Cher is unstoppable. Having just celebrated her 72nd birthday the Goddess of Pop is heading to Australia for her first headline arena tour in 13 years. Tour info here.
So, to celebrate, we thought we’d take a stroll down memory lane and look at just a small snapshot of Cher’s immense contribution to music and entertainment starting in the 60s…
1960's
Despite a shaky start in the 60s with a few misfired singles under various monikers, Cher finally found her feet as a pop artist with the infamous Sonny Bono. Until 1965 the pair were known as Caeser and Cleo, but changed to Sonny & Cher in time for their breakthrough smash, "I Got You Babe" which soared to the top of the charts.
Their debut album, Look At Us, spent weeks at #2 on the Billboard charts, beaten only by the Beatles' Help. Fans mimicked the duo's fashion style with long straight hair and bell-bottom jeans becoming massively popular even up against the British Invasion and Motown sounds of that era. The album spawned five top 10 singles and by the end of 1967 had sold tens of millions of copies.
Competing with her work with Sonny was a successful solo career. In 1966 "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down), taken from The Sonny Side Of Cher album reached #2 on the charts.
The end of the 60s saw a decline in sales of Sonny & Cher's music to make way for heavier and progressive rock bands such as Led Zeppelin and The Who. A couple of unsuccessful albums and film that left them in debt caused the demise of pop's new darlings.
1970's
Scoring their own comedy TV show, The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, bought the couple back into the spotlight with incredible ratings for a light-hearted prime time TV show that included feature guests and won Cher a Golden Globe Award in 1974 for Best Actress.
While working on television, Cher further established herself as a chart-topping singles artist with "Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves", "Half-Breed", and "Dark Lady". After her divorce from Sonny Bono in 1975, she launched a comeback in 1979 with the disco album Take Me Home.
1980's
A residence in Los Vegas solidified Cher as a power player, especially amongst LGBTI fans, with hits now spanning pop and disco.
In 1982, Cher made her Broadway debut in the play Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean and starred in the film adaptation. She earned critical acclaim for her performances in films such as Silkwood (1983), Mask (1985), and Moonstruck (1987), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Cher revived her musical career by recording the rock-inflected albums Cher (1987) and Heart of Stone (1989). The latter including the huge global smashes "If I Could Turn Back Time" and "Just Like Jesse James".
1990's
Love Hurts (1991) also yielded several successful singles.
Cher reached a new commercial peak in 1998 with the album Believe, whose title track became the biggest-selling single of all time by a female artist in the UK. It features the pioneering use of Auto-Tune, also known as the "Cher effect".
2000's
Cher's 2002–2005 Living Proof: The Farewell Tour became one of the highest-grossing concert tours of all time, earning $250 million. In 2008, she signed to headline the Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas for three years. Cher's first studio album in 12 years, Closer to the Truth (2013), became her highest-charting solo album in the U.S. when it debuted at number three on the Billboard 200.
In 2018, Cher will return to film for her first on-screen role since 2010's Burlesque, starring in the romantic musical comedy film Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.
She is also set to embark on the Australia-only Here We Go Again Tour, which is her first tour to our shores in 13 years.
Cher has won a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, an Academy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, a Cannes Film Festival Award, and a special CFDA Fashion Award, among several other honors. She has sold 100 million records worldwide to date, becoming one of the best-selling music artists in history. She is the only artist to date to have a number-one single on a Billboard chart in each decade from the 1960s to the 2010s. Outside of her music and acting, she is noted for her political views, philanthropic endeavors, and social activism, including LGBT rights and HIV/AIDS prevention.
We’ve collated some of Cher’s most memorable tracks into a playlist called ‘I Like: Cher’ available here on Spotify…
