Cher's World Is High Intensity Dance Personified

Happy birthday to Mom. Mom loves Cher. For this reason we'll chew a little of the proverbial fat about her single "A Woman's World" lifted from the "Closer To The Truth" album. This album is loaded with sweat cranking dance goodness. She learned her lesson well from 1999 when "Believe" became her biggest solo hit ever, spending a solid 4 weeks at #1 on the Billboard chart. Personally I'm not as smitten as she obviously was with the Vocoder device that makes her pipes sound technologically jazzed up. My belief is there's no breathing being on this earth with a voice like Cher's so why would she want to distort it in some way? Ah yes, but that's the question explaining why she's a multi-platinum selling artist and I'm a music fanatic who lusts after the lifestyle of a multi-platinum sellng artist. After taking a peek at the video for "A Woman's World" you'll come to be reminded Cher hasn't lost her way with being the ringmaster (ringmistress?) in her own electrifying universe. Fashion has always been a big part of Cher's mystique. The song does a fine job of putting that tendency in its most flattering light. Cher makes a beeline for the girl power aesthetic that past artists such as Helen Reddy("I Am Woman")Annie Lennox & Aretha Franklin ("Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves") and The Spice Girls (any hit single of theirs covers it)have mined to lucrative effect. It's a little amusing to note that if Madonna is the dance diva for the newly christened AARP set then that makes Cher a charter member of the AARP elite. Good for both of them for sticking a tongue out at any tendency to box them in a corner because continuing to be alive has worked out so swimmingly for both of them. What I appreciate about "A Woman's World" in comparison to "Believe" is that the world orchestrated on the former isn't so aware of its own technological wizardry. It all sounds pleasingly organic. Although Cher does play some little voice head games on the CD ("Dressed To Kill" is unintentionally humorous in the way Cher's echoing voice paws with the word "kill") there's lots of the real persona bubbling under, percolating around, and slamming through the surface. When flashing back to her earlier work ("Half Breed" for instance) the dance stylings were, appropriately enough, the standard "let's put a classical music savvy cast of crackerjack musicians behind her and let the awesome nature of her colossus-like presence take the money to the bank from there" business model the '70s hit paraders were legendary for. From the "Believe" era on there's much more of a freewheeling curiosity of experimentation. With "Believe", as I imagine could be said for Madonna's "Ray of Light" and "Music" efforts, Cher dipped her toe in the higher beats per minute vein of dance music. Throughout "Closer To The Truth" Cher flamboyantly (as if she was even capable of being any other way) churns out dance spectacle for all it's worth. She's comfortable enough to keep this party going now that she knows how to crank the explosiveness to 10. Cher fearlessly probes the essence of her highly documented scar-laden battles in the game of love. Similar to the plot for "Believe" "A Woman's World" addresses Cher's continued ability to rise from romantic ashes, get the hell on with her life, and bask in the abiding glow of Cher-hood. As pop culture females go, only Oprah Winfrey has that same knack for being so E.F. Hutton in that when both women talk, people listen. With Cher it's been a far longer carnival ride. She still racks up record sales, and keeps the public's curiosity piqued so the biggest "Well, duh" response I can think of is she must be doing something right. She has longevity because she doesn't quit easily. There's not one part of the soundtrack to my life that she hasn't found her way into. "A Woman's World" is the latest example of how Cher owns a room when she enters it.