In the first volume of her memoir (which she hasn’t read), she explores her difficult childhood, her fraught marriage to Sonny Bono and how she found her voice. Twice during a 90-minute interview about her memoir, Cher asked, “Do you think people are going to like it?” Even in the annals of single-name celebrities – Sting, Madonna, Beyoncé, Zendaya – Cher is in the stratosphere of the 1%. She’s been a household name for six decades.
She was 19 when she had her first No 1 single with Sonny Bono. She won an Oscar for Moonstruck , an Emmy for Cher: The Farewell Tour and a Grammy for Believe . Her face has appeared on screens of all sizes, and her music has been a soundtrack for multiple generations, whether via vinyl, 8-track, cassette tape, compact disc or Spotify.
But wrangling a definitive account of her life struck a nerve for Cher. There were dark corners to explore and 78 years of material to sift through. And – this might have been the hardest part – she had to make peace with the fact that her most personal stories will soon be in the hands of scores of readers.
“This book has exhausted me,” she said of the first volume of her two-part eponymous memoir, out now. “It took a lot out of me.” Cher is a gutsy account of tenacity and perseverance: Cher’s childhood was unstable.
Her marriage to Sonny Bono had devastating aftershocks. The book is also a cultural history packed with strong opinions, boldface names and head-spinning throwbacks: Cher’s.