60 Songs That Explain the '90s - "Believe"—Cher

Episode Date: January 17, 2024

Rob takes a trip down memory lane and once again back to his days of watching ‘Beavis and Butt-Head’ before stopping at his memory of the time Beavis and Butt-Head met a woman. That woman was Cher. Cher’s influence in the world of auto-tune is also discussed along the way. Later, Rob is joined by DJ Louie XIV to discuss the impact of Cher’s “Believe.” Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: DJ Louie XIV Producers: Jonathan Kermah and Justin Sayles Additional Production Support: Chloe Clark Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Did Don Draper really buy the world of Coke? Did Tony Soprano really die? Or just order more onion rings? Were those guys really in hell the whole time, or was that just the audience? The finales of our favorite shows can make us argue, make us cry, and make us crazy. From Spotify and The Ringer, I'm Andy Greenwald, and this is Stick the Landing, a new podcast where we'll be telling the story of modern TV backwards, one fade out at a time. Each episode, a guest and I will choose a celebrated series from history,

from the 70s to the streaming era and beyond and do a deep dive on its very last episode. Was it all a dream? Did it turn into a nightmare? And most importantly, what can we learn about tomorrow's new shows from the way yesterday's ended? TV is a journey.

I hope you'll enjoy this podcast about the destination. Starting January 17th, find Stick the Landing on Wednesdays on the prestige TV feed, on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you ever just sit around? Thinking about what a good first line this is. I'm not aware of too many things. I too am not aware of too many things,

but I am aware that her name is Edie Brickle. Her band is Edie Brickle and the New Bohemians. She's from Dallas. They're from Dallas. And this song is called What I Am, a surprise top 10 hit from the band's 1988 debut album, Shooting Rubber Bands at the Stars. That's a rad album title.

Those are rad opening lines to a pop song, self-effacing and yet intriguing. I know what I know if you know what I mean. I don't know what she means exactly, but I'm intrigued. And I am further intrigued by these lines, which are even ratter. A little pretentious. Sneaking the word philosophy into a pop song, that's pretentious. That's a bit sting, if you'll forgive the expression. That's how Liam Gallagher from Oasis once.

described Wonderwall. I do quite like that expression. It's a bit sting to use the words philosophy and religion in your hit pop song. But hey, it was the 80s. And the whole 80s were a bit sting, honestly. Edy, as you might be aware, is married to Paul Simon. That's tough on a songwriter, on a lyricist, I imagine. I imagine in that situation, you'd write your lyrics extra hard, which in turn inevitably makes your lyrics extra pretentious. But yo, religion is the smile on a dog. That's an especially rad line. I don't know that I was ever aware that that's what she sings there exactly. I always heard that line as religion, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know how you do with songs on the radio. In 2011, Edy told Vanity Fair that what I am is a song about how she got

immediately annoyed while listening to her fellow students blather on pretentiously in her world religion's class while she was studying at Southern Methodist University. She dropped out. Relatable, semi-relatable, getting annoyed at other people talking about religion. That's super relatable, actually. Religion is the smile on a dog. Rad line, man. Vanity Fair asks her if she was trying to be controversial and Edie says, quote, no, I meant that in an endearing way. Because what is more expressive and sweet than that smile on a dog. And I felt that in terms of religion, some people see it, some people don't see it. End quote.

That's a very cool image, honestly. The video, though, the video for What I Am by E.U. Backel and the New Bohemians. It was quite popular on MTV and VH1 in the late 80s and early 90s, but the What I Am video is quite boring. The band's just playing the song in a soundstage, not a ton of charisma. They bought a bunch of lamps. It's a remarkably well-lit video.

They blew their whole budget on lamps. But as the video for What I Am begins, as Edy announces that she knows what she knows, if you know what she means, Edie is crouched down. She is squatting with her chin in her hands and her fingers in her ears, in her elbows on her knees, and her feet spread awkwardly. I think she's trying to convey irritation, but mostly she just looks pretentious and uncomfortable. I'm having trouble, honestly, conveying to you what Edy Brickle is doing

in this video. Can anyone help me out? We're a two minute thing. That's disgusting. She's pinching a loaf. Thank you, Beavis. Okay, I will tell you that in all honesty, it does look like Ety is.

pinching a loaf. I don't want to belabor this. I'm just saying I agree with Beavis on this point. That's so immature. I apologize sincerely to E.D. Backell. And I want to reiterate that religion is the smile on a dog is a great line. But I will remember she's pinching a loaf until the day I die because I almost died the first time I heard she's pinching a loaf. Yes, the time has come once again to pay homage to Beavis and Butthead, the best TV show of the 1990s. With all apologies to Friends, Seinfeld, Buffy the Vampire, Slaher, the Simpsons in Living Color, and Xena Warrior Princess. Beavis and Butthead, the animated masterpiece created and helmed and primarily voiced by one Mike Judge. It originally aired on MTV from 1993 to 1997. And as a surly

teenager, even more immature than I am right now, I related profoundly. Beavis and Butthead because I, too, spent the vast majority of my time between 1993 and 1997 watching MTV and a mild, bemused, uncouth stupor. Butthed, Buh, there is just phenomenal. Yeah, basically half of every Beavis and Buttheads, episode, the superior half, honestly, no offense to the great cornholio or the episode where the coach teaches sex education. Half of each episode consists of you, the viewer, sitting, presumably on your couch, while watching on MTV on your television as Beavis and Butthead sitting on

their couch, watch actual MTV videos on their television, and provide running commentary that mostly consists of rude giggling, phenomenal television. I'm not joking. The uh-oh clip, they're watching the video for The Family Ghost, a 1987 operatic metal jam from the Danish musician King Diamond, who isn't horrible necessarily, but King Diamond is wearing corpse paint, and he is definitely, you might even say he is excessively Danish. Beavis and Butthead do watch popular videos for, actual hit songs. I do greatly enjoy, for example, when they start brawling on the couch while

watching the video for Bobby McFeran's Don't Worry Be Happy. Okay, the fight's over I won. I give you my phone number. If you worry, call me. I make you happy. That's a good time. That's actually quite a shrewd cultural analysis of Don't worry, be happy. I have mentioned this before, and this is also tremendously immature, and I do apologize. But I would, would be remiss if I did not remind you of the time, Beavis and Butthead watched the grody stop motion animation video for Tools Sober, because it's one of the funniest things anyone has ever said on television. If I could move my arm that fast, I'd never leave the house.

If I could move my arm that fast, I'd never leave the house. Oh my God. I almost died on that day, too. You know one of my favorite running Beavis and Butthead gags? When they're super into a song, when it's loud and rocking and angry. But then they immediately hate the song when it gets slow and quiet. I have a weirdly specific memory of watching them, watch the video for the 1992 Danzig song, How the Gods Kill. These guys are cool.

This works in reverse, too, when a song starts out super quiet and they hate it, and then it gets super loud and they love it. That's also very funny. You know the song Liar by Henry Rollins by the Rollins band? Beavis and Butthead hate that song, and then they suddenly love that song. It's a good time. But these dudes turning on Danzig, this also qualifies as shrewd cultural analysis. Oh, man.

This part sucks. Yeah, the song was cool until they started getting all wimpy. Seriously, I've written hundreds of album reviews that don't have a single line as incisive as. This song was cool until they started getting all wimpy. Poor Danzig. But while you're watching Beavis and Butthead on MTV as they watch MTV, it's way better when you don't know the video or the song or even the artist at all. Beavis and Butthead in the 90s were an invaluable source of music discovery.

to use a very not 90s phrase. Beavis and Butthead were the algorithm before the algorithm. I do apologize to King Diamond, the ultra-Danish operamental guy, but I was not previously familiar with King Diamond until Beavis and Butthead recommended him to me. And yes, Butthead saying this is horrible totally counts as a recommendation. Remember Plant Man, the song Plant Man by Gary Young, who I am only just just now realizing is the same Gary Young, who is the original drummer in pavement?

Wow. Plant Man, Gary Young is that Gary Young. Wow. But I only know Plant Man, and I only remember Plant Man, because I watched Butthead imitate the drums in Plant Man. That's probably the only thing this guy can play. He brings his friends over those.

Hey, check this up. The look on Butthead's face as he goes, do-do-do-to-do-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-to-that stays with me. Let me ask you something. When's the last time you watched a whole music video from beginning to end, without pausing it, without checking your phone, without doing anything else? Do you still do that? Can you still do that?

An old video, a brand-new video, it doesn't matter. Any video, almost certainly you're watching this music video on YouTube, right? It's four minutes long or whatever, but almost certainly within 15 seconds, I'm guessing you feel yourself pulled to some other corner of the internet, Twitter, Instagram, one of your 35 open tabs, your inbox with 3,000 unread messages, whatever. I do that. I struggle with that. When I sit down and just attempt to watch a whole music video without doing anything else,

that's when I'm most aware of the fact that my attention span has been destroyed. I can't do it. I can't focus on one thing, on any one thing for four minutes. You ever read a book and you finish a chapter and you reward yourself for reading a whole chapter of a book by checking Twitter like as a treat? Yeah, MTV in the 80s and 90s was the enemy, right, culturally and spiritually. MTV was polluting the youth. MTV annihilated our precious youthful attention spans. with its nefarious MTV-style editing.

Remember when MTV-style editing was a slur in magazines and newspapers and movie reviews in the venerable halls of shrewd cultural analysis? The quick nonsensical cuts, the wanton flashiness, the narrative dysfunction, the brazen, lewd, insouciant randomness of your typical MTV video. MTV was a sign of the apocalypse. MTV was the apocalypse. And Beavis and Butthead even more so. Those dudes were definitely polluting the youth.

My mom subscribed to some sort of Christian magazine, focused on the family or something in that vein. And a columnist in this Christian magazine wrote an angry column about how Beavis and Butthead were polluting the youth spiritually, and you shouldn't let your kids watch it. And all I remember is that the guy wouldn't say, he wouldn't type the word butthead. Because Butthead is ungodly, right?

That's taking Butthead's name in vain. So this guy called the show Beavis and Company. Like it was a Grateful Dead spin-off or something. And also the art, the illustration for this column was a photo of the author holding like a cutout, like a stencil of Beavis and Company and throwing it in the trash. And I get that impulse spiritually. I do. But at its core, Beavis and Butthead, the television show is about two.

burnout loser miscreant teenagers who just sit on a couch and watch music videos on MTV with zero other distractions and then they share their feelings about what they see and hear by sharing their feelings often that consists of them saying this is horrible or this part sucks or if I can move my arm that fast I never leave the house but nonetheless do you have any idea how wholesome how admirable how culturally enriching the mid-90s TV show Beavis and Butthead feels now in 2024? I haven't gotten to the remake yet. I hear it's great.

It's in my cue. They just sit there and watch music videos and listen and pay attention and having grossing conversations with one another. Watching these clips now, I'd forgotten how much silence there is or how silent Beavis and Butthead are watching videos. They'll go like 30 seconds without saying anything. There's a genuine reverence of focus. It's astounding.

It's archaic. The sheer length and intensity of their attention spans feels like ancient history, like science fiction. It's like that Mike Judge movie, Idiocracy, right? Where the dumbest person in 2005 is the smartest person alive 500 years later because, you know what? Never mind. I also really loved it when Beavis and Butthead were watching the video for Corns Blind. And Beavis sucked on his thumb super hard to make himself dizzy. And then he turned into a.

blathering rock critic for 30 seconds until Butthead slapped him. I think that's a problem with this video is it is highly derivative of many popular bands within the genre. Although when viewed on its own merits, it does have a decent groove. However, what it has and groove, it lacks an originality. What's your problem? It's good shit. What I'm saying to you is that if Beavis and Butthead were actual human teenagers in the 1990s, then right now, in 2024, as a adults, they'd be in the Senate. They'd be leading the Senate. They'd be chairing prestigious Senate

committees. Beavis would be the chair of the Foreign Relations Committee and Butthead would lead let's say agriculture, nutrition and forestry. And so one time, and possibly only one time, Beavis and Butthead met a woman. This happened. I need to stress to you that this actually happened. know how this happened? Do you know why this happened? Is it okay with you if I don't go find out why this happened now? Because I just feel like it's cooler if I never find out how and why this happened. Can we agree to not get to the bottom of this? The year is 1993. And the director of this four-minute-long music video is Tamara Davis, who directed Billy Madison, half-baked, CB4 and Brittany Spears's crossroads.

And the song Beavis and Butthead are merrily grunting along to is I Got You, Babe. And the lady Beavis and Butthead meet is Cher. They say our love won't pay the rents. For it's earned got a money as old big spitz. Do you ever just sit around thinking about what a good first line that is? They say our love won't pay the rent. Seriously, this is real. Beavis and Butthead are in a virtual reality machine in a video arcade,

and they announce that they need a chick who's cool and has tattoos on her butt and used to be married to some dork so now she's all wild and stuff, and she appears. She is summoned if, right now, whoever you are, wherever you are, if you announce that you need a chick who's cool and has tattoos on her butt and used to be married to some dork, so now she's all wild and stuff, then Cher will dutifully materialize next to you. Don't do that.

Don't ask that of Cher, but she'll show up if you ask politely. Would you like to hear Cher sing the word butthead? I'm guessing that you would. You got me and butthead, I got you. Whoa. Share sings the word butthead beautifully. Does she not?

Share imbues the word butthead with. Gravitas. Share is taking this seriously. I do in all honesty think that the less context you have for this, the better. Suffice it to say that Cher singing, I Got You, Babe, with Beavis and Butthead. This song appears on the 1993 compilation, The Beavis and Butthead Experience, which opens. Track one on this thing is Nirvana's. I hate myself and I want to die. How's that for setting a tone? Then you get anthrax covering the Beastie Boys, then Megadeth, Run DMC, Aerosmith, White Zombie, Primus,

surmix a lot, the red hot chili peppers, and jackal. Jackal with a Y with the chainsaws. The Jackal song is called Mental Masturbation. Also, the red hot chili peppers are covering the stooges. They're covering search and destroy by the stooges. I like the red hot chili peppers very much, but I do not want to hear that shit.

No thank you. You keep that away from me. This CD went double platinum, dude. The Beavis and Butthead Experience sold 2 million copies in the United States. That's 1993 for you. Even Beavis and Butthead could go double platinum in 1993. See, I told you context wouldn't help. Share is bellowing, dude.

Share is committed to the bit. This is not a bit at all to share. Share doesn't do bits. Share doesn't do bits even when the bit is that she's flirting with butthead. So like, uh, Cher. So like fat. Is that true that you used to be like, uh, married to that Bono dude? And then Cher has to explain to Beavis and Butthead, but also to the polluted youth of America.

She has to explain who Sunny Bono is. Sonny Bono being her ex-husband and original duet partner and I got you babe. And I do like to imagine Sonny Bono sitting on his couch watching MTV unawares and encountering this video for the first

time. No, it was a mare of Palm Springs. He's a wolf. Yeah, well, yeah. Yeah, well, kind of, yeah. My goal in life is to never have two uncouth cartoon characters declare that I

suck on national television. And then one of my exes responds, yeah, well, kind of, yeah, I'm doing okay so far, I think, so far as I know. If a lady on TV has announced that I kind of suck, maybe just don't tell me about it at this point. But I do think it's going to get harder to avoid people saying that I suck as I age. Hear me now and believe me later. The Beavis and Butthead version of I Got You, Babe, is the second greatest share single of the

I mean that sincerely. There's not a ton of fierce competition there, but there is some. And of course, there is no shame in being second best when you come in second to this. I can feel something inside me say. The tempo of this song, 133 beats per minute, FYI,

the tempo of this song, or maybe it's the melodic structure, is not conducive to pleasing legally permissible excerpts. in my opinion. I can already tell this is going to vex me. Several elements of this indeed very wonderful song are going to vex me greatly. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 113th episode of 60 songs that explain the 90s and this week we are discussing Believe by Cher from her 1998 album also called Believe. Also, FYI, Believe is Cher's 22nd solo album. Take a couple minutes and wrap your head around that. We try and avoid hyperbole around here, but I am hard pressed to think of a more

influential pop song from the 1990s. In terms of the way pop song sound and behave and function now, including right now, because the way share sounds on this song is kind of the way everyone sounds now. So the story of Believe, the story of the monumental eternal influence of Believe, this is a story about autotune. Yes. Believe is generally thought to be, if not the first, then the first explicitly and hugely successful application of the polarizing vocal technology known as autotune. But more specifically, it's about what autotune does to share in the gravitas and history and pre-existing imperial majesty that share brings to autotune. You hear the future and believe. Yes. But crucially, you hear the past. You've

here shares 21 previous solo albums as well it had to be her believe needed autotune but auto tune auto tune needed share all right okay what i mean to say is da da da da da da da da da da da da da da the year is 1965 the song is i got you babe classic uh the guy singing i got you to kiss good night is sunny bono future mayor of palm springs and the lady singing, I got you to hold me tight is Cher. And Cher's got just a little more skill and charisma and pure force and star power. Does she not? Sunny and Share were married.

Sunny and Cher were cool for a while, but Sunny is no share. Can we agree on this? Okay. Sherilyn Sarkeesian was born in El Centro, California. In extra southern California. in the year 1996.

Yo, I apologize for this. But if my math is right, Cher was conceived three months after World War II ended. You know the term BC, as in 500 years BC? That stands for before Cher, her voice.

Even on I Got You, Babe. Even in duet, trading off lines with that shaky-voiced guy who kind of sucks, even in short-birth, you can immediately sense the richness, the boundless depth of Cher's voice. What I like to think of as the wind dark sea of Cher's voice. That's a literary reference. Thank you, the wine dark sea.

That's a phrase in the Iliad, written by the Greek poet Homer in the 7th or 8th century BC, and critics disagree on what Homer means precisely by this term, the wine dark sea, and specifically what color the wind dark sea is. But I'm here to tell you that the wine dark sea is a reference to the richness of Cher's voice because Cher is in the Iliad.

Share is either the star of or perhaps even the author of the Iliad or perhaps both somehow. And I know I just said BC stands for before Cher, but Cher also existed in the 7th and 8th century BC because Cher has been around

since before Cher. Don't ask me to explain this. Don't ask me to explain anything about the durability of share. Really. It's just a fact. These are not corny. Share is old jokes. These are corny.

Share is eternal jokes. Share is ageless. Share right now is in better physical and emotional condition than I am. For example. Share is monumental. Share the person. Still thriving. Still tweeting.

She just put out a Christmas album. into it. Share the person is a living, walking, thriving monument to share the monument. All right. Okay. Can I tell you one not very related thing real quick? Andrea Bocelli, the Italian opera star, he also put out a Christmas album in late 23 called A Family Christmas. But so Andrea Bocelli had a massive hit album in 1999 called Sacred Arias, as an aria, A-R-I-A, right, the opera term. Biggest classical music album of all times, sacred arias. And my mom asks for sacred arias for Christmas. She wants the CD.

And so my younger brother Ryan goes to Best Buy to get Andrea Bocelli's sacred arias for our mom. But on the drive to Best Buy, he forgets both the artist and the album title. And so when he gets to Best Buy, he walks up to a Best Buy employee and asks if they have this CD called Papa Jojo's Sacred Areas. He got both of those wrong. I don't think it actually happened like that, but it doesn't matter. Papa Jojo's sacred areas is cherished Harvilla family lore to this day. Cher's Christmas album is probably better than Papa Jojo's, though. No offense, Papa Jojo. All right. Okay. Tell us where you were really born, Cher. Wagging up a traveling show, my mama used to dance for the money they'd throw. Mama would do whatever he could. The wind, dark sea of the word could, when Cher sings the word could. Man, one benefit of being monumental and eternal and existing outside the flow of chronological time

is that you get to set bonkers music industry records. Like, for example, Cher has a number one song. on a Billboard chart in every decade since the 60s. Starting with I Got You, Babe, in 65, which topped the Hot 100. It's not always the Hot 100 in every decade. Sometimes you'll find Cher a top Billboard's adult contemporary chart or the dance club songs chart or perhaps her new Christmas album vaults are atop the dance slash electronic song sales chart, but nonetheless, holy shit.

And Cher was, in fact, not born in the wagon of a travel. show, but that was 1971's gypsies, tramps, and thieves, which did hit number one on the Hot 100, thank you. And same deal with this 1973 jam that I regret to inform you is called half-breed. Yeah, this is a song about the racism and rejection you encounter when you're half-white and half-chericky, and Cher is, in point of fact, not half Cherokee. Maybe a little Cherokee in her mother's side, But yeah, mistakes were made here, especially in terms of, you know, costuming during

live performances and such. And mistakes are probably still being made if Cher ever tours widely again and puts the Indian headdress back on. Yikes. Thankfully, with no regret, I can inform you that in 1974, Share hit number one again with a song called Dark Lady.

And I think you can imagine tons of rock bands and pop stars singing a tough and ominous song called Dark Lady. But Cher is the only person alive with the balls to sing a song called Dark Lady in which she personally kills the Dark Lady. That'll teach you to mess with Cher, Dark Lady. Spread the word. It turns out you're the second darkest lady.

You know who else learned not to mess with Cher? Now, you know, you, I know you didn't want to come on here for the longest time. So why finally, after nearly four and a half years, did you decide to come on? We jump forward now to 1986. Put David Letterman on the list of people, the list of significant cultural entities who are still around today, still significant, still significant, still doing arguably good work. But they've changed so radically that it's impossible now to convey what they were like back then. Another example here would be MTV, like all of it. The whole channel, the whole universe of MTV.

That station that just shows ridiculousness reruns, 23 and a half hours a day now, I cannot explain to a young person in 2024 how dominant MTV felt in 1986, in part because no young person will talk to me now. But David Letterman, the jolly old, harmless, giant bearded, earnest guy who pops up every so often to interview George Clooney about his charity work or whatever. David Letterman in 1986 was an insurgent, terrifying, acidic, confrontational, revolutionary figure. As a youngish and radicalish late-night talk show host, sometimes Letterman was leading the revolution by putting on a Rice Krispy suit

and submerging himself in a bowl of milk. And sometimes he was being a jerk to his guests. In those instances when he personally felt superior to his guests, which was always. And we loved David Letterman for this. Everyone did. Most people did. She didn't. I don't know because I thought that I would never want to do this show with you.

Now why? Share on David Letterman in 1986 is famous. This is a cataclysmic moment in her life and in his life and in the history of late night, talk shows. It probably mattered way more to him than to her, actually come to think of it. And the cataclysm here is tough to fully convey given how much more swearing and

confrontation you can find on TV now, generally. Forget all that. Don't mess with Cher. That's the only real takeaway here. Now let's explore this a little. Why? Because you thought I was an ass.

There's a look on Cher's face immediately after she says this, right when the cheering starts and long before the booing starts, where Cher takes this deep breath and looks genuinely angry and genuinely righteous in her anger for just a second, and then it passes. And the cheering and booing stops, and David hams it up, but also looks genuinely taken aback, and Cher clarifies that she just means that she can tell watching the show when David doesn't like his guests. And David, says, I think a lot of people feel that way. And then he asks her about her tattoos, and they talk pleasantly for 15 more minutes, and that's it.

That's a famous TV moment. When David Letterman retires from late-night TV, several decades later, Cher comes back and gives him a hug and calls him an asshole again, and it's a legitimately heartwarming moment. But what is conveyed here? in the legitimately famous moment wherein Cher calls David Letterman an asshole to his face on his show is Cher's willingness to speak truth to power and shares ability to convey

that she is way more powerful than whatever power she's speaking truth to. All right, my wife is going to get super salty with me if I don't knock it off already and talk about Moonstruck. What sense have you? Twice I took the name of the Lord in vain. once I slept with the brother of my fiance

and once I bounced a chick at the liquor store but that was really an accident. Obviously I could have played you the more famous scene from the 1987 romantic dromedy classic Moonstruck where Nicholas Cage says I love you and shares

the absolute bejesus out of him twice and says snap out of it but you've seen that you've heard that a billion times right? Oh let's hear it again movie magic notwithstand Listen to how loud these slaps are, dude. There are famous war movies less conclusive than this shit.

I'm in love with you. Out of it. Ow. Share won the Oscar for best actress, for her timeless portrayal of the super charismatic Italian-American lady who slaps the absolute bejesus out of Nicholas Cage in the 1987 classic Moonstruck. Share's not Italian either. But you tell her that. Sheesh. Share is Armenian, FYI.

At first, I wasn't going to bother mentioning that Cher was Armenian, but someone very close to this operation heard that I wasn't going to mention that Cher was Armenian. And this person thought that my failure to tell you that Cher was Armenian was, quote, pretty whack, end quote, which is rude. But I don't want to be pretty whack. So Cher is Armenian. The great critic, Lindsay Zolads.

She's at the New York Times now, but she wrote a great piece for The Ringer in 2019 about Cher, about the 20th anniversary of the Cher song, Believe, in fact. But this piece takes in the whole of Cher's career, including the various iconic, flamboyant, delightfully fuck you type dresses that Cher has worn, often to the Oscars, whether or not she was nominated,

and often designed by the great Bob Mackie. Moonstruck is one of my wife's favorite movies. When we lived in New York, my wife wanted to go see the Moonstruck house where they filmed parts of Moonstruck in Brooklyn Heights. Amy Schumer owns the Moonstruck house now. What the fuck? My wife has two core memories involving Cher and Moonstruck is one of them.

But so in this ringer piece, Lindsay Zolad writes, quote, To understand the miracle of believe, you have to know how far Cher had fallen in the decade between Moonstruck and to Autotune. end quote. In the late 80s, Cher contracted the Epstein-Barr virus, where a major symptom is extreme fatigue, and she had to turn down a bunch of big movie roles, including apparently Thelma and Louise. Musically Share had better luck in terms of maintaining her impact. And so it is time for me to ask you, can you hear the hooting and hollering sailors, the Navymen, the crew of the USS Missouri, hooting and hollering in the background here. I think you can hear them perfectly well, even if you can't really hear them at all.

I take back all the words that it hurt you shit. Yes, yes. How do I talk about this without getting in trouble with either the Navy or my mother? The music video for Cher's 1989 hit, If I Could Turn Back Time, consists of Cher, prancing around on the deck of the USS Missouri

amidst hooting and hollering sailors in the U.S. Navy while wearing an outfit, Cher's outfit, not the sailors, while wearing an outfit that flaunts all of Cher's tattoos. I forget the precise details, but I can still recall, I can still feel my mother's profound disapproval, her revulsion the first time she saw this video on MTV, which was also the first time I saw the, if I could turn back time video on MTV. and I do not recommend that you and your mother find out about this video simultaneously. Fun fact, the USS Missouri was where Japan formally surrendered in September of 1945, ending World War II. And I think my math was wrong, actually, and that's possibly the very same month. Share was conceived.

And forget I ever brought that up, but the Navy was big mad about this video once they got, you know, the whole scope of it. or the whole scope of Cher's outfit in it. But if I could turn back time, written by Diane Warren, this song is a jam, man. If I could reach the stars, and it's a jam that is only enhanced by the fact that I always hear the hooting and hollering sailors in the background

when I listen to it. And really, Cher's still doing great musically in 1990, when she exuberantly admonishes her backup singers for not listening to her. Didn't I tell you not to mess with Cher? Backup singers, please listen to all Share says for your own protection. Share is a top 40 hit with her cover of It's in His Kiss,

parentheses, the Shoup Shoup Song, which appears in the 1990 film Mermaids, in which Cher stars as the mother of both Winona Ryder and Christina Ricci. That was a lot to absorb. This song also appears on Cher's 1991 album Love Hurts, on which Cher also covers Love Hertz, the song. Shares Love Hurts is the second best version of Love Hurts after the 1974 version by Nazareth, the But Rock band.

The Nazareth version of Love Hurts is still the best, obviously. But rock is not a pejorative. But okay, perhaps more indicative of Cher's whole deal in the 90s musically is her 1995 album, It's a Man's World, which is, shall we say, adult contemporary. Share has been hitting number one on Billboard's adult contemporary charts for a while now. She had a couple jams with Peter Satera in the 80s. Back in 86, when Cher called David Letterman and asshole, they also talked about Cher turning 40.

She's fine about turning 40, but now, like, excited about it. It's relatable. Now, Cher's pushing 50. Now, shares covering walking in Memphis. It's pretty good. Now shares covering fucking Don Henley. That's even better, actually. But Cher does not exactly come across as a cutting-edge pop superstar.

It would be weird, I think, for Cher to be a cutting-edge pop superstar in the 1990s. Share's got some jams, but Cher knows her lane. And her lane in the 1990s is discovering fresh nuance in the line, Do I really feel the way I feel? Do you ever just sit around thinking about that line? But do I really feel? the way I feel? What a great line. It just slightly destabilizes

the whole song. Am I having a profound Elvis-based spiritual awakening? Or am I just singing a song about how I wish I could have a profound Elvis-based spiritual awakening? Great line. The original walking in Memphis,

the Mark Cone, original from 1991, is still the best, of course. She is doing fine musically in the 90s, although her output has slowed, and she's gotten a bit sting if you'll forgive the expression also the album cover for this record for the 1995 share album it's a man's world i am confounded by this album cover share is holding both an apple and a snake that's a biblical reference but her pose is so awkward that initially

it looked to me like she had three hands and was also holding a marmot i spent like 20 minutes staring at this album cover trying to figure out what was going on i don't want to talk about it also and this is a little more troubling. I don't think Cher thinks she's doing fine musically. In 2018, talking to the New York Times, she says, quote, I've made millions of albums, and most of them are absolutely no good,

but some of them aren't bad. End quote, that's troubling. But no, regardless of what Cher herself thinks, share doesn't have a musical problem in the 90s. She has a hair care problem. And how is Lori able to make her client's hair look so great? It's simple. Her treatments are unequaled and her hair products are pure magic.

Really, Cher is an infomercial problem. In 1993, Share appears in a trilogy of infomercials, including one for her friend Lori Davis's line of miraculous hair care products. Lori Davis, hair doctor to the stars. Lori Davis, close personal friend of Cher. Lori Davis, infamously portrayed by Chris Farley in the inevitable Saturday Night Live parody skits about shares infomercial. Per that ringer article, here's another share quote for you. Quote, there's nothing like an infomercial to slam dunk your ass.

I had really fucked up, end quote. These infomercials are on YouTube. I got no idea what's happening here. Ted Danson shows up at one point and kisses Lori. Davis, hair doctor to the stars, I got nothing. This is all far beyond my powers of understanding. And what's really exciting is that this line of skincare products is the only line in America that has Hydro Botten 5000 in it. I have no idea what Cher is talking about. It's the sad little clap before Cher says, Hydrobotin 5,000, that really breaks your heart, I think. Share is down bad.

If you'll forgive the expression. Less embarrassing, but also relevant, is my wife's second core share memory, which is, you guessed it, shares super 90s step aerobics workout tape. All right, this is the beginning of step class, our favorite class. The sweat your butt off class. And this is our instructor, Miss Kelly Roberts. Miss Kelly Roberts, close personal friend of share.

Miss Kelly Roberts, super Australian, Miss Kelly Roberts could bend me into a pretzel. I consider doing the whole share Step Aerobics workout tape with my wife now, like as a bit, but I would have died. I would have died. I would have either died or I would have ended up filing

the most humiliating workman's cop claim in American labor history. Amstring. On the next time round, we're going to Add a little bit of my intensity, yeah. Abduction. Holy crap. Even Miss Kelly Roberts is out of breath.

Forget about it. I would not survive that experience. We're in the weeds here, my friends. Cher is in the weeds, but so are we. So let me ask you something. Let me ask you a simple question. Is this auto tune? Hey, it's my own worst enemy. The Almighty 1999 jam from regular Southern California rock band

lit. So the pitch correction audio processor known as Autotune was released by Antara's audio technologies in 1997, having been invented by a former Exxon engineer named Dr. Andy Hildebrand, who like many famous inventors did not anticipate how precisely his invention would be most commonly used. I'm guessing that Dr. Andy also did not anticipate winning a Grammy in 2023. The record The awarding academy gave him a special merit award. If you're scoring at home, the inventor of Autotune, one Grammy, the band lit, zero Grammys. Listen to this again and give me your thoughts on the word why. Some very smart music critics I trust on these matters have insisted that you can hear hella auto tune on my own worst enemy.

The word why there, especially, word why has a suspiciously robotic lilt to it. Yes? It sounds like a robot pushes him down the stairs. Is that auto tune? Yes or no. I think it probably is. I think the dudes in Litt would probably get salty with you if you asked them if that's auto tune.

I literally Googled, does Litt have any Grammys? This is my job. It's a raucous debate. Lots of message board chatter about lit, but my own worst enemy is not proudly, explicitly hailed as the birth of autotune as a monumental force in 21st century pop music. No, this is. Just as it's nearly impossible for me to convey how dangerous David Letterman felt in 1986 or how down bad share was in 1996, I don't think I can truly express to you how jarring the words, Can't Breakthrough sounded on the radio. The first time you heard Share,

robotically sing the words, can't break through on the radio. What just happened to share? In 2015, Share told Billboard magazine, The most fun I ever had making a song was Believe, because you didn't know it was me in the beginning, and I was so excited, end quote. Who has done this to share?

Mark Taylor and Brian Roller. two London-based producers. That's who. And at first, when Mark Taylor and Brian Rawling were interviewed about what precisely they'd done to share, they lied about it. So, per a 1999 New York Times piece about believe, quote, Rob Dickens,

president of London-based Warner Music, UK, had decided that the only thing Cher could do to make up for her last album, It's a Man's World, a set of rock ballads that sold disappointingly, was to focus on her gay audience with a high-energy dance record, end quote. And then Cher says, he said, I want you to make a dance album. I said I didn't want to, but I have that problem.

If someone says I want you to do something and I'm not sure, I usually just say I don't want to do it. End quote. Don't mess with Cher, but Cher makes the dance album. Slowly, reluctantly, arduously, believe the song has six. credited songwriters. The New York Times says there are four additional uncredited songwriters, one of whom is Cher herself. There are many rewrites. There is much raucous debate. At one point, Cher dismisses one proposed line as total garbage. The lyrics finally come together, and the giant chorus has kind of always been there, but the full song itself has not

come together. The song is lacking something. And then Cher gets an idea. I'm packing up my bags now, because I can't take anymore. I am not 100% sure that this is the song, Share Hears, but I'm like 85% sure that this is the song. Share hears. Share is in the United Kingdom. Share is watching TV. Share is watching a UK talk show that features a musical performance by the band Rochford,

led by the acclaimed singer-songwriter Andrew Roachford. And Andrew, on this UK talk show. television program is singing a song through a vocoder, a synthesizer designed to replicate human speech. The vocoder was invented by Bell Labs in 1928. The vocoder was deployed tactically to disguise military communications during World War II, and the vocoder is figured prominently in pop music since the 70s. Pink Floyd, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson on P.Y.T. Phil Collins on in the air tonight. Will I remember? And then the rappers take over.

You got to read this book, man. It's called How to Rec a Nice Beach, the vocoder from World War II to hip hop, written by the awesome rap writer, Dave Tompkins. Came out in 2011. How to Recre a Nice Beach is what the phrase, how to recognize speech, might sound like if you said it through a vocoder.

Awesome book. I'm 90% certain Andrew Rochford is singing through a vocoder. And consequently, he sounds ever so slightly like a robot, especially when he takes a breath. This is it, right? Don't tell me this, isn't it? Every retrospective oral history type article about shares believe says that she saw this dude Andrew Rochford singing through a vocoder on UK TV, and she went out and bought a

Rocheford album, and she takes this one song on the Rocheford album to her producer. and Cher says, make me sound like this. But none of these articles say what Rochford's song it was, specifically. And so, I am 95% certain that the song is, I know you don't love me. Off Rochford's 1994 album, A Permanent Shade of Blue. This had better be it. This band Roachford is super rad, actually. And I know that because I listen to a shit ton of this band trying to find the song.

This sort of thing vexes me. But in February 1999, when the tech magazine Sound On Sound interviews believe producers Mark Taylor and Brian Ralling, Mark and Brian say, oh yeah, this is a vocoder. They're lying. Mark says, and may I remind you that Sound on Sound is a gearhead type tech magazine. Mark says, quote, so instead I used a Digitech talker, a reasonably new piece of kid. that looks like an old guitar foot pedal, which I suspect is what it was originally designed for. You plug your mic straight into it,

and it gives you a vocoder-like effect with clarity. It almost sounds like you've got the original voice coming out the other end. I used the tone from the Nord rack as a carrier signal and sequenced the notes that the Nord was playing from Q-base to follow Cher's vocal melody. That gave the vocals the stepped quality that you can hear prominently throughout the track, but only when I shifted the Nord's notes.

Oh, shut up, Mark, you're lying. It's Autotune. Everyone knows it's Autotune. I suspect that Mark and Brian didn't want any other producers stealing their shit. And it's pretty rad shit, honestly. Listen to the way Autotune makes Cher roll her R on the word, really. And here is the moment where T-Pain is born. And Daft Punk's one more time.

and Kanye West's 808s and Heartbreak and Lil Wayne's lallipop. Autotune is a powerful weapon in any pop or rap star's arsenal now. And even if bad singers can use auto tune in subtle ways to sound like

better singers, Autotune works best when people who can already sing, T-Pain for instance, use it in the most blatant way possible to almost disguise the fact that they can really sing. Lindsay's in that rad ringer piece on Belief.

She points us toward a 2018 pitchfork article written by the great critic and author Simon Reynolds, headlined how autotune revolutionized the sound of popular music. And Simon says, quote, the pitch correction technology autotune had been on the market for about a year before Believe hit the charts, but its previous appearances had been discreet as its makers, and Terra's audio technologies intended. Believe was the first record where the effect drew attention to itself. The glow and flutter of Cher's voice at key points in the song announced its own technological artifice, a blend of post-human perfection and angelic transcendence ideal for the vague religiosity of the chorus, end quote.

And this is why it had to be Cher, because Share, too, is a figure of very. vague religiosity. Because Cher, as a legit pantheon capital D diva since before the summer of love, epitomizes post-human perfection. Because Cher also revels in wanton, heedless, ultra-cringe, oh my God, Cher, what are you doing imperfection? You ever watch a basketball game and it's tied with 10 seconds left and your center, your seven foot tall brick-handed oaf takes a wild three-pointer out of nowhere and you go, no, no, no, but then it goes in and you go, yes, share. Believe had to be share. Believe doesn't work without the sky-high potential for catastrophe that only share can manifest. You can't be sure this is going to work. You have to hear in her voice the infomercials, the tabloid

dribble-dry, the fuck-you Oscar dresses, the Indian headdress, ma'am, step away from the Indian headdress, the omnipresent chaos. In the millions of albums she's made that she dismisses as no good, you need her singular combination of perfection and imperfection. Auto-tune needs Cher. Share does not need Autotune. Maybe she doesn't like her millions of albums, but plenty of people do. And what with her wind, dark see of a voice, she can hit every note like it's got David Letterman's face on it.

Autotune doesn't make her imperfections perfect. Share makes auto tunes perfections imperfectly transcendent. But that ain't auto tune. That's her. Believe the song spent four weeks at number one on the Hot 100. Believe the album peaked at number one. number four and is loaded up with other dance pop jams designed to remind you of believe the song. There's a song called Strong Enough. It's hilarious. It rules. This book is so good. I got to read

you this excerpt from How to Recognize Beach by Dave Tompkins, the vocoder book from one of the last chapters about how autotune rules pop music now. The chapter is called It's Not the End of the World. David writes, quote, in a sense, Exxon could be held accountable for the reinvention of Cher, who proved that believing in life after love, after age 50, was a simple matter of geophysics, artificial enhancement, and abused technology. As a 13-year-old from Yemen once told me, the people singing the songs aren't really singing the songs. So the adolescent listener reconstructs the voice with his own off-key. pipes. He goes on. Autotune can't sit still any more than after-school hormones. Maybe it appeals to kids

because they're undergoing a transformation of their own. Their voices modulating all over the pitch scale. Their speech ambushed by puberty. At times, the frog won't let go. Finally, he says, auto tune is the jitters, the teenage love hysteria, where the highs and lows, are no less drastic than the dips and spikes of pitch scale melodrama. That first heartbreak is the end of the world. It's not robotic. It is fickle and a flutter, and it seems to be happening all at once.

End quote. So picture a loser teenager sitting on a couch who never leaves the house, even though his arm only moves at normal speed, racked by lust and doubt and fury and catastrophe, Unlovable, but with a hilarious and alarming voice that millions of teenagers love precisely for its ugliness, and the poor kids dreaming of true love, but for now, he'll settle for the lady on the battleship on MTV. And if you're going to picture one loser teenager on that couch, why not picture two? Our guest today, we are honored to be joined once again by DJ Louis X. 14th, a DJ writer and host of the fantastic.

podcast Pop Pantheon, which celebrates and painstakingly ranks all of your favorite pop stars. Louis, thank you so much for coming back. Rob, it is my honor and pleasure to be here. Likewise. Yeah, I was not aware until fairly recently that Cher is informally known as the goddess of pop. Like, I don't disagree with this necessarily. I just, I wasn't up on this. Like, when did she acquire this title, you know, and in your opinion, you know, does she still hold it? I don't claim to know the etymology of her being called the goddess of pop necessarily, but I don't think it's a title that is wielded like Michael Jackson being the king of pop or Madonna being the queen of pop or I think it's informal probably is the right word for what's going on

there. In terms of whether or not she deserves it, I was thinking a lot about this when you sent the question over. And I think she really does because I think if Madonna is the queen of pop, it would make sense that Cher would be the god or goddess. I bet you Cher maybe wouldn't subscribe so much to the gender term goddess as she has famously referred to herself as a rich man, which is something we can discuss. That's a great quote. That's a fantastic quote. Yes. So God or goddess, whatever you want to say. I think it makes sense in the context of the idea that I think a lot about how we think about modern pop stardom sort of calcifies in the titans of the early 80s, namely in Prince, Madonna, Michael Jackson.

I think those three really represent like the formation of pop stardom in the MTV era and the idea of being a pop star as something that really is something much bigger than being a musician. It's really kind of a 360 degree exercise that is very visually driven. It has a lot of elements to it that sort of play on the person's X factor. And music, I think even increasingly into the modern age, becomes kind of like a brand extension more so than like a central organizing principle. And I think that, you know, for Michael, Prince, Madonna, obviously all wonderful musicians in their own right.

And music is obviously incredibly integral to who all of them are. But they also were part of a generation of pop stars in which music, you know, became one amongst an ray of areas in which you could consume them. And I think Cher predates that in many ways, but I also think maybe somewhat inadvertently sets the template in the pre-MTV era for like that version of being a pop star where her stardom is about her music on some level, but it's also about so much more than her music. It's about her visual. It's about her multimedia approach to stardom.

It's about just her. general X factor. I mean, share will be remembered as much for her hits, if not more so, for just being share, for just the idea of being famous, for her shareness, you know, and she was able to, she was able to funnel that into so many different mediums from music to TV, to movies, to just existing fashion, right? I mean, her look, all of that part of it. So in that way, I do think of Madonna as like a modern pop star like air tech. So she's like kind of she precedes the ideas of modern pop stardom, but also sort of sets the template that then is sort of seized upon by these sort of 80 stars that I think we we currently think of as kind of like the foundational elements of pop stardom today,

if that makes sense. So goddess works. That's my long way of saying. Goddess works. She's kind of above. She's above the fray in a sense. Right. Sure. Sure. Sure. Because I was going to ask because she's been famous, you know, I got you, babe, was 1965, you know, I was going to ask you, like, half jokingly if Cher was, like, the first pop star as we think of pop stardom now. Through that, you know, the 80s mindset, as you say, like, I think that's where the template is born. And when we think of a pop star, that's who we think of first a lot of the time

is Madonna, MJ Prince, in the 80s, you know? So is Cher really the foundation for all of this? I think there's definitely a lens through which. you could look at it that way. I think if you're thinking of other pre-80s pop stars, I feel like she's the one that maybe fits most squarely into the sort of terms that we think of pop stardom as now. I mean, obviously, I think Tina Turner has to be part of that conversation. I obviously think people like Little Richard and Elvis have to be part of that conversation. I think even someone like Frank Sinatra probably has to be part of that conversation.

Like these are all people that like added and built upon each other's work to create. kind of like what we think of as the modern day pop star. But I think of all those sort of pre-80s stars, I would say that it's probably fair to say that Cher is the one that is the most like overtly conversant with the nature of pop stardom as we know it today for all the reasons I was sort of laying out in my previous answer. Sure. Okay.

So I grew up in the 80s, right? I was a little kid. I was watching MTV. You know, I worshipped Prince, MJ, you know, Janet Jackson, Madonna. And my first concrete memory of Cher is if I could turn back time, right? You know, like, Share on the battleship, et cetera, et cetera. Like, is she on top of the world when the 90s start? You know, she's had all these hit songs.

She just won an Oscar. Like, what do you make of Cher in the 80s overall? And how is she positioned, like, at the onset of the 90s? Well, what's really interesting about Cher is, like, the sort of, like, currency of her career is sort of, like, boom and buzz. Like, she's constantly in this kind of ebbing and flowing. And I think, like, comebacks are sort of, like, her entire, like, lifeblood. Like, that's how Scher's career works.

Like, she kind of goes to these periods of massive saturation and relevance that are followed by kind of moments where she falls out of fashion. You know, I think the Madonna-Share connection is, like, very, very clear in a lot of different ways. But one of them is sort of this, like, voracious... reinvention, like this idea of sort of like, how do I, if something's not working, how do I, like, update what I'm doing to fit what's happening at the moment while somehow never losing track of the essence of who I am, which is like, you know, I think a great sort of like ongoing struggle for pop stars and sort of like one of the things that like only the greatest can do over and over again in a way is like retain the essence, but somehow like reimagine or like

re-actualize themselves for new moments. And I think, Cher has been incredibly adept at that throughout her career. When thinking about late 80s and early 90s, you have kind of a perfect example of this. I mean, Cher had kind of built to maybe the highest peak of her solo career in the late 80s. You know, after having gone through probably two booms and busts or notable booms and busts coming into that moment,

you know, the late 80s was obviously in some ways the peak, the pinnacle of Cher in the sense that you on the one hand, you know, her proving all of her doubters wrong and becoming a bona fide movie star through hits like The Witches of Eastwick and, of course, her Oscar winning turn in Moonstruck. And then you had this kind of musical comeback in a guise that I think she had long sort of craved, which was sort of like being taken seriously as like a rocker chick. I mean, I think that that was something that hadn't necessarily been how she'd been seen in the past. I mean, she had obviously had dalliances with it, but this was kind of like an

era where she was able to slide into like making rock music and posing herself as a rock star in a way. And I think she had great success. I think initially kind of the template setter for Scher's music in this period is I found someone, which was like a 1987 hit that was written by Michael Bolton. It's kind of like mid tempo kind of. Yeah. That makes sense. Yes. Yes. Yes. That makes a lot of sense. Wow. That's clarifying. Thank you. Yes, exactly. So it's like, you know, these kind of like heavy rock. but with a kind of big booming uplifting pop courses that then obviously, like, the promise is fulfilled in 1989 with what is probably, I think, if it's not believe her signature hit is, you know, the Diane Warren written if I could turn back time, which is this, you know, of course, as you referenced, is also the moment where in her early 40s, Cher is in a like, you know, a bathing suit with her ass out, like, mounting cannons and like, you know, you know. That is factually accurate.

Yes. I think, like, you know, when shares, when she, you know, I think a lot of times, like, when you think about the biggest pop shows in the world, they can often be kind of like canonized in a single image. And I think share in the bathing suit, in the leather jacket with the big hair singing if I could turn back time. Yes, with the sailors. That's the image that I think will go down as like, you know, as someone who's had a lot of indelible images, I think that is the one that will probably go down. So I think to say, all of which is to say, the late 80s are an incredible boom time for share. But the early 90s immediately kind of leads to like an absolute nadir for share where she essentially like I think I was kind of reading up on it this morning, but like becomes kind of overly cautious about her movie choices, turns down Thelma and Louise and a number of other like potential sort of like follow up movies that could have been big deals and ends up doing infomercials. which like becomes a heavily derided aspect of her early 90s output.

I happen to think that it's kind of like, again, like a forward-thinking thing of like share the brand. I mean, now we're like, we were obsessed with the idea of selling out, right? In the 90s, that was like such a big deal. Now in like the Kim Kardashian era of celebrity, like every pop star is out of her hawking like makeup and lingerie and like what, like there's no shame in that game. She's an influencer. Right. She was literally like ahead of the game.

But at the time in our. sell-out obsessed culture of the 90s. I think people really saw her as like, you know, probably she was over. I mean, again, having a sustained pop career past 40, like, especially as a woman, it's very, very uncommon. So I would say, I would say as we enter the 90s, it somehow was both, like, coming off of, like,

the boomiest boom time and the, like, a time where she really proved everybody wrong, and then also seemed like another moment where people probably thought her career was over, I would guess. Yeah. She was sick a lot. in the early 90s, I guess. Like, she lost a couple years.

And I think she said, that's why she had to turn out like Thelma and Louise, of course. Yeah. She talks a lot, you know, she talks about how down she was at this point because of the infomercials. She's like, that fucked up my career so much.

In every retrospective oral history, whatever, on believe, like, share, it's share leading the charge and like declaring how, like, badly she needed to hit, you know,

like, where was share? Right in 1998, like the day. before Believe hit, you know? Was she just desperately needed a hit, right? Yes, she did. And I think, like, one of the brilliance aspects of Cher is her willingness to, like,

throw out the rulebook and, like, do what it took. You know, that's, like, often a route to success in pop startup. Again, you have to do that somehow while still retaining that essence. If you lose that, then you're fucked also. Sorry, can we curse on this? Sure. You can curse all you want, Louis. Firewake.

So you're fucked in that way. But I think Cher has a very cany and like sort of like brazen ability to like toss out whatever was going for her before that stops working and kind of like find the hit, you know, find the hit. And I think that that is a lot of the story of believe in of this entire album, you know, especially coming off of like the flop of the preceding album, which was a 1995 record called it's a man's world where she essentially like, yeah, where she was like kind of doing, you know, MOR, rock, you know, whatever. And then it was not a success. Yes. Yes. Exactly. So yes, she needed a hit, but I don't know that anybody thought she was going to get one. And I definitely don't think anyone thought it was going to be this big of it. I don't think anyone thought Scher's signature hit was still ahead of her at this moment. Was still ahead of her. Absolutely. Yeah. Sorry to ask you a personal question, but where do you stand on Autotune? Are you with it or against it? In general. I'm definitely with it. I think that, you know, I'm not, you know, again, I think there's like anything. in life, it can be misused, but I think that it's proven over the last, let's say, I guess, 25 years since believe, but definitely I'd say in the sort of post-T pain and then I guess post-808s

and heartbreak and then subsequently Little Wayne and Future and whomever to be a tool that can be really effective in so many different ways. I mean, we can talk about that. Maybe I don't know if you want to talk about this exact juncture, but like, you know, this is a tool that these artists have. have used to create sort of pathos. It can be flirty. It can be, you know, kind of, it can convey a sense of, you know,

coldness or disaffection. You know, it's really, it can be funny. I mean, I was thinking a lot about like Kesha. And I was thinking about a conversation that we had. I don't know when this episode's going to come out. Maybe I'm tipping my hand here. But I'm thinking about boom, boom, boom. I mean, there's like, you know, there's so many instances, you know,

I think it's a very versatile. thing. And I think I'm someone that definitely does not look down on sort of like the utilization of machinery in popular music. I think like, of course it can reach a point where we lose humanity. But I definitely think there's so many artists and examples of songs out there in which humanity has somehow been enhanced or some quality, some quality has been enhanced by the use of auto tune through various different uses of it throughout the last 25 years. So I would say I'm definitely overall happy that it exists and pro auto tune. Are you pro auto tune, Rob?

I am. I'm with you. Anything can be misused, you know, but I do think that it's proven to be like a really cool weapon, you know, and like the iciness, the coldness. You know, I listen to 808s recently, you know, for the first time in a while. And if you can filter out, you know, the billions of things you have to filter out. Like, it's a great record. And like, it's just the mood that it sets and the desolation, you know, that it sort of presupport. You know, that it's sort of projects onto you. It really is something. And T-Pain, of course, you know, I love like the rise and fall of everyone's perception of T-Pain. And like the moment where he goes on like the tiny music desk or whatever and like,

oh, he can actually sing, you know, like that kind of thing. Like I, it's, I'm pro auto-tune just for the way it sort of throws a wrench and how we think about these people and their abilities and like whether or not they can sing and all of that. Yeah. And I also think like the idea of whether or not someone can sing being. like so important to everyone. It's such a rockist, irritating concept in and of itself. And it feels really dated.

I mean, we don't think about, like, like, okay, yes, you have Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey

and you have all these people that can sing like that, but it's like so many other artists do worthwhile things and are creative in so many different ways that don't necessarily sort of spin around the access of whether they are traditionally great singers.

So it doesn't, you know, to me, I just think that that's like an empty argument. Like vocal manipulation can be a tool, like any other tool to, something. It's a creative idea. So, yes, I think

AutoTune is great and has been great many, many, many, many times in the last 25 years. How revolutionary was Believe really? Was this song just a complete shock when it came out, or were there enough other

songs along the way, like in the early mid-90s, where like it was sort of a gradual continuation? Like, is there a lineage here? Or is this just a Big Bang type moment? for auto tune and, you know, vocal manipulation, you know, as a major pop entity. I think there's, like, a couple ways of thinking about this. I mean, I think artists have attempted to manipulate their vocals throughout pop history,

like Elvis's slapback echo thing and, like, the Beatles double-tracking, and, like, you know, like, filter, French, like, filter disco was, like a huge thing in the mid-90s. And, you know, I was reading something. I forget what it was when I was prepping for this. but they were talking about essentially like the word falsetto contains the word false in it. And so it's essentially like kind of a superhuman expression of the human voice, which is part of the reason why like Beach Boy songs sound so ethereal and kind of like strange. So I think in that sense it's not a new idea.

And, you know, I was also thinking about it in the lineage of kind of like dance music and the sort of like overt synthesized nature of dance music a la kind of like I feel love, obviously being the kind of like big boom boom moment of that again in that song you know which i think is in conversation with believe in numerous ways but like again the warmth in that song comes from the fact that donna summer's vocals are kind of like buttery and very human sounding against kind of this sort of like arpeggiated synthesizer noise and you know i think that like but like you still have that kind of feeling of like like not trying to hide the syntheticness like not exactly like making use of the syntheticness

in a way that is an art form in and of itself. So I thought about that. In terms of kind of like the 90s, I think you have to talk about Daff Punk's homework in 1997 being like an important preceding moment to believe. Like you think about a song like around the world and they're using a vocoder.

They're not using autotune. But there's an example of a song that has a lot of human qualities to it. It's very playful. It's got warmth to it somehow through a lot of synthetic elements. a lot of computerized elements. And I think that that felt like the,

perhaps like the most important sort of like preceding moment to believe when I was thinking about this question after you sent it. I think that like clearly everyone was moving, you know, the technology was advancing. I mean, think about the advancements in studio technology in this time period. Of course. I mean, one thing you asked me before we got on here is like, who were the big stars of this moment?

I think this was a big moment preceding belief for R&B stars, right? like you were having, you know, Brandy and you were Mariah. There was a lot of people that were sort of like TLC. This was like a big moment for like crossover R&B stars. But R&B was also becoming this incredibly like experimental synthetic studio creation by way of dark child and Timberland and Neptunes. And so yes, I think this was a moment generally speaking where like studio wizardry and like computerized studio wizardry was really like at a formative moment.

So this was, this was good. Whether Cher did it. in this moment or not like this something like this was obviously like on the horizon is what I feel like yeah you mentioned Madonna you know just the parallels there and I was going to ask you about you know believe the believe

album and Madonna's ray of light if you see those in conversation you know are parallel to each other in terms of like superstars who are past their first decade you know and are proving like you said like how to continue to be famous and to continue to innovate you know but still

hold on to like this core essence of who they are. Do you hear Believe in Ray of Light as being similar in that way? Well, I definitely think there are similarities. I mean, they are both like divas that many thought were maybe like past their hit-making prime employing sort of like contemporary dance music elements

to sort of reinvigorate their sound. There's definitely sort of like techno elements to the production of Believe that like reminds me in some ways of like elements of like Ray of Light's title track. or sky meets heaven or whatever, like a lot of songs on ray of light. But I think in some ways, aside from that idea, I think they're functioning very differently.

Aside for sort of like, quote unquote, comeback vehicles as like a broad over like way and the sort of employment of dance music styles and electronica to sort of get there, I think they're operating differently, which is that Madonna's ray of light was a moment of sort of like profound, like deepening and sort of looking inwardness

that sort of like really altered the way that we... Like I think that was a very expansive record for like what we thought Madonna could do as an artist. Like it was something that like was really radically kind of deepened and widened the scope of Madonna's artistry and like was meant to do so. Like clearly had a very self-serious sort of approach to it that was meant to be like,

I am a dead ass serious artist and like really achieved. that in many ways, while at the same time, of course, being very successful. I think Believe is kind of coming on the opposite tact, which is like, we need you to stop making like self-serious music and pivot towards gay people and like, like, make dance music and make party music. And, you know, the music on Believe, which I relistened to this morning preparing for this, you know, it's very broad. It's not, you know, like, there's a lot of sort of specificity to Ray of Light. I mean, it's very biographical. It's very, like, you know, again, intimate is the word that comes to

mind, like she is mining the depths of her soul in a way that we, like, you know, almost had never seen her do before. And I, or at least with that level of adroitness. And I think, believe is kind of the opposite. Believe is, again, not that Cher isn't bringing elements of herself and biography and emotion to it, but these records feel much more kind of like cravenly, like, squared towards, like, how do we broaden you again? Like, how do we take this broader?

So that, so in that way, I don't see them as being similar. But I think maybe aesthetically, I can imagine that the team and Cher herself were probably looking at the sort of broad techno aesthetics of ray of light and going, like, perhaps this is a route back to the charts for us, maybe. Yeah, I don't, yeah, I don't listen to believe and think, share is really getting deep here. Yes, exactly. You know, when you don't want that, right?

Like, it doesn't have to be that, you know, and it's great for what it is, but it isn't, it isn't that at all. I've asked you this a lot, but I, as a DJ, you know, how and when do you deploy share? Like, how often are you breaking out, believe, like, what's the reaction? You know, how often do you break out a share song that isn't believe? Like, how do dance floors react to this person now? Well, I would say that, like, it's probably important pretext here to say that, like, as a DJ, I'm definitely a crowd pleaser. I'm not the

type of DJ that's getting up there for the most part and being like, look at the cool shit I can pull out that you've never heard before. So there's no question that 99% of the time if I'm pulling a share song out of my ass. It's going to be Believe. Which is, again, her signature song, and not just her signature song, but also one of the most kind of,

I think, enduring hits of the 90s. I mean, it's definitely a song that has lived on, like, people that didn't grow up with it know it. I think, again, the auto tune is such a massive part of that. It's like, I was actually going back and reading our buddy Tom Bryant,

Ryan's number one's column on this. And he was talking about it, and I believe it's true. It's like this song without the auto tune is much less remarkable. I mean, it's not that it isn't good, but I think that, you know, I think that I don't want to call it a gimmick because I think it's an effective artistic choice, but that sort of like makes it so memorable and I think has caused it to sort of like endure in people's minds. Like her hitting that believe in the chorus and like kind of falling between, like the shattering auto tune sort of crazy blippy bloopy bloopy.

feeling of that. Like, that is so memorable. So, yes, the song is lived on. People love this song. Like, it is one of those songs where if you hit it at the right time, like, it is really like, it can be a real 10 out of 10 moment. And like, if I'm pulling out a different chair song, I mean, I don't know. There's a club that I sometimes play at a New York called Joyface where you can't play music past 1989 and maybe I'll pull out, like, if I could turn back time or the disco, or the disco song, take me home or whatever, but like, or I think that's what it's called. But like, but yeah, no, I'd say 99% of the time. Share wasn't really a dance artist.

I mean, that's the thing. That's the other part of Believe that I think is kind of like an interesting thing as it being the song she's most remembered for. Like, Cher for most of her career was not making dance music. Of course, there were moments where there were larks. She made a disco album, but it was seen as a lark. Like, she's not really a dance artist in this way, entail belief. After Believe, you know, she definitely, you know, tried a pivot.

Yeah. What happens at the club where you're not allowed to play music past 1989 if you do? Like, do you get gonged or like does a giant hook like pull you off? Yeah. Security lifts me up and throws me into a puddle on the sidewalk. Through a plate glass window. Literally. You know, your records bounce after you.

Alarm starts spinning. All the lights come on in the club. They evacuate. The sprinklers go on. Yeah. They're very serious about this. Yeah. It's dead ass.

I wouldn't dare. Honestly, I don't know the answer because I would not dare. Right. It's just in your imagination, it's worse than whatever they would actually do. The trap door in the floor opens and I'm fed to a bowl of sharks. That would be the most convenient way to get rid of you is just the trash you. Like, just look at your feet the next time you're there and just check for seams. And then this has been awesome.

Yes. Thank you so much for this, man. This has been great. I really appreciate it. My pleasure, Rob, anytime. Thanks very much to our guest this week, DJ Louis XIV. Thanks, as always, to our producers, Jonathan Kerma, and Justin Sales. Thanks to Chloe Clark for additional production help.

And thanks very much to you for listening. And now, why don't you go listen to Believe by Share? We'll see you next week.