Hi, everyone! It is 6am local time, and I have been up for several hours already (including a drive to Flint and back). While making that drive I had some time on my hands to consider the following question: which Cher tunes most fully encapsulate the Cher experience? There are few voices in the history of American "pop" music that are as unique and distinctive as Cher's. Even when she is bad, she is great. While the power of some pop stars lies in their ability to totally enmesh themselves in a larger structural apparatus designed to churn out music with the broadest possible appeal, Cher's power derived from her ability to speak to those outside of that range. She is the patron saint of particular kinds of non-conformists, and has made more from her measure of natural talent than many performers who have capitalized less fully on greater natural gifts. After some thought, I settled on five. Before I dive into the list, however, I should do a quick rundown of the rules I followed to compile this ranking:
1. No Sonny & Cher: the reasons behind this should be obvious. Sonny Bono, who went on to become a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, weirdly, has no place in these rankings. Nuts to that guy.
2. No songs (I'm looking at you "Strong Enough") that remind us that Cher was once married to Gregg Allman, and performed in a duet with him called Allman & Woman. We'd all rather forget that happened.
3. The rankings are compiled based on four factors, which were as follows:
Vocal Heft: When Cher is at her apex as a performer, you can hear the physical labor that goes into her singing. In the same way that some words in Japanese, for instance, require that you speak with a flexed diaphragm, so it is with Cher's best songs. You can hear her accessing her core strength (a major Cher asset), in order to force a voice that normally exists in a lower register to hit notes it shouldn't be able to. While Cher might not have the most pure talent as a singer, she has a ferocious will and an unbeatable motor (in this she is the pop music equivalent of someone like Kawhi Leonard) who gets great results out of less inherent physical talent.
Smokiness: As Cher matured as a singer, her voice took on a level of huskiness normally reserved for the Nina Simone's of the world. Part of what made "Believe" such a tragedy, within the context of her discography, was that the use of Auto-Tune leveled this aspect out of her voice. Without it, "Believe" could have been performed by anyone. Other classical masters of this quality include Nina Simone, and the modern champion might be someone like Nikki Minaj. You need to have a distinctive voice to pull this off.
Sultriness: The best Cher tunes feature an unabashed and unashamed sensual power. This is an intrinsic quality. Katy Perry, for instance, even when she is aiming at the erotic "Dark Horse," or the coquettish "Teenage Dream," or the playfully lewd "California Girls," never comes close to making this happen. Taylor Swift never even tries.The modern masters of this quality are Rihanna and Shakira.
Cher-itude: I didn't know what else to call this. What I mean here is the ineffable sense of personal power that comes along with being Cher. You know how in the video for "If I Could Turn Back Time" she dances on a battleship and straddle's it's 16"/50 cannon (this thing fires a sixteen inch piece of ordinance with a yield of over 2,000 pounds)? That's Cher-itude.
Without further ado, here are the top five!
5. "Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves."
Most people, if they know only one Cher song, are familiar with this one. A classic in the "story-song" mode, it tells of a young woman seduced by a drifter, and the pregnancy that recapitulates within her own family the cycle of carnival life.
Vocal Heft: 6/10
Smokiness: 7/10
Sultriness: 8/10
Cher-itude: 6/10
Total Score: 27/40
4. "Hell on Wheels"
What else is there to say? This song is just Cher reminding you, in no uncertain terms, that she is a force of nature and not to be trifled with.
Vocal Heft: 7/10
Smokiness: 6/10
Sultriness: 7/10
Cher-itude: 9/10
Total Score: 29/40
3. "Carousel Man"
This song is...creepy. The story of a young woman who meets the titular "Carousel Man" an older gentleman who manipulates her and uses her. "All I had to do to keep him," Cher sings, "was to give and give." This kind of vampyric lover is a standard Cher device, such figures appear in numerous songs, but the trope reaches its apotheosis here.
Vocal Heft: 8/10
Smokiness: 9/10
Sultriness: 7/10
Cher-itude: 7/10
Total Score: 31/40
2. "If I Could Turn Back Time"
One of her more popular songs, "If I Could Turn Back Time" has frequently been made the subject of fun because of the aforementioned battleship dancing/gun-straddling. Sucks to the haters though. This song kills it.
Vocal Heft: 9/10
Smokiness: 8/10
Sultriness: 7/10
Cher-itude: 9/10
Total Score: 33/40
1. "Welcome to Burlesque"
Originally from the soundtrack to the 2010 feature film Burlesque, this song is a fully mature Cher reflecting not only on her past music, but on the way that music has been picked up in the contexts of burlesque and drag. Clever, beautiful, and soulful, this song has done what only a few other songs from motion pictures have done for artists of comparable power: defined a stage in their career (this is apex "late Cher"), anointed a successor (Christina Aguilera), and meditated on a legacy. A superior song, and arguably Cher's best.
Vocal Heft: 8/10
Smokiness: 10/10
Sultriness: 10/10
Cher-itude: 10/10
Total Score: 38/40
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