Trivia / Cher

• Backed by the Pentagon: Subverted. The video for "If I Could Turn Back Time" was shot on the real naval battleship the USS Missouri, and used its real crew as its extras. This was initially approved by the Navy, as they lacked the money for recruitment advertising at the time. This video would go on to be infamous for how racy it was; in particular Cher's outfit—or lack thereof. To the point it was banned from network TV. This caused a huge headache for the Navy, who received quite a bit of backlash for allowing such a display on a historic monument; the USS Missouri being the site of Japanese surrender to end World War 2. The Secretary of the Navy briefly considered sacking the captain of the Missouri, though nobody ended up being disciplined for it.
• Breakup Breakout: As should be very obvious, when Sonny & Cher split, she went on to be the success story of the break-up, with a decades spanning career and a laundry list of hits. Sonny released one failed solo album, went into politics and died in 1998.
• Creator Backlash: Cher heavily disliked the album Cherished and said she only did it to fulfill a contract with Warner Bros. None of the songs from it have ever been performed live and the album was unavailable legally for over forty years.
• Creator Couple: With Sonny Bono at first, and later on with Gregg Allman.
• Executive Meddling: Cher was pressured by Casablanca Records to make Take Me Home more disco-oriented, much against her wishes. This also happened with the following album Prisoner, though she did have more creative input on that one.
  • She did not like "Believe" when she first heard it, and it originally wasn't even going to be on the album. Some pleading by the Warner Music execs convinced her to give it another chance, which she did on the grounds that the song was reworked a bit.
• Real-Life Relative: Her son Elijah Blue Allman appears in the music video for "If I Could Turn Back Time" as the guitarist in her backing band. He's the one wearing sunglasses and a Jimi Hendrix t-shirt.
• Throw It In!: Producer Mark Taylor put the extensive AutoTune on "Believe" simply because he was bored.
• What Could Have Been: Cher was set to work with infamous producer Phil Spector on an album that would've been called A Woman's Story; One promo single was released from the sessions, but the album was scrapped after Spector had financial issues.
  • It's a Man's World was originally a much more classic, folk rock Cher record, however Warner felt it wasn't "commercial enough" and had her release a more contemporary pop album instead. The original folk tracks were released years later as not.com.mercial exclusively through Cher's website.
• Working Title: Prisoner was originally set to be titled Mirror Image but was changed at the last minute.

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