If I Could Turn Back Time (Greatest Hits) - Cher

...questions about how to tell if a man loves them and Cher answering. A great sing-a-long for the car!

I always skip the fifth song because it is intolerable. "After All" is a duet with Peter Cetera, who has probably the most irritating voice I have ever heard. This song is incredibly cheesy and was used as the "love theme" for the film "Chances Are." Ugggh.

Next is the epic "If I Could ...
...would hate "I Found Someone" if it was sung by anyone but Cher. It is has really cheesy lyrics and was co-written by MICHAEL BOLTON (Pause for shock and horror of readers). This 1987 song is extremely dramatic.

"We all Sleep Alone is similar" to the previous track but was written by BON JOVI. It starts out slow but has a good bridge with a guitar solo that is pure '80s.

"You may have lovers ... more

"David is not homophobic, although he has expressed occasional mystification at gay culture and practices (it's the Cher thing that particularly bewilders him)..." -Nick Hornby from How to Be Good

I re-discovered my love for my Cher thanks to my best friend, Ethan. We listened to this album in his car on the way home from university and laughed and sang along.

Cher's Greatest Hits (1999) is organized in reverse chronological order, starting with a new single and ending with the song that made her famous way back in 1965, "I've Got You Babe," the duet with then-husband Sonny Bono. It features 17 intense tracks, most of which are powerful, dramatic pop. Cher is a pop goddess and she knows it. You will find yourself singing along in your best Cher-esque deep voice.

Cher is a parody of herself. She wears outrageous outfits and wigs and has had so much plastic surgery that she can barely move her face. Basically, she looks like a drag queen. However, she has a wonderful sense of humour and can make fun of herself. For instance, in an interview, she acknowledged the fact that someone had said, "After a nuclear war, the only thing left on the planet will be cockroaches and Cher." Other performers might have been offended, but not Teflon Cher.

The first track on this album is "Don't Come Cryin' to Me", a rather ordinary song written by Diane Warren, who penned many of Cher's more recent hits. This song is very similar to the third track, "Save up all your Tears," which is also by Warren. In both songs, Cher anticipates that the man who has left her will regret his decision, but, by then, she won't want him back. These two songs are even the exact same length! (4:03) However, "Save up all your Tears" is far superior in terms of the tune and the power of the song. Plus, in that song, Cher predicts that the man will eventually be crying over her.

The second song, "Love and Understanding," is another Diane Warren composition (1991). In this one, shockingly, Cher sings with a social conscience. She sings about how we have an abundance of material objects but not enough compassion.

"We got enough cars to drive around the world
Enough planes to take us anywhere...
We've got more than enough
But there's one thing there's just not enough of
Not enough love and understanding"

I couldn't agree more.

The power pop continues as track three is "Save up all your Tears" (1991). This is one of my favourite Cher songs. I sang it to my mom once to stop her from crying when I was going back to university after the summer. (Yes, I CAN actually sing like Cher, and her songs are generally excellent choices for karaoke.)

The fourth song is the always-fun "Shoop Shoop Song (It's in His Kiss)." This is a cover of a classic song from the '60s and was used in the film "Mermaids," which features Cher, Winona Ryder and Christina Ricci. This song features back-up singers asking questions about how to tell if a man loves them and Cher answering. A great sing-a-long for the car!

I always skip the fifth song because it is intolerable. "After All" is a duet with Peter Cetera, who has probably the most irritating voice I have ever heard. This song is incredibly cheesy and was used as the "love theme" for the film "Chances Are." Ugggh.

Next is the epic "If I Could Turn Back Time," another Diane Warren composition and probably Cher's most famous hit. The video for this song was initially banned from MTV (1989) because it featured Cher performing on an aircraft carrier to hundreds of sailors while wearing an extremely skimpy outfit that revealed her tattooed bum. The theme of this song is the opposite of "Save up all your tears" in that Cher regrets breaking up with a lover. It is an excellent karaoke song. Oooh, that key change!

"Just like Jesse James" is another one of my favourite Cher songs. It is probably the best woman-power song on this album. Another Warren composition, this song allows Cher to show off her vocal range and really belt it out. She sings:
"If you're so tough, c'mon and prove it
Your heart is down for the count and you know you're gonna lose it
Tonight you're gonna go down in flames
Just like Jesse James"

The point of this song is that Cher is too tough to fall in love and have her heart broken by a bad boy, but she's going to make him fall in love with her. Yeah. This song is my personal mantra. :)
This song does feature one very bad line, however:
"If this heart is gonna break, it's gonna take a lot to break it."

"Heart of Stone" is a very strange song that is full of terrible lines that really don't make a whole lot of sense. It is pretty ordinary except for the nonsensical lyrics:
"Big crowd at the crazy house
Long queue for the joker's shoes"

WHAT???!!!

Also,
"Do you lose and win or win and lose?"

Painfully bad, but funny.

I would hate "I Found Someone" if it was sung by anyone but Cher. It is has really cheesy lyrics and was co-written by MICHAEL BOLTON (Pause for shock and horror of readers). This 1987 song is extremely dramatic.

"We all Sleep Alone is similar" to the previous track but was written by BON JOVI. It starts out slow but has a good bridge with a guitar solo that is pure '80s.

"You may have lovers wherever you roam
But sooner or later, we all sleep alone"

Next is Cher's remake of the Sonny and Cher classic "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot me Down)" (1987). It is a really sad story that about kids who grow up together and eventually get married and how their break-up has devastated the woman. However, the lyrics are really strange and the music is so overly dramatic that it ends up just being funny. It starts out with a choir singing "Bang Bang" and then goes into a Def Leppard-type beat. The song starts out with the bizarre lyric:
"I was five and you were six
We rode on horses made of sticks"

Hehe. How can you take this song seriously with lines like that? Plus, the way that she pronounces "sticks" is hilarious. Apart from "Big Crowd at the Crazy House," this is my and Ethan's favourite (i.e. silliest) Cher lyric.

"Take me Home" is a '70s disco track that I don't like very much.

"Dark Lady" is a ballad about a woman who goes to a fortune teller who tells her:
"The man you love is secretly true to someone else who is very close to you."

It turns out that her lover is having an affair with the fortune teller and when the protagonist discovers them in bed together, she shoots them both. It's a heavy story that is lightened by the campiness of the melody and Cher's voice.

Similarly, "Half-Breed" is a sad song about prejudices against Native Americans. But if you see the footage of Cher in the '70s dressed in gaudy, feathered headdresses, it takes away from the seriousness of this message. She sings that white people call her "Indian Squaw" and that Native Americans consider her "white by law."

"My life since then has been from man to man
But I can't run away from who I am
Half-breed
That's all I ever heard," she sings.

I don't really like "Way of Love," which sounds like a song from a musical. It features screeching strings and lots of dramatics. It seems ordinary and lacks the energy that most other Cher songs have.

Although several Cher songs have serious lyrics, "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves" is the only song on this album that actually makes me feel sad. It is a ballad about a girl who was "born in the wagon of a travelling show" and how people shunned her family because they were considered low-lifes. However, men would pay money to watch her mother dance. When the girl grows up, she becomes pregnant and her own daughter continues the cycle as she, too, is "born in the wagon of a travelling show/ Her mama used to dance for the money they'd throw."

I don't really like the original of "I've Got You Babe" since I think it is very bland. Unfortunately, Cher did not update the song for this greatest hits collection as she did with "Bang Bang." Also, this song doesn't fit with the stong, independent woman theme expressed by a lot of the songs on this album. However, check out the version of "I got you Babe" that she did with Beavis and Butthead. They say, "We need a chick... We need a chick who used to be married to some loser, so now she's all wild and stuff." After they say, "This sucks. It needs to be louder. LOUD!" the song increases in intensity and Cher rocks out. Get the MP3 now! As Beavis and Butthead would say, "It rules!"

The album ends on an anti-climactic note, but it has enough good songs to make it worth getting. Most regular Cher albums are full of throw-away tracks, so this is the only Cher album you really need. The liner notes feature pictures of her in at least 15 different over-the-top styles.

 

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