Introduction

CHER (1987)
1) I Found Someone; 2) We All Sleep Alone; 3) Bang-Bang; 4) Main Man; 5) Give Our Love A Fightin' Chance; 6) Perfection; 7) Dangerous Times; 8) Skin Deep; 9) Working Girl; 10) Hard Enough Getting Over You.
I always thought The Witches Of Eastwick was a fun movie (thanks largely to Nicholson, of course, but the ladies were okay too), and even though I do not remember much about Moon­struck, I don't remember being particularly put off by that one, either. Both of them came out in 1987, and both plainly suggested that Cher could have a bigger future in Hollywood than in her sunken musical career: for five years straight, she had not bothered making a new record, and we could almost be so happy as to hope that she would sit out the rest of pop music's corniest decade just as well. Alas, this was not meant to be: 1987 had to be the year of Cher's final triumph as actor and musical performer, and we had to sit back and accept it.
As is often the case, a new self-titled album signifies a creative rebirth, and in this case, Cher is rebooted as a leather-clad, big-haired, power-puffed arena icon, stuck in between synth-pop and glam metal — whatever it takes for people to buy the record. Her corporate allies, in addition to Desmond Child (now solidified in his realm by having recently scored with Bon Jovi), now in­clude Diane Warren (who else!), Michael Bolton (the long-haired Zeus of Eighties glam-rock to Diane's Hera), and a bunch of lesser figures who spend most of their time sucking up to the big ones. Her musician supporters include a list of approximately 100 different names — amazing, considering how almost every song here feels like it consists of about four different synthesizer notes and a robot drummer. And her attitude here can be described as "I don't really care how good it is, as long as it can kick ass across a football field".
I don't think it makes sense to even begin discussing any of these songs — everything here just sounds like completely generic radio fodder from the era (which it was): minimalistic, but annoy­ingly loud synth patterns, big drums, hystrionic guitar solos, and mildly catchy choruses that sometimes stick in your mind because of how many times they are repeated. The «hits» (ʽI Found Someoneʼ and ʽWe All Sleep Aloneʼ) sound no better or worse than the non-hits; also, ironically, even though it was ʽWe All Sleep Aloneʼ that was co-written by Child with Jon Bon Jovi, the one song that sounds the most like Bon Jovi is ʽGive Our Love A Fightin' Chanceʼ, co-written by Child with Diane Warren. But why should we care?
The worst offender is probably a re-recording of ʽBang Bangʼ, done pop-metal style, just because it is such a transparent statement of "that was way back then, and this is how it's going to be done now", because times change blah blah blah. Poor Sonny must have had a fit when he heard this; those of us who weren't tremendous fans of the early version in the first place have it better, but still, it is fairly hard to tolerate this mess of metallic basslines and piled-up synth overdubs. At least the original was a sentimental cornball with a sense of dark humor; the new version is a plastic, lifeless melodrama going straight to the garbage bin.
The only «stand out» on the record is ʽSkin Deepʼ, just because it ditches the arena-rock clichés for a second... only to engage just as heavily in dance-pop clichés à la Debbie Gibson or Tiffany or any of those other post-Madonna icons of the era. It's... danceable. Good enough for an aero­bics stint, but it didn't even chart all that high upon release. For that matter, even ʽI Found Some­one (To Write My Crappy Songs For Me)ʼ and ʽWe All Sleep Alone (No Matter What You Think About Me Having A Threesome With Michael Bolton And Desmond Child)ʼ never hit the top of the charts — although they did rise high enough, largely because of the captivating effect that the names of Bolton and Bon Jovi had on the public at the time, and made it perfectly legit to speak of Cher's musical «comeback» after almost a decade of floundering. But all this album really does is integrate the lady in the already established musical fashion of the late Eighties — and now, in the 2010s, it is high time we put the ugly baby back to sleep with a thunderous thumbs down, while at the same time, perhaps, resuscitating some interest in the early 1980s «flops» like Black Rose and I Paralyze that actually had at least a few sparks of genuine creativity.
HEART OF STONE (1989)
1) If I Could Turn Back Time; 2) Just Like Jesse James; 3) You Wouldn't Know Love; 4) Heart Of Stone; 5) Still In Love With You; 6) Love On A Rooftop; 7) Emotional Fire; 8) All Because Of You; 9) Does Anybody Really Fall In Love Anymore; 10) Starting Over; 11) Kiss To Kiss; 12) After All.
This is the one that made her big again — as in really really big, the size of the USS Missouri where they filmed the video for ʽIf I Could Turn Back Timeʼ (remember the fishnet stockings, the slavering sailors, the BIG BIG GUNS? — now those were the days, when REAL people ruled the world and made America great... oh, never mind). But even in terms of calculated marketing, there's hardly any real progress here, just some extra polish on the formula. Desmond Child, Diane Warren, Michael Bolton, and Bon Jovi continue to rule the day, and loyally deliver the canned goods for the average pop taste of 1989: glammy synth-rockers and overblown power ballads alternate with each other at regular intervals, smoothly sliding off the corporate conveyer belt and polluting both radio waves and Cher's reputation in years to come.
Ironically, the two big singles are not that bad. Despite being written by Diane Warren (who allegedly had to — literally! — claw into Cher's leg to get her to accept the song), ʽIf I Could Turn Back Timeʼ at least has a fun pop bounce to it: that chorus is seductively catchy in the good sense of the word, and if only the song could earn a traditional power pop arrangement (jangly guitars and all), I'm sure it could have had more staying power. Another thing is that it's not really a Cher-style song (she rarely does the pleading thing successfully), but then, its atmosphere is not really sad — it's like a confession dressed as a party anthem, and the melodic development is well suited to Cher's powerhouse build-ups.
ʽJust Like Jesse Jamesʼ is a neo-country ballad — with a power engine, too, but pretty much the only song here based on an acoustic arrangement and sharing something in common with Cher's early Seventies' past; in fact, some of the vocal lines closely resemble ʽGypsys, Tramps And Thievesʼ, and I'm pretty sure that Child and Warren did write it specifically as a retro number (amusingly, Cher herself stated later that she disliked the song because there was too much country and way too many words in it). But there's a good whiff of the strong, self-assured, sarcastic, empowered woman in it, and that's precisely the kind of stuff that has always been Cher's forte, so even if the final hook is still dumb (I mean, if her arrogant lover is Jesse James, is it really all that flattering to compare yourself to Robert Ford?), the gradual ascension / self-win­ding all the way up to it is handled perfectly. The only thing you have to do is get your mind off the boring arrangement, completely, and concentrate on the vocals.
Had the remainder of the record been like these first two songs, it would probably rank among the more tolerable relics of the Eighties' glam rock era. However, that's about it: everything that follows is pompous, hystrionic, monotonous muzak, choked with synthesizers and unimaginative pop metal solos, to the point where technical «ballads» (ʽLove On A Rooftopʼ, etc.) and technical «rockers» (ʽEmotional Fireʼ, etc.) only differ in speed and basic vocal intonation. Most of these songs could have been played by anybody, sung by anybody, and it does not even matter whether they were written by Jon Lind, Jon Bon Jovi, or any other Jon in existence since the Old Testa­ment. The only visible standout is the final song, ʽAfter Allʼ (a.k.a. "Love Theme From Chances Are") , and it's only visible because, as a sentimental power duet with Peter Cetera, it is especially vomit-inducing — one of those generic pieces of crap romance that continued making our life unhappier throughout the Nineties, polluting bad and good movies alike and even video games (remember ʽGirl In The Towerʼ from King's Quest VI? GOD!).
In the long run, even these two opening songs shouldn't be worthy enough for your «Guilty Pleasures of the Eighties» collection if you limit it to the first Top 100, so the best I can say about the record is that it is at least not as overtly disgusting in spirit as, say, a contemporary Aerosmith sellout like Pump; but even a disgusting contemporary Aerosmith sellout like Pump at least sounds much less boring and monotonous than Heart Of Stone. Thus, inevitably, a thumbs down, and considering how people like to define this record as the best of her «Eighties / early Nineties comeback» era, it seems like there's even more trouble coming up ahead.
LOVE HURTS (1991)
1) Save Up All Your Tears; 2) Love Hurts; 3) Love And Understanding; 4) Fires Of Eden; 5) I'll Never Stop Loving You; 6) Could've Been You; 7) One Small Step; 8) A World Without Heroes; 9) When Love Calls Your Name; 10) When Lovers Become Strangers; 11) Who You Gonna Believe; 12) The Shoop Shoop Song (It's In His Kiss)*.
Third time's the charm? Not a general rule. The Eighties are formally over, but we are still living in the pre-Nevermind era, and so Love Hurts faithfully follows the formula that brought Cher back to commercial success — and why, pray tell, should anybody expect otherwise? Here we have eleven more anthemic glam rockers and power ballads, contributed by old friends and new­comers; no more Bon Jovi or Michael Bolton, but a whole three songs from Diane Warren this time, of which ʽLove And Understandingʼ, strongly echoing Olivia Newton-John's ʽMagicʼ in rhythm and melody, but updated for the modern dance-pop era, charted the highest — still no­where near as high as the singles from Heart Of Stone, though. People were getting tired.
Strangely, the first song from the album, ʽSave Up All Your Tearsʼ, did not chart that high, even if it essentially repeats the formula of ʽIf I Could Turn Back Timeʼ — danceable, powerful, chorus-wise catchy, not particularly irritating, in short, probably the best song on the entire re­cord (that's not saying much, though). Perhaps it was because people were already familiar with the original (and somewhat inferior in terms of singing, though equally generic in terms of musical arrangement) version by Bonnie Tyler, or perhaps it did reflect the trend of people getting tired of stereotypical glam-pop; whatever the case, it's a bit of a fun opener.
After that, though, it's just one bore after another. It does not help that Cher occasionally turns to classics (the title track is one of those old torch ballads that heavy rock artists take a liking to for some strange reason — I cringed when Nazareth were doing it, so why should I be enjoying a Cher version? this is not the kind of material she'd do convincingly even with a soft rock arran­gement...), or hits upon a very strange idea, such as covering ʽA World Without Heroesʼ from KISS' Music From "The Elder" (I first thought this was due to Cher dating Gene Simmons, but apparently that was over by 1980, so the idea hardly counts as a loving memento) — and turning it into a crazy mess of synthesizer fanfares and booming drums, over which she looms large with her most tragic intonations, as if this really meant something.
But nothing really means anything on this album, except for the single permeating thought — keep on being relevant! be on (M)TV! get a hit! stay afloat! I am not saying that there are no decent melodic ideas anywhere in sight — it is simply not very interesting to hunt for these ideas when the album as a whole sounds so sterile, formulaic, calculated, and monotonous. When you get to the bonus track, a modernized version of ʽThe Shoop Shoop Songʼ, it's almost like a last merciful breath of fresh air in comparison — a much-needed reminder that simple pop music had not always been like this, and that, while it may not have been much smarter in the past, it used to at least sound more innocent, charming, and just plain fun. Now, instead, it's like you are required to take this synth-pop shit seriously — so please excuse me if I decide to "save up all my tears" and give the record another predictable thumbs down.
IT'S A MAN'S WORLD (1995)
1) Walking In Memphis; 2) Not Enough Love In The World; 3) One By One; 4) I Wouldn't Treat A Dog (The Way You Treated Me); 5) Angels Running; 6) Paradise Is Here; 7) I'm Blowin' Away; 8) Don't Come Around Tonite; 9) What About The Moonlight; 10) The Same Mistake; 11) The Gunman; 12) The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore; 13) Shape Of Things To Come; 14) It's A Man's Man's Man's World.
Stuck in between Cher's two triumphant eras (the ʽIf I Could Turn Back Time /And Bring The Fishnet Look Into The Sixties/ʼ one and the ʽI Believe /In Plastic Surgery/ʼ one), It's A Man's World is kind of an odd record, largely overlooked and forgotten, but not without its own special twist. By the mid-Nineties, glam-pop was dead and gone, so trying to release a follow-up to Love Hurts would have made no sense; however, latching on to some new fashionable direction did not seem to be an easy task, and was made even harder by a personal crisis she was going through at the time (diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, among other things). Going the alt-rock route would not be natural, yet neither would be turning into Celine Dion (what with Cher still sticking to a few crumbs of «rock authenticity» that she had always had in her).
In the end, signing up with Warner Bros. for this record, she went for a «soulful» approach: It's A Man's World kind of walks the line between neo-soul, neo-country, modern R&B and adult con­temporary. I know, I know — sounds awful, right? Well, this is definitely no masterpiece: for starters, most of the songs are slow, lazy on the hooks, conventional in terms of arrangement, and there's fourteen of them, meaning that the record drags on for over an hour, when the typical length for a Cher record used to be 35-40 minutes. Add to this the usual reliance on corporate songwriters (though, fortunately, her love affair with Diane Warren, Desmond Child, Michael Bolton, and Bon Jovi has come to an end) and the unusually somber / introspective mood on many of the tracks (not the best emotional setting for Cher), and it is easy to see why the album was both a commercial and critical letdown at the time.
On the other hand, revisiting it in retrospect shows quite definitively that it is at least an attempt to make something serious — not merely a conveyer-produced glossy pattern like «The Trilogy», but a collection of songs somehow reflecting Cher's own state of mind at the time. Even the title, as well as the decision to cover the respective James Brown chestnut, reflects that, as she said something about the wish to sing a bunch of «men's songs» from a woman's standpoint. Granted, portraying herself as Eve on the front sleeve, snake-clad and ready to tempt her man with the big red one, is not necessarily as «self-empowering» an image as one might think, but then again, you never can tell with feminist / anti-feminist standpoints (was Eve the first «self-asserting woman» or the first «dumb bitch» in existence? Or both?...). Anyway, on the whole It's A Man's World is not an emphatic feminist statement — just a collection of pensive, occasionally intriguing, but usually rather languid and dull songs about... uh... relationships.
The first song already illustrates all that is good and bad about the record — Cher's take on Marc Cohn's ʽWalking In Memphisʼ stays fairly close to the original, retaining its Roy Bittan-ish key­board melody and glossy production, and although the intention is good (a sincere tribute to the «Memphis feel» is always welcome), the realisation hardly ever makes it come across as some­thing special. The line about "he said, ʽTell me, are you a Christian?ʼ, and I said, ʽMan, I am tonight!ʼ" certainly does not have that special appeal for Cher that it has for the Jewish heritage of Marc Cohn, but she delivers it with all the strength she can gather, and the desire to churn up a rootsy-spiritual aura is clearly felt — too bad that she and her backing band did nothing to actual­ly make the music ring out with at least a bit of that good old Memphis vibe.
The second single from the album, and the only one that charted, was ʽOne By Oneʼ — not sur­prisingly, since it is one of the few songs here that would have fit in with the upbeat glam formula of the previous three records. Originally written by Antony Griffiths of The Real People and recorded by Eurovision hero Johnny Logan... okay, it's not really a musical horror: it's actually fun when it gets to the chorus, and it's also fun to see Cher aim for these falsetto notes in the verse while at the same time going for her bottom range on the chorus. She also does okay turning blues-rock into dance-pop (ʽI Wouldn't Treat A Dogʼ), and even some of the slower ballads have special touches of moodiness (ʽThe Gunmanʼ, with a mildly threatening funky guitar line), but in the end, there is only one song here that I would be taking home with me — ʽShape Of Things To Comeʼ, nothing to do with the old Mann/Weil classic, but rather an entirely new composition by none other than the Buggles' Trevor Horn and 10cc's Lol Creme.
That number is actually a mini-masterpiece of moodiness — fast, tense, paranoid, literate, and ambiguous (you can't even lay a definitive claim to the song being all about man-woman rela­tionships — after all, no song whose hookline is based on the phrase "shape of things to come" can be centered exclusively around personal stuff). There was nothing like this on any part of The Glam Trilogy, and there would never be again — in musical and atmospheric terms, it is arguably the best thing to come out of the Cher camp in the past thirty years. And then she follows it up with a really good reading of the James Brown track — this time, adding in some extra layers of tragedy, with a rip-roaring guitar break and a hushed, husky coda that turns the tables radically against the song's protagonist: "He's lost in the wilderness... he's lost in the bitterness".
Ultimately, my rating shifted from a thumbs down to neutral as I was writing this review. Trim some obvious filler, replace some of the drum machines with normal drumming, get her a good guitar player, speed up one or two tempos, and it might be real close to a thumbs up — and, as it usually happens with Cher, this is precisely the album that nobody rushed out to buy, because no­body wants a Cher that's getting too serious for her britches: everybody just wants the glitzy pop diva of ʽTake Me Homeʼ and ʽIf I Could Turn Back Timeʼ. Three years later, she'd give them what they wanted, but this one, it seems, was made more for herself, and, fortunately, it still shows after all these years.
BELIEVE (1998)
1) Believe; 2) The Power; 3) Runaway; 4) All Or Nothing; 5) Strong Enough; 6) Dov'e L'Amore; 7) Takin' Back My Heart; 8) Taxi Taxi; 9) Love Is The Groove; 10) We All Sleep Alone.
Undoubtedly, the main question of 1998 was not "how do we stop the Congo War?" or "do we impeach President Clinton or not?" — the main question of 1998, which each of us who was old enough to have ears must have heard a million times, was: "Do you believe in life after love?". I'm pretty sure that more people on this planet of ours have pondered over this question than there are people for whom the name "Cher" means anything — I do believe myself that I lived through at least three solemn promises to find and strangle the singer before even learning who that was (I knew about the existence of Cher, of course, but it never occurred to me to equate this Vegas relic with the autotuned monstrosity that Genghis-Khanned its way all over the radiowaves).
Since the record-buying public would not want to pay serious attention to the slowly unfolding and ultimately not very rewarding soulful intricacies of It's A Man's World, it seemed inevitable that we'd soon begin the next loop — after a commercially failing «artistic» album, the world should brace itself for an artistically failing «commercial» album, what with retirement not being an option in an age where the triumphant march of female empowerment can always be bolstered with a little plastic sur­gery. And it's no big secret that the direction in which she went with Be­lieve had everything to do with the success of Madonna's Ray Of Light — the advent of electro­nic techno-pop suddenly gave «Divas» all over the world a new style where they could succeed without breaking too much sweat and stay unquestionably modern and trendy. Of course, she'd never really worked in the electronic field before, but it's not about electronica, really: it's about a dance-pop groove, and how could somebody with ʽTake Me Homeʼ behind her belt fail at that, if she really put her mind to it?
Well, technically speaking, she does not fail. The record, masterminded by British producers Mark Taylor and Brian Rawling (whose clientele before and after has also included Enrique Iglesias, Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, and One Direction, if you really want to know more) and with significant songwriting input from Paul Barry (also a wholesale supplier for Enrique Igle­sias), became her largest success ever, and ʽBelieveʼ became her signature song — probably the only such case in pop history, when it took the artist more than thirty years in the business to produce a signature song (and I'm fairly sure that youngsters all over the world went into a state of shock upon discovering that the very same person who really didn't think we were strong enough now in 1998 had said that all she really wanted to do was to be friends with us back in 1965 — I mean, at least the ones who could actually be prompted to discover anything).
Grinding my teeth and cursing God's name, I have to admit that ʽBelieveʼ does display genius craftmanship — nothing else could explain its mystical hold over the world. Its main hookline is one of those anthemic-rhetoric questions that can hook up to your brain like a well-polished political slogan, and when combined with the techno beat, it probably does constitute the ultimate in clublife experience (not that I'd know much of that). Then, of course, there's the vocoding bit: as everybody knows, this is the first well-popularized use of autotuning on the vocals, and as heavily as the practice became abused immediately after that, this particular first time actually works — the vocal effect was not there because Cher needed autotuning (her vocal powers are still fairly intact at this point), but because the producers thought it would be fun to have her sing like a robot for a bit (alternately, it may have been hard for her to hit that little melismatic bit on "so sa-a-ad that you're leaving", except we never ever get evidence for that because there does not seem to be even one version of the song in existence, studio or live, without the effect). Just a little creative fun, and look at all the damage it did to the music industry.
The problem is, of course, that it will take at least ten thousand years for the song to return to a reasonable reputational level — the one of a fluffy fun dance-pop throwaway, rather than a «pop epic» of catastrophic proportions — and that the process of leveling has not even begun yet, as I still get shudders and shivers every time I hear the damn thing. And then there's another problem: most of the rest of the album, though consistently delivered in the same vein, is just crap. Techno crap, disco crap, adult contemporary crap — song after song of tasteless, meaningless, corporate-formulaic drivel that makes even the late-Eighties «glam trilogy» seem like a strong musical offering in comparison. Oh, it's catchy all right — the choruses are repetitive enough, so if you hold out for two or three listens, musical viruses such as "baby, it's all or nothing!...", "now I'm strong enough to live without you!", "love is the groove in which we move", and even the accur­sed "taxi, taxi, give me a ride" will infiltrate your DNA and begin a corrosive process of mutation that can only be stopped with a good cleansing (I recommend Metal Machine Music, if you're man enough to take some rough treatment). But taken as a whole, the album is perfect proof that you don't really need Autotune in order to sound like a crudely assembled robot.
The few non-techno songs on the album are even worse than the techno ones: ʽDov'E L'Amoreʼ, for instance, is the most clichéd take on the "Latin love song" that could be thought of, with restaurant-level flamenco guitar and horrid Italian-English lyrical hybridizations ("dov'e l'amore, dov'e l'amore, I cannot tell you of my love, here is my story" — bathroom, please), and ʽTakin' Back My Heartʼ almost mockingly starts out with a guitar lick copped from ʽStayin' Aliveʼ, as they try a generic old disco revival for a change, only to actually make us feel nostalgic for the real thing, when disco music could actually be creative and even feature excellent musicianship. Some are hideous hybrids — ʽTaxi Taxiʼ tries fusing an old disco bass line with a modern techno beat, but since the main melody consists of something like one synth note, the «experiment» goes very wrong from the beginning. And then there's the idea of fighting fire with fire — take an old glam-pop turd (ʽWe All Sleep Aloneʼ) and reinvent it as a new techno-pop turd, just, you know, to prove that the old flame can still burn bright in a new vessel. Which doth remind me of a great answer found on the Web to the important question "How well does poop burn?" — "If you find some month old elephant dung, it can be a great firestarter since they exclusively eat plant matter. However, if your dog's asshole is leaking diarrhea from that left over taco bell you gave him, it will most likely not ignite." Kind of reminds me of the current situation.
Again, it is, of course, all a matter of (good vs. bad) taste, and since the choruses are catchy and all, brings us back to the eternal question of whether there is such a thing as a «bad hook», or if a hook is a hook, and if you can get hooked up, that's a good thing in itself... but instead of having this discussion, let's all just be good boys and girls, agree that Believe is a thumbs down turd that has no place in the musical garden of Eden, and move on to a safe and happy future in which there is no life after love, and Cher is remembered more for Gypsys, Tramps And Thieves and even I Paralyze than for the amazing feat of trivializing the already not-too-complex musical values of Madonna.