CHER – "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's In His Kiss)"

The showbiz thing about Sonny and Cher was the assumed disparity; skinny little guy nestling in the shoulder, and under the chin, of a tall statuesque beauty – indeed, a case could be made for Cher as the most successful statue in pop. They played at being freethinkers, even if you occasionally noticed the odd contractual obligation sigh, but they sent out the right signals. Then the sixties were turned into the seventies and they settled in showbiz; The Sonny And Cher Show was a big transatlantic success (even prompting their temporary return to the UK top ten in 1972 with “All I Ever Need Is You”) in which Cher weekly belittled the runt-like stature of Sonny and we were finally encouraged to laugh at him. But there were real arguments behind the bitter façade, and they split soon afterwards. Where Cher went on to “Half Breed,” the stunning Spector reunion of “A Woman’s Story” and Gregg Allman, Sonny found himself contractually obliged to see out the final season of The Sonny And Cher Show with a succession of wan Cher lookalikes – was this worse than death? Small wonder that he abruptly turned away from everything he’d been, or had pretended to be, at season’s end and settled for the far less demanding existence of a staunch Republican mayor and senator.

But the statue of Cher continued to evolve and as the seventies melted into the eighties she fancied having a go at acting. Early signifiers were good; in Silkwood and Mask she set up a niche for herself as the feisty, dirt-proud and heart-noble liberal campaigner. But in The Witches Of Eastwick she found herself the least comfortable of the three female leads, either with Jack Nicholson or with black comedy. So she settled for the template of the wayward but unflappable matriarch still attracted to smaller and stouter men – Danny de Vito in Moonstruck, Bob Hoskins in Mermaids – while relaunching her singing career on the side with perfervid flagwavers like the troops’ phallic favourite “If I Could Turn Back Time.”

Her revival of “The Shoop Shoop Song” came from Mermaids, a cosy little comedy drama set in the pre-Beatles (and pre-Sonny) sixties where she plays the wayward but unflappable matriarch to her two daughters, one of whom (Winona Ryder) wants to become a nun, but then after a series of slapstick mishaps and near-tragedy, the family finally realise What Really Matters In Life. Despite being produced by Peter Asher of Peter and Gordon fame and featuring a string arrangement by Jack Nitzsche only occasionally audible over the crashing, or crushing, guitars and drums in the foreground, and being sung by Cher in her typically bellicose fashion (but the song’s supposed to be about a teenage girl who doesn’t know, or hasn’t yet been told, about such things!), it’s a flat record whose sole purpose seems to have been to remind ageing sixties consumers that some people were still around. As it prevented “Last Train To Transcentral” (rightly described by Simon Mayo as the most spectacular performance in the history of TOTP) from reaching number one, however, its cynical retro stance becomes positively offensive.

“You’re No Good” made even more adult (or more childish, as in fear of the dark?) and sinister by Linda Ronstadt’s cover (produced by Peter Out Of Peter And Gordon).

Does Christina Ricci actually sing in the song? Obviously not, but I would like to hold out some hope that she’s had a number one in the UK.

The classic hits radio station my mum would constantly listen to had a habit of introducing old songs into their rotation if there was a modern cover in the charts. In 1993, for example, an Australian band called Chocolate Starfish had a hit with a hard rock cover of ‘You’re So Vain’. (Yes, they were called Chocolate Starfish. Yes, they were bad). But that just meant that 2WS played the original Carly Simon song. In 92/93 Caligula (another Australian hard rock band) covering ‘Tears Of A Clown’ meant that 2WS played a lot of Smokey Robinson’s version. Et cetera. And I’m pretty sure that the earliest song I remember 2WS doing this for was “Shoop Shoop Song”, playing Betty Everett’s original instead of Cher.

At the time I was a bit put out by this – it was weird to discover that these songs in the charts had had another life, that they used to sound just as daggy as that stuff my mum listened to. It was like the adults were saying, ‘no, you can’t have that, it’s really ours’.

But at the same time, hearing the originals was an education in itself – I would pay attention to the originals of the covers in the charts in a way I wouldn’t pay attention to the station’s regular diet of Supertramp or Steve Miller Band. I guess the covers functioned as translations – they spoke in a language I understood/related to. And so, when I heard the originals, they made me realise that it wasn’t the songs that I disliked, but the sound, because I liked the songs when done by modern musicians. And it made me realise that the songs that I thought were daggy now might not have been daggy back in the day.

I think this cover seemed daggy at the time, mind you. I remember hearing the original and thinking that it had more spunk to it. With the video clip and the movie tie-in and all that, Cher et al seemed like they’d put together a song designed to get mums and daughters to have a special moment together with. Which was daggy as far as a 9 year old boy like me was concerned. Girls were weird.

(NB: Occurs to me that I should ask, is daggy a very Australian word? It means pretty much the same as naff, if it is)

Great fun from Cher here. It doesn’t bear much scrutiny, nor is it one of her finest moments. But it’s a nice revival of a forgotten classic and earned her a long overdue solo #1.

I can’t wait to wax lyrical on Believe, one of the best and influential pop records of the 90s. In the meantime let me make a case for a modest hit from between her solo chart-toppers that I believe deserves to be *far* better remembered – the glorious ‘One By One’. Definitely one of her most subtle (by Cher standards!) and underrated hits.

# 5 No I don’t think either Christina or Winona really sing on this they were just in the video (which Winona hated doing).

# 9 That’s interesting TB. I used to advocate radio stations doing that over here to try and spike all the covers. Probably wouldn’t have worked with a big movie tie-in like this but might have hit BIg Fun, Danii Minogue etc.

“Mermaids” is quite likeable although Bob Hoskins is completely wasted, probably his least rewarding performance. Winona is very good but I’m a bit biased there.

I remember Alan Jones in the surviving Chartfile section of Music Week predicting that Cher would rue the day she recorded this because all the hard rock fans who’d bought into her last few records would desert her for going back to pop. That was clearly wrong a) because the HM crowd probably didn’t take her that seriously anyway and b) in the 90s people were moving towards buying into a celebrity and weren’t too bothered about consistency of output. Hence Madonna remained buoyant despite a long string of uninspired singles and we get to the travesty of Mrs Beckham asking her fans to suggest what sort of record she make next.

I wasn’t interested in this but not long after I bought a 70s-era best of to get the divine trinity of “Gypsies”, “Half Breed” and “Dark Lady” which were present and correct but in between are some of the worst covers I’ve ever heard of the likes of “Fire And Rain” and “The Long And Winding Road” . It proved just how one-dimensional a vocalist she is and you can only take your hat off to her for surviving so long.

I always got Mermaids mixed up with Hairspray for some reason and took little notice of either. I get the sense of fingerwaggyness from Shoop Shoop, wrote it off as female-centric hen-party pop and went back to listening to…

…wait a minute, Last Train To Trancentral was held off the top by this?

Not surprisingly, as I love the Ramona King/Betty Everett girl group takes on Shoop Shoop, I’m very fond of Cher’s debut Dream Baby (under the name Cherilyn) which is a great big Christmassy Spector knockoff, and doesn’t have her belting it out for once. Baby Don’t Go by S&C also very strong, a muted-but-full folk rock 45.

I’ve never understood why Sonny Bono is always described as a weasely sidekick who gets accused of “stealing” from Spector, while every other associate who nicked the production technique gets away with it. Theirs is an underrated catalogue, dwarfed by Cher’s big hair moments.

Re 9: Here you go, vinylscot . So that clears up where the album title came from, then. Just doing my duty.

#14 – I have a feeling that was produced by Bon Jovi (she was dating one of them when she recorded that album, which was her comeback)

At this point in my life I hadn’t been enjoying myself very much. It was the usual thing of snotty girls making your life a misery and not really knowing how to make any other friends, especially when all the other girls had a best friend, or were part of the snotty misery gang, or were similar unfortunate outcasts with whom I could never be friends as that would totally ruin my chances of rejoining snotty misery gang. I used to dread it whenever Mrs Field would utter the words ‘ok find a partner and…’ as I would always get left on my own or WORSE have to partner up with a BOY. Except suddenly after Easter 1991 I found a friend and we teamed up against the snotty misery gang and it was all ok and things magically got better and I had someone to do project work with and silly happy songs like this were just fine. We preferred Crystal Waters though because my new chum was a self-proclaimed ‘hippy’.

Also shout out to T99’s Anasthasia which got to #14 during Cher’s run at the top!

I forgot this one was coming up which is odd because it seemed to be at number 1 for an eternity. What strikes me is how varied Chers music career has been. Never really settling with one approach for too long but surprisingly adept at whatever she has a go at. Maybe it helps that her vocals are assertive but not particularly showy.
The four UK chart toppers I can think of that Cher has sung on are four completely different types of song and considering that the first was an early example of flower power in pop and the most recent a hint of how dominant autotune would become I think it’s fair to say she’s moved with the times with more zeal than other long term stars.
In spite of all this I’m not really a fan of her vocals and the Shoop Shoop Song is simply retro play-acting. I can think of several instances where I’ve liked the song from a film but not thought much of the film itself (A Life Less Ordinary is the only that comes to mind at the moment though). This is an example of the opposite because I’ve always rather liked Mermaids in fact I prefer it to Winona Ryders more credible teenage comedy Heathers which for all it’s originality now seems rather confused and has been imitated once too often.

Agree that ‘One by One’ is great. Just make sure to get the UK/album version (which is what’s on Cher’s 2000s Greatest Hits) rather than the US single version (vids. for both are on youtube).

BTW, I vaguely recall Winona Ryder bad-mouthing Mermaids at the time (or maybe immediately afterwards). I guess it was an early sign of the un-professional/erratic strand in her personality.
BTW2, in my view Ryder should have won best supporting actress Oscar for Age of Innocence (1993) – the movie’s pretty good overall but she’s the best thing in it and you don’t often say that about someone in a movie with Daniel Day Lewis. I wonder whether a deserved win for that role would have helped settle Ryder down a bit? Anna Paquin got the gong for 1993 for her child-turn in The Piano. Hmmm, the Oscars are genuinely strange sometimes. One would have *thought* that Academy voters would have jumped at the chance to reward Ryder for good Oscar-bait work. Rather like Cruise missing out for his role in Magnolia, it’s very tempting to take the miss as a personal sleight of some kind, and see the ‘snub’ as relevant to any later acting out.

#26: Yep, that is correct. Daggy wool is worse news than simply being a bit shitty too – Australian farmers have to be careful to monitor the dags, because sheep in Australia very often get ‘flystrike’ (flies laying eggs in the general region of the dags, which is particularly unpleasant for the sheep).

I was quite surprised, a couple of years ago, to find out that ‘naff’ originally came from the gay British slang language Polari.

To me, the Linda Lewis version of this song was the best. Got to No.5 in 1975.

Just browsing Cher’s wiki page for the first time… and some of the numbers reported there are staggering: est. personal wealth in 2002, $600 million (US), amount personally paid for recent Las Vegas engagement, $60 million (US), and so on. She’s evidently played the business side of the showbiz game about as well as anyone.

fatgit – I wonder if Wichita took that from the comments under the YouTube video, where someone says “I love Cher’s face at 56”. I thought it was odd that two people got the age identically wrong, then realised the poster was talking about “her face at :56”, ie 56 seconds into the video, where she’s pulling a “love you guys but you’re jerks” face at Winona and Christina’s moves. Actually it’s a lovely video, they’re all having great fun with each other and barely performing at all, which is why I always looked forward to it on TOTP. As for the vocal, it’s Cher being Cher but in a more relaxed mode than the overblown power ballads, and none the worse for that. In fact the only thing that annoyed me about this was the title – the bloody “Shoop Shoop Song”. What’s wrong with the proper title?

Listening to the Betty Everett version, got to say the backing band is a bit ropey.

Linda Lewis – great version, possibly the best vocal of the three, and quite a frock on TOTP. Her Wiki entry is startling, didn’t realise some of the things she’d been involved in – appeared in “A Taste of Honey” and “Hard Day’s Night”, performed at the first Glastonbury, sang on “Aladdin Sane”. Kudos.

Mark M @#32 – Christina Ricci is one of my favourite actors, it’s just unfortunate for her that everyone’s got such a strong impression of who she is and what kind of character she can play – only ten or so actors in the world can afford to just play themselves, and nobody’s writing roles especially for her. If you take a look at some of her recent films you’ll see she’s got a much greater range than people give her credit for, but I fear her time to break through as a major star may have passed now.

Re 35: “Nobody’s writing roles especially for her” – it’s a cliche but nonetheless true that Hollywood considers a stroppy twelve year old cute, a stroppy eighteen year old girl exciting and a stroppy thirty year old woman not something anyone wants to see on screen.
I loved Ricci in The Ice Storm and Buffalo 66 and Desert Blue, but a quick look at her filmography reveals the only* films of hers I’ve seen in the last ten years are Miranda (weird and not in a good way) and Black Snake Moan (really weird, but good – although not many people thought so). She seems to made some atrocious choices – this, for instance looks like a shocker.

*Except for ten minutes of Speed Racer on a plane…

While we’re taking about Christina Ricci – She’s superb in
The Opposite of Sex.

Re 40: No, I’ve never seen Monster – after the two Broomfield docs I felt I’d seen as much of that depressing tale as anyone ever needed to – but I did hear Ricci was really good in it.

Hilarious pub game: the MERMAIDS SUPERGROUP

Rules: members of the supergroup to drawn from rock musician boyfs of Cher, Winona and Christina
Extra rule: for purposes of game, Vincent Gallo counts as Christina’s ex. This travesties actual history, in which they made a film together, and he was v. poisonous abt her three years later (= she told him NO).

Winner = deviser of best and worst supergroup.

My opening bid: Allman, Bolton and Stipe

Re 43: here’s a grim trio for you:

Sambora-Jay Kay-Moby

Randianism and Scientology are both very much about self-validation, so it’s not terribly surprising they appeal to actors: as a profession, acting entails dealing with constant rejection — not getting roles because you look/speak/ARE wrong… the thing that brought you success at 20 (or indeed 7) being the thing that cuts you off from it at 25 (or 12), and that has to be incredibly demoralising and disorienting, in ref who you “are”.

Winona’s been no cop to speak of* since Reality Bites, a (fairly dimwitted) “portrait of a generation” pic which Janeane Garofalo totally stole from her. WR is very pretty but she’s not really capable of funny and I think this rendered her ultra-winsome shtick quite tiresome quite quickly.

As a child, Ricci was pitch-perfect funny in a very strong ensemble, in the Addams Family movies. You can’t hold Sleepy Hollow against her — it’s a Tim Burton movie and he just can’t tell stories.

*All the same, anything ANY of the Mermaids have ever done >>>> everything Nick fvcking Broomfield has ever done or will.

Another cover that used to drive me into one of my “but the original is so much better! If only people heard it!” rants that would bore my girlfriend to tears. I’m a lot mellower about that sort of thing now but this is still too bulldozing for me, the original is brash too but this is just shouty, and I like Cher normally.