In the spring of 1999, this recent Pacific Northwest transplant was craving the energy of a 24-hour city like Chicago, where I grew up. Thus, when a work trip took me to New York, I was overjoyed. I was also broke and knew nothing about the place. The concierge at my touristy hotel probably sniffed that on me when he recommended a joint within walking distance, which wasn’t so much a nightclub as an establishment with a velvet rope by its entrance.
That velvet rope wasn’t cordoning off anything but wishes and dreams. Luckily, the bouncer recognized that I had been misled and invited me to peek inside to decide if it was worth the $20 cover. He was a good man.
Inside lurked a nearly vacant dance floor radiating “friendless rich kid's birthday party” energy. A terminally bored drink slinger slumped behind a lonely bar. A disco ball ambitiously sparkled for nobody but two mullet-sporting ladies tipsily writhing by a bistro table. It was the tune, Cher's “Believe,” that injected nitro into my run for the exit. “You’re welcome,” he said as I re-emerged, directing me toward decent bars within walking distance.
Let me be the first to admit what music snob the girl in this story was — and still is — but if you were in circulation back then, you may also recall how inescapable "Believe" was for months on end.
The downside of creating pop music immortality, an achievement for which “Believe” is being celebrated on its 25th anniversary, is that few such hits ascend that mountaintop without pushing millions of people over the edge.
For well over half a year, Cherilyn Sarkisian’s throaty question of whether we believed in life after love confronted us in malls and convenience stores; at hair and nail salons; and on every radio station’s repeating drivetime playlist. Strains of its speed-laced melody violated my peace by wafting into my apartment like a garbage truck’s drive-by stink. It would not surprise me if some church choir director retrofitted it to suit their Sunday services. The title track of Cher’s 22nd album spent a whopping 31 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, four of which were on top at No. 1.
A quarter of a century has provided enough distance for me to tolerate the odd free-range encounter with the biggest hit of Cher’s career. I can even say that “Believe” was — and still is — a force for good. Cher was already a gay icon when “Believe” dropped, but the song sealed her reign for a new generation while mainstreaming her fabulousness in the flyover states similar to the way Madonna brought voguing to the masses a few years earlier. I can even appreciate the innovations it contributed to modern American music, partly because its most significant one bolsters my argument as to why it’s still sort of detestable.
I’m referring to the song's introduction of auto-tune, birthing a sea of robotic audio assaults from which the occasional Daft Punk and T-Pain banger bob forth. In 1998, British producers Mark Taylor and Brian Rawling pioneered its modern usage by making Cher’s velvety contralto pixelate and reconstitute over and over, measure by measure, making history.
Since Cher is among the first to lead the auto-tune revolution, referred to as the “Cher effect” for a time, one might forgive her for popularizing the technique into hackneyed overuse. But by layering her tech-manipulated vocals over a club synth beat rolled in pixie dust, Taylor and Rawling smashed our assumption that Cher might be sliding into the emeritus chapter of her career — revered, perhaps, but no longer a vital force in popular music.
This anniversary finds me a lot closer to Cher’s age when “Believe” revitalized her sound. Cher had gone nearly 25 years without scoring a No. 1 hit before “Believe” first laid siege to our ears — and in a time when the hot hitmakers were a young Britney Spears and Brandy. At 52, the success of “Believe” made Cher the oldest female solo artist to top the Hot 100, a title she still holds in the Guinness Book of World Records. That aspect of its legacy, I stan.
The track also earned Cher her only Grammy Award to date, for best dance recording, which would seemingly vindicate that Midtown tourist trap's DJ. Fair enough.
TV sufficiently reassured me that I wasn’t alone in my distaste for the ditty. In a third season episode of “South Park,” authorities from a government agency blasted “Believe” (or, rather, Trey Parker’s license-free approximation of it) outside of a party. “This is what we did in Waco: play really bad music really loud until it drives them nuts and makes them want to come out . . ." an officer remarked. "Nobody can stand this much Cher!” I didn’t always agree with the show, but on that topic, we were of like mind.
A few months after that episode aired, a fourth season episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” showed its heroine struggling to coexist with a college roommate from Hell, who she suspected was an actual demon, citing her new co-tenant's off-putting insistence on blasting “Believe” on repeat as proof, along with her habit of ironing her jeans. Spoiler alert: Buffy was correct.
So was Cher’s legion of fans, who loved the song into Hall of Fame status, establishing its place as a timeless anthem for Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z. Jackhammering any Top 40 tune into our brains tends to win such campaigns since — love them or hate them — their ubiquity makes them part of an era’s commonly accepted soundtrack.
There’s something more to consider in the song’s longevity, which is its reaffirmation of the upbeat break-up track’s potency. “Believe” is one in a long time of happy heartbreak tunes, but it set a pattern for a slew of tracks urging the newnly jilted to dance out their despair.
Does it deserve credit for being a recent pop progenitor of hits like Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own,” Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone” or Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the U.S.A.” — or, heck, any Taylor Swift cut that calls people off the sidelines to stomp out their ex’s memories on the dancefloor? Better question: Does it not?
“Believe,” both the track and the album, transformed Cher’s sound and musical direction in a way that resonates today, which you can hear in the auto-tune lacquering of “DJ Play a Christmas Song." The holiday single is from her just-released “Christmas,” the first studio album of original material she has recorded in 10 years. Similar to her balking at the suggestion that she record a dance music album in 1998, Cher recently told Billboard that she never intended to make a holiday album.
“. . . I almost never like what I do,” she said to Billboard. “But I mean people love it, and I’m happy. I’m so particular, but I love the songs and everyone who hears them loves them.” Well, maybe not everyone at first, but eventually, most of us do come around.
Cher's “Believe (Deluxe Edition)” will be released on Friday, Nov. 3. “Christmas” was released on Friday, Oct. 20.
