “Prior to 2019, about 14%-15% of the inductees were women. In the last five years, it has been almost 25%. We’re not there yet, but we’re seeing the inductees class evolve not only in sound but gender.”

When we spoke to Sykes, we also discussed Willie Nelson, who had been eligible since at least 1987. This was the first time the country legend had appeared on the ballot and he got in. “He had one of the highest vote totals in the history of the Hall of Fame,” Sykes revealed. “He scored a huge number. It reflects too how the voting understands that rock and roll is not a single sound. It’s an attitude and if anyone has attitude, it’s Willie Nelson.”

If it’s attitude they want, Cher invented attitude. She exhibited an IDGAF attitude long before anyone had coined that acronym.

The Rock Hall doesn’t want to let in people who haven’t stood the test of time. I think they’re OK with Cher on that score.

Her high-charting albums on the Billboard 200 span more than 53 years, from Sonny & Cher’s Look at Us, which began an eight-week run at No. 2 on Sept. 11, 1965, to her own Dancing Queen (a collection of songs by Rock Hall members ABBA), which debuted and peaked at No. 3 on Oct. 13, 2018.

Her No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 span nearly 34 years, from Sonny & Cher’s “I Got You Babe,” which reached No. 1 on Aug. 14, 1965, to her solo smash “Believe,” which ended a four-week reign on April 3, 1999.

Both “I Got You Babe” and “Believe” are notable No. 1 hits. “I Got You Babe” is a reminder that a song can be simple and still convey profound truths. Rock Hall member Chrissie Hynde was featured on UB40’s 1985 cover version of the timeless smash. “Believe,” of course, was highly influential in its use of Auto-Tune. It brought Cher her first (and only) Grammy for best dance recording. The smash was also Grammy-nominated for record of the year, 34 years after Sonny & Cher were nominated for best new artist.

Even those of us who don’t know the first thing about fashion can recognize that The Met Gala has become the place to see and be seen for many A-list pop stars. Cher wore a feather-and-crystal-encrusted gown, designed by Bob Mackie, to the 1974 Met Gala. (You know the dress, which gave the illusion, at least, of nudity – she wore it again when she made the cover of TIME in March 1975 under the cover line Gladrags to Riches).

“The dress” paved the way for other scene-stealing outfits, such as Jennifer Lopez’s cut-down-to-there dress on the Grammys in 2000.

Vogue’s André Leon Talley told Billboard in 2017: “It was really the first time a Hollywood celebrity attended [The Met Gala], and it changed everything. We are still seeing versions of that look on The Met red carpet 40 years later.”

In early 1986, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences requested that all nominees and presenters dress in a way that would maintain the decorum of the evening. When Cher wasn’t even nominated for her acclaimed performance in Mask, she asked her pal Bob Mackie to design the most outlandish outfit ever worn on an awards show. He rose to the challenge and she wore the outfit to the Oscars on March 24, 1986, where she was a presenter.

After letting the audience take in the one of the greatest sight gags in the history of the Oscars, Cher said “As you can see, I did receive my Academy booklet on how to dress like a serious actress.”