When Cher first heard Diane Warren‘s demo for “If I Could Turn Back Time,” she immediately turned the song down. Warren pleaded with Cher to record it. She even got down on her knees and begged Cher to take the song. “I told her I wasn’t going to leave the room until she said ‘Yes,’” remembered Warren, “and finally, just to get rid of me, she did.”
Once released on her 1989 album Heart of Stone, “If I Could Turn Back Time” became one of Cher’s biggest hits, peaking at went to No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topping the charts in several countries. Despite her earlier solo success with early-’70s No. 1s “Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves,” “Half-Breed,” “Dark Lady” and “I Found Someone” from 1987, and later in her career, Cher has still remained the harshest critic of her work—specifically her solo career.
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“I’m not a Cher fan,” said Cher in 2017, adding that she was ashamed of her early songs and always wished she sounded more like Joni Mitchell, Bob Seger, the Eagles, or Bruce Springsteen. “I just don’t think my aesthetic taste lies in her [Cher’s] direction.”
[RELATED: The Story Behind Cher’s Smash Hit “Believe”]
‘It’s a Man’s World’
When Cher signed to Warner in the early 1990s, her first album, It’s a Man’s World, was another disappointment and an album she called “crap.” Cher added, “I don’t remember what’s on it. I didn’t like any of it.”
The album was a collection of songs, including covers of Don Henley‘s “Not Enough Love in This World,” Marc Cohn’s “Walking in Memphis,” and James Brown‘s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World,” along with two original songs, co-written by Cher and The Real People’s Anthony Griffiths, “One By One,” and “The Gunman, which she wrote with Paddy McAloon (Prefab Sprout).
At the time, then Warner UK president Rob Dickins asked Cher to release a dance album in the UK, which she refused. “So he said, ‘Let me rephrase that,’” she recalled. “‘I’m going to send you some songs—when you like them, tell me.’”
It’s a Man’s World peaked at No. 64 in the U.S. and reached the top 10 in the UK.
“Believe”
By the end of the ”90s, Cher was working on her 22nd album Believe, which went to No. 4 on the Billboard 200. The title track also topped the charts in 23 countries, including the U.S., and gave Cher, who was then 52, her fifth No. 1 hit.
Regardless of its success, Cher didn’t initially connect to “Believe” and called its recording “a nightmare.” In Mark Bego’s 2001 book Cher: If You Believe, Cher revealed more from the experience and how she rewrote some of the lyrics to suit her better. “I was singing [the song] in the bathtub, and it seemed to me the second verse was too whiny,” said Cher. “It kind of pissed me off, so I changed it. I toughened it up a bit.”
She then wrote the lyrics It takes time to move on / It takes love to be strong / I’ve had time to think it through and maybe I’m too good for you but she never received songwriting credit on the track.
After arguing with producer Mark Taylor, Cher stormed out of Dreamhouse Studio in West London in the middle of recording “Believe.” Her vocals on the track were auto-tuned and became known as the “Cher Effect.”
Regardless of any hardship around the recording the title track, “Believe” earned Cher another Grammy for Best Dance Recording.
Photo: Shutterstock (578274a) / Cher at The Brit Awards, London, UK—1999
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