Cher, Chrissie Hynde and Neneh Cherry with Eric Clapton 'Love Can Build A Bridge'

Chart Peak: 1 [1 week]

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The 1995 Comic Relief single is an all-star cover of the Judds' 'Love Can Build A Bridge'... It raced into the Top 5 on release in March '95

Performers on this track are listed in the same order as they were on the sleeve - order of appearance would be Hynde-Cher-Cherry (and then Clapton). And while we're dealing with details, Now CDs of this era have the song titles and production credits printed onto the disc itself, but this is the one case I know of where there are also credits for the three engineers, five assistant engineers and the mastering engineer (as well as the arranger and mixer, jobs which get mentioned now and again). I've attached the photo of this below the jump, just in case anyone wants to avoid spoilers for the remaining tracks on the album; I presume these people took a more prominent credit in lieu of payment, due to the nature of the release. Incidentally, the arranger on this track was David Campbell, which is the closest we've ever got to his son Beck appearing on a Now album.

Regular readers may have noticed that when I write a whole first paragraph without mentioning the song itself, this is rarely a sign of enthusiasm, and so it proves again. We're back in cover-of-a-cover territory here, as the song's obvious sentimentality had already seen a version released to raise money for Rwandan children peak at only 57 six months earlier. The song clearly had potential though, hence this swift re-recording, though it is rather an odd one out among the Comic Relief singles: where previous releases had been out-and-out comedy tracks, and subsequent ones have often been upbeat tracks by currently popular acts with room for clowning in the video, this is the one single that makes no attempt at humour, although whether it actually is the least funny one is a matter of opinion. Speaking of odd ones out, it seemed at the time that Neneh Cherry was slightly out of place among the three singers as she was the only one who'd not previously had a Number One single (in fact, she was the only one of the three who hadn't had a Number One with a version of 'I Got You Babe') but all three singers do a decent job of the vocals, even though the number of technical staff involved implies they recorded their parts separately. Eric Clapton's guitar solo, which also earns him his first Number One single, isn't very interesting though, and he looks a bit stupid wearing a suit and trainers in the video. Still, he's as good as the song itself really deserves. At least it was for a good cause. I believe the Tom Jones/Lenny Henry track on the B-side would have been the audio of this sketch from 1991, though how well that worked in sound only I wouldn't care to speculate.

Cher also appears on: Now 32, 33, 42
Chrissie Hynde also appears on: Now 6, 13 [both with UB40]
Neneh Cherry also appears on: Now 14, 15, 16, 18, 29 [with Youssou N'Dour], 35

Cher 'Believe'

Chart Peak: 1 (7 weeks)

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High tempo dance tune 'Believe' gave the legendary Cher her biggest hit in the UK to date.. It became the biggest selling and longest running No1 single of 1998, and has also qualifed as the biggest selling single by a female artist in the UK... ever!

OK, we don't have the biggest hit of early 1999 on here, but we do have the biggest one of late 1998 (and a bigger seller in total, in fact). 'Believe' is a track that has several claims to a place in history: it was Number One in the first ever Top 5 to consist entirely of new entries, it made her the oldest woman to top the singles chart in the UK or the US and as the sleevenote mentions, it remains to this day the biggest selling single by a female solo artist, admittedly favoured by its release in a very strong sales climate. It was particularly important as a comeback hit for her in the US, where her releases in the middle of the decade hadn't seen the same success they did in Europe. Not bad going for a single that was rush-released in the UK even before the video had been finished.

The track's biggest influence though is of course musical. 'Believe' was surely not the first hit single to use AutoTune, but it was the first to make a feature of it, with it turned up to overdriven levels to create an odd semi-robotic sound, most obviously on the "can't break through"/"can't do that" lines in each verse. Of course, this is really just an extension of the usual studio effects producers have been trying out on vocals since double-tracking became possible, but it's also the obvious antecedent of the sound of radio in 2013, with pitch correction used as an end in itself and applied liberally whether the singer needs it or not. I have to admit that it's not a sound I'm keen on: unlike some people I have no moral objection to the use of Autotune and more than I have to varispeed or reverb, but I find long exposure to this sort of vocal too wearing on the ear. Even in the four minutes of 'Believe' itself it's tiring to listen closely to. Whether it was intended to emphasise any part of the song's sentiment or simply to be a gimmick for its own sake isn't clear: you could fashion some sort of theory that the protagonist might have sacrificed some of her humanity in order to become a survivor, but I suspect it's coincidental. Mind you, in all these years I've never totally figured out what the chorus is supposed to mean anyway; when she sings "I can something inside me say, I really don't think you're strong enough", is "you" the singer herself or the ex she's addressing (and dismissing) in the verses? Either way, it doesn't seem to matter that much, it's just a vehicle for a big chorus and in that sense it works.

Also appearing on: Now 30 (with Chrissie Hynde and Neneh Cherry), 32, 33
Available on: Believe

Cher 'One By One' (LP Version)

Chart Peak: 7

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'One By One' was a huge No. 7 hit for Cher in January 1996... She has now had big UK Top 10 smashes in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

And in fact she managed it in the 2000s as well with 'Music's No Good Without You', though that's her only hit single so far this century. You might think that Cher was something of an about-turn from the Britpop sound of the previous tracks, but in fact there is a connection: the song was written by Tony Griffiths of proto-Britpop group The Real People, though it's fair to say that their original demo recording isn't that Britpoppy. Nonetheless, Griffiths and his brother have a place in the genre's history as it was in their studio that Oasis recorded the demo which got them signed, whilst he also sings backing vocals on their first single 'Supersonic'. The Real People also recorded probably the only Top 100 single named after a place in the Harrow area: 'Rayners Lane'.

Although Johnny Logan had had a hit in Ireland with the song, this is the only well-known version in most of the world. It's a solid mid-tempo rocker which features some really rather good singing from Cher herself, although it's more potboilerish than truly outstanding, mainly because the chorus doesn't quite seem to hit home. The great weakness is Steven Lipson's production, which seemed staid even at the time and is painfully dated now, though it's still rather better than the lightweight pseudo-RnB remix that was released as a single in the USA. This aging (and maybe the fact that it wasn't much of a hit over there) might be why you never seem to hear this one nowadays, but either it's better than I remember it or I'm more open-minded.

Also appearing on: Now 30 (with Chrissie Hynde and Neneh Cherry), 32, 42
Available on: It's A Man's World

Cher 'Walking In Memphis'

Chart Peak: 11

YouTube

Hmm... if you want a tenous connection, she used to be married to somebody called Bono.
For the first few seconds, you get exactly what you're expecting: a straight and rather pointless cover of Marc Cohn's 1991 hit. Then at 0:38 the junglist beats kick in... OK, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but the most notable thing about Cher's first solo Now appearance is the attempt to make it sound more up-to-date than the original, for all that Cher is the more experienced act. As the sleeve note points out it was thirty years since she had her first solo hit with 'All I Really Want To Do (Marc Cohn would have been about six years old then), but then again it's this sort of attempt to chase the contemporary that has made her career so long lasting: certainly when I first encountered her during her first run of hits in the 1980s it didn't even cross my mind that she might have had hits before I was born.

The other remarkable thing about this version is the changes of gender. "I'm as blue as a girl can be" is only logical, of course, but I'm not so sure why "Muriel plays piano..." has to turn into a man called Gabriel, especially if I'm correct in recalling that Muriel was a real person. Either way, insistently giving the elderly pianist the opposite gender to the singer adds an implication that I don't really think was ever intended.
Nonetheless, whilst her greater name recognition presumably helped this chart higher than the original over here, it seems largely forgotten now. I'd say it hadn't aged well, except that I didn't like it at the time either. I can't say I'm surprised they didn't even bother to release the single in America.

Also appearing on: Now 30 (with Chrissie Hynde and Neneh Cherry), 33, 42
Available on: The Very Best of Cher