Cher Believe

1. Believe
2. Power
3. Runaway
4. All or Nothing
5. Strong Enough
6. Dov’e L’amore
7. Takin’ Back My Heart
8. Taxi Taxi
9. Love Is the Groove
10. We All Sleep Alone

Cher’s recording career has long taken a back seat to her acting pursuits, but with Believe she’s back with a vengeance as a throbbing disco diva. Although no fewer than five producers with dance pedigrees are along for the project (including Todd Terry, Junior Vasquez of Madonna fame, and Rob Dickins, who helped resurrect Rod Stewart’s ailing career), this is by no means a dance album in the ’90s trip-hop sense of the term. Rather, it’s a tour de force that summons mid-’70s images of strobe-lighted dance floors, sequined miniskirts, and writhing bodies. In “Power,” Cher wails, “Ain’t nothing changed much through the years.” Not a bad thing in this case, since Cher’s star was still rising in the steamy ’70s and ’80s with a string of hits that included the disco gem “Take Me Home” and the haunting “If I Could Turn Back Time.”

After the poorly-received previous record It’s a Man’s World, Warner Bros. talked Cher into recording a dance album. Cher began working on Believe in summer 1998 in London, meeting with producers Mark Taylor and Brian Rawling, who had previously worked with Rob Dickins; additional producers included Todd Terry (“Taxi Taxi”) and Junior Vasquez (who had to originally worked on “Dov’ L’Amore” but when he sent back his version from New York, it was rejected by Dickens, who decided instead to give the production of the track to Taylor and Rawling as well). Cher worked also with long-time collaborator Diane Warren (who wrote “Takin’ Back My Heart”) and covered two songs: “The Power” and “Love Is the Groove”. Furthermore she decided to introduce a remix form of her 1988 single “We All Sleep Alone” from her 1987 Cher album.

The “Believe” single was originally written only by Brian Higgins, Matt Gray, Stuart McLennen and Tim Powell and circulated at Warner Bros. as an unwanted demo for months. Mark Taylor said, “Everyone loved the chorus but not the rest of the song; As we were already writing other songs for Cher, Rob asked us if we could sort it out. Two of our writers, Steve Torch and Paul Barry, got involved and eventually came up with a complete song that Rob and Cher were happy with.”

During early sessions Cher recorded a cover version of “Love Is in the Air” that she previously performed a cappella on the talk show The Magic Hour in 1997. The song was mixed and produced by Junior Vasquez but it did not appear in the final cut of the album. Now it is only available on file sharing networks.

The album featured a new musical direction for Cher, with use of auto-tune, most notably in the title track. The album was influenced by Sonny Bono’s death in a skiing accident earlier that year. Believe is dedicated to him.