Cher
Cher (/ʃɛər/; born Cherilyn Sarkisian; May 20, 1946) is an American singer, actress and television personality. Often referred to by the media as the "Goddess of Pop", she has been described as embodying female autonomy in a male-dominated industry. She is known for her distinctive contralto singing voice, for having worked in numerous areas of entertainment and for adopting a variety of styles/appearances. Cher rose to fame in 1965 as one half of the folk rock husband-wife duo Sonny & Cher before releasing her first solo top-ten singles "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" and "You Better Sit Down Kids". Throughout the 1970s, she scored the US Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles "Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves", "Half-Breed", and "Dark Lady", becoming the female solo artist with the most number-one singles in US history at the time.
For other uses, see Cher (disambiguation).
Cher
- Bonnie Jo Mason
- Cheryl LaPiere
- Cher Bono
- Cherilyn Sarkisian La Piere Bono Allman
- Singer
- actress
- television personality
1963–present
- Georgia Holt (mother)
Vocals
After her divorce from Sonny Bono in 1975, Cher released the successful disco album Take Me Home (1979). Her music career revival in 1987 saw the releases of rock-inflected albums Cher (1987), Heart of Stone (1989), and Love Hurts (1991), all of which yielded hit singles such as "I Found Someone", "If I Could Turn Back Time", and "Save Up All Your Tears". Cher reached a new commercial peak in 1998 with the dance-pop album Believe, which featured pioneering use of Auto-Tune to distort her vocals, known as the "Cher effect". The title track became the number-one song of 1999 in the US and the best-selling single of all time by a female artist in the UK. She continued to make music, with the albums Closer to the Truth (2013) and Dancing Queen (2018) both debuting at number three on the Billboard 200 and becoming her highest-charting solo albums in the US.
Cher became a television personality in the 1970s with her CBS shows The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, watched by over 30 million viewers weekly during its three-year run, and the namesake Cher. In 1982, she made her Broadway debut in the play Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean and starred in its film adaptation. Cher subsequently garnered critical acclaim for her performances in films such as Silkwood (1983), Mask (1985), and Moonstruck (1987), the last of which won her the Academy Award for Best Actress. She contributed to the soundtrack for her next film, Mermaids (1990), which spawned the UK number-one single "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's in His Kiss)", and made her directorial debut with a segment in the abortion-themed anthology If These Walls Could Talk (1996). During the 2010s, Cher landed starring roles in the films Burlesque (2010) and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018).
Having sold 100 million records, Cher is one of the world's best-selling music artists. Her accolades include a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, an Academy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, a Cannes Film Festival award, the Billboard Icon Award, and awards from the Kennedy Center Honors and the Council of Fashion Designers of America. She is the only solo artist to date to have a number-one single on a Billboard chart in seven consecutive decades, from the 1960s to the 2020s. Her 2002–2005 Living Proof: The Farewell Tour became the highest-grossing concert tour by a female artist ever at the time, earning $250 million. Aside from music and acting, she is noted for her trendsetting, elaborate outfits, plastic surgeries, political views, social media presence, philanthropic endeavors, and social activism, including LGBT rights and HIV/AIDS prevention.
Artistry
Music and voice
Cher has employed various musical styles, including folk rock, pop rock, power ballads, disco, new wave music, rock music, punk rock, arena rock, and hip hop;[285] she said she has done this to "remain relevant and do work that strikes a chord".[286] Her music has mainly dealt with themes of heartbreak, independence, and self-empowerment for women; by doing so, she became "a brokenhearted symbol of a strong but decidedly single woman", according to Out magazine's Judy Wieder.[287] Goldmine magazine's Phill Marder credited Cher's "nearly flawless" song selection as what made her a notorious rock singer; while several of her early songs were penned by or sung with Sonny Bono, most of her solo successes, which outnumbered Sonny and Cher's successes, were composed by independent songwriters, selected by Cher.[288] Not Commercial (2000), Cher's first album mostly written by herself, presents a "1970s singer-songwriter feel" that proves "Cher adept in the role of storyteller", according to AllMusic's Jose F. Promis.[289]
Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times writes, "There were a lot of great records by female singers in the early days of rock ... None, however, reflected the authority and command that we associate with rock 'n' roll today as much as [Cher's] key early hits".[290] Some of Cher's early songs discuss subjects rarely addressed in American popular music such as divorce, prostitution, unplanned and underaged pregnancy, and racism.[288] According to AllMusic's Joe Viglione, the 1972 single "The Way of Love" is "either about a woman expressing her love for another woman, or a woman saying au revoir to a gay male she loved" ("What will you do/When he sets you free/Just the way that you/Said good-bye to me"). Her ability to carry both male and female ranges allowed her to sing solo in androgynous and gender-neutral songs.[291]
Cher has a contralto singing voice,[292] described by author Nicholas E. Tawa as "bold, deep, and with a spacious vibrato".[285] Ann Powers of The New York Times called it "a quintessential rock voice: impure, quirky, a fine vehicle for projecting personality."[293] AllMusic's Bruce Eder wrote that the "tremendous intensity and passion" of Cher's vocals coupled with her "ability to meld that projection with her acting skills" can provide "an incredibly powerful experience for the listener."[294] The Guardian's Laura Snapes described her voice as "miraculous ... capable of conveying vulnerability, vengeance and pain all at once".[295] Paul Simpson, in his book The Rough Guide to Cult Pop (2003), posits that "Cher [is] the possessor of one of the huskiest, most distinctive voices in pop ... which can work wonders with the right material directed by the right producer".[296] He further addresses the believability of her vocal performances: "she spits out the words ... with such conviction you'd think she was delivering an eternal truth about the human condition".[296]
Writing about Cher's musical output during the 1960s, Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times stated that "Rock was subsequently blessed with the staggering blues exclamations of Janis Joplin in the late '60s and the raw poetic force of Patti Smith in the mid-'70s. Yet no one matched the pure, seductive wallop of Cher".[290] By contrast, her vocal performances during the 1970s were described by Eder as "dramatic, highly intense ... [and] almost as much 'acted' as sung".[17] First heard in the 1980 record Black Rose,[297] Cher employed sharper, more aggressive vocals on her hard rock-oriented albums, establishing her sexually confident image.[298] For the 1995 album It's a Man's World, she restrained her vocals, singing in higher registers and without vibrato.[151]
The 1998 song "Believe" has an electronic vocal effect proposed by Cher,[286] and was the first commercial recording to feature Auto-Tune—an audio processor originally intended to disguise or correct off-key inaccuracies in vocal music recordings—as a deliberate creative effect. According to Rolling Stone's Christopher R. Weingarten, the "producers ... used the pitch correction software not as a way to fix mistakes in Cher's iconic voice, but as an aesthetic tool."[299] After the success of the song, the technique became known as the "Cher effect"[284] and has since been widely used in popular music.[300] Cher continued to use Auto-Tune on the albums Living Proof (2001),[301] Closer to the Truth (2013),[302] and Dancing Queen (2018).[258]
In a 2013 interview with the Toronto Sun, Cher reflected on how her voice has evolved throughout her career, becoming stronger and suppler over the years. She said working with vocal coaches had made a significant difference: "It's so freaky because people my age are having to lose notes and I'm gaining notes, so that's pretty shocking."[303]
Other interests
Philanthropy
Cher's primary philanthropic endeavors have included support of health research and patients' quality of life, anti-poverty initiatives, veterans rights, and vulnerable children.[354] The Cher Charitable Foundation supports international projects such as the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, Operation Helmet, and the Children's Craniofacial Association.[355]
