| Product Summary | | Label: Rhin/mesa/bluemoon Records | | UPC: 00081227385224 | | Release Date: 4/1/2003 | | Buy.com Sku: 60592576 | | Item#: MTQKCC | | Buy.com Sales Rank: 25050 | Format:  CD |
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| Song Listing |  |
Disc 1
| | Song Title | Sample | | 1. Believe ~ Cher |  | | 2. If I Could Turn Back Time ~ Cher | | | 3. Heart Of Stone ~ Cher | | | 4. Just Like Jesse James ~ Cher | | | 5. Save Up All Your Tears ~ Cher | | | 6. After All - (with Peter Cetera) ~ Cher | | | 7. I Found Someone ~ Cher | | | 8. One By One - (Junior Vasquez Vocal Edit) ~ Cher | | | 9. Strong Enough ~ Cher | | | 10. All Or Nothing ~ Cher | | | 11. Song For The Lonely ~ Cher | | | 12. Take Me Home ~ Cher | | | 13. Shoop Shoop Song, The (It's In His Kiss) ~ Cher | | | 14. All I Really Want To Do ~ Cher | | | 15. Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) ~ Cher | | | 16. Half Breed ~ Cher | | | 17. Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves ~ Cher | | | 18. Dark Lady ~ Cher | | | 19. Beat Goes On, The - (with Sonny & Cher) ~ Cher | | | 20. I Got You Babe - (with Sonny & Cher) ~ Cher | | | 21. Different Kind Of Love Song, A - (Rodney Jenkins main mix, faster) ~ Cher | |
| The first-ever career-spanning Cher compilation, sampling 21 of her biggest hits. Covers almost four decades, from the Sonny & Cher era and beyond the 1999 global hit "Believe." Also features "If I Could Turn Back Time," "Just Like Jesse James," "I Got You Babe," and 18 more favorites. THE VERY BEST OF CHER presents more than 70 minutes of star-powered music on one essential disc.
| | Album Notes and Credits |
Notes & Personnel Info |  | Personnel includes: Cher, Sonny Bono, Peter Cetera (vocals); Rodney Jerkins (keyboards, programming). | | Producers include: Mark Taylor, Brian Rawling, Diane Warren, Desmond Child, Sonny Bono. | | Compilation producer: David McLees. | | Includes liner notes by Kurt Loder. | | THE VERY BEST OF CHER: SPECIAL EDITION includes THE VERY BEST OF CHER and LIVE: THE FAREWELL TOUR recorded live at Miami Continental Arena in November 2002. | | Personnel includes: Cher (vocals); Sonny Bono, Pete Cetera (vocals); David Barry (guitar, background vocals); Paul Mirkovich, Ollie Marland (keyboards, background vocals); Bill Sharp (bass, background vocals); Mark Schulman (drums); Stacy Campbell, Patti Darcy Jones (background vocals). | | Producers include: Sonny Bono, Peter Aher, Snuff Garrett, Cher, Mark Taylor. | | Compilation producer: David McLees. | | Recorded between 1965 & 2002. Includes liner notes by Kurt Loder. | | Audio Remasterers: Dan Hersch; Bill Inglot. | | Audio Remixer: Junior Vasquez. | | Liner Note Author: Kurt Loder. | | Recording information: ??/1960-11/2002. | | Photographers: Kevyn Aucoin; Norman Seeff; Harry Langdon; Sonny Bono. | | Since it's a cross-licensed, 21-track collection, it stands to reason that Warner Strategic Marketing's 2003 The Very Best of Cher is finally the Cher collection that gets it right, presenting a fully rounded portrait of her long, winding, multi-label career. It's not, but it's closer than any previous collection, eclipsing Hip-O's 2001 The Ultimate Collection by containing hits from every aspect of her career, from Sonny & Cher's "I Got You Babe" to her 1999 comeback, "Believe" and beyond to the new, Rodney Jerkins-produced "A Different Kind of Love Song" (yes, it does feature heavy vocoder work). Where other collections emphasized her '70s hits, this focuses on the Geffen work, which may be appropriate since they rarely appeared on hits compilations before this, along with the late-'90s comeback on Warner. This is all pushed toward the front, taking up the first 11 songs, which, frankly, is infuriating sequencing, especially since it bounces between the Geffen album rock and the post-house, neo-disco of the Warner years. Also, there is simply too much Warner material, given that apart from "Believe" it was entirely too generic and also not big hits. They nearly knock the collection off track by providing a dead stretch in the middle of the record before it regains momentum with 1979's "Take Me Home" and then more or less works its way back to her beginning. This is a bewildering choice in sequencing, and it hurts the general listenablity of the record; even if all periods are represented and all the big hits are here, the lack of logic leads to a herky-jerky sequencing that is tiring on the ear. That said, this does have all the big hits -- "Believe," "If I Could Turn Back Time," "Just Like Jesse James," "After All," "I Found Someone," "The Shoop Shoop Song," "All I Really Want to Do," "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)," "Half-Breed," "Gypsies Tramps & Thieves," among them. And even if the presentation leaves a lot to be desired, it's still nice to have all these in one place. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine | | The word "diva" has been thrown around a great deal in the pop world since the '90s, but Cherilyn Sarkasian, better known as Cher, was one of the original pop divas. As such, she's not only survived but prospered through the ever-changing winds of music trends. THE VERY BEST OF CHER covers all the stylistically varied phases of Cher's career. The tracks run in roughly reverse chronological order, kicking off with her massive '90s dance pop hit "Believe." Along the way, there are stops at '80s power balladry ("If I Could Turn Back Time"), late-'70s disco ("Take Me Home"), early-'70s AM pop ("Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves," "Half Breed"), and of course, the '60s folk/rock/pop hits she recorded as half of Sonny & Cher ("I Got You Babe," "The Beat Goes On"). As a thumbnail sketch of a career spanning four decades and countless twists and turns, VERY BEST OF CHER hits its target dead on. | | Displaying an uncanny knack for revival, Cher has arisen from her requisite humble origins as Cherilyn Sarkisian and managed to sustain an astounding level of fame over four decades. This two-disc set, bringing together her extremely popular VERY BEST OF... and her 2002 swansong live album, could easily be said to be the definitive collection of the indomitable superstar with the trademark darkly gilded voice. | | Throughout her career, Cher has shown a remarkable ability to adapt to the times. Starting off with her bubble-gum musical marriage to Sonny Bono, she remained around the top of the chart until the singer/songwriter days of the early-1970s, offered perfectly overwrought pop in the late-'80s, and returned with pulsating dance-pop at the turn of the century. The VERY BEST OF... side covers the studio version of pretty much every hit a Cher enthusiast or hobbyist might desire, including the Sonny & Cher days and a movie duet with Peter Cetera, along with usual #1 favorites, from "Gypsy, Tramps & Thieves" to "Believe." The LIVE side stands as a must, since along with possessing two of the more powerful lungs in the Western Hemisphere, Cher has lived her life on the screen, from the variety show to the awards-show appearances to a movie career which garnered her an Oscar. |
Engineer: Dan Hersch |
Musical Guests | | Sonny Bono | | Peter Cetera |
| | Artist Overview | | When Cherilyn Sarkasian reinvented herself as the more photogenic half of '60s pop duo Sonny & Cher, no one could guess it would be merely the first step in an ongoing artistic redefinition that would continue for decades. After the smash success of Sonny & Cher's '60s recordings and '70s TV show, the pair split. Cher continued to score pop hits on her own, such as "Half Breed" and "Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves" in the '70s, before switching into disco mode for "Take Me Home." In the '80s, she became an acclaimed actress, with lead roles in such well received films as MASK, MERMAIDS, and MOONSTRUCK (the latter earning her an Oscar). Incredibly, she followed this by returning to the pop charts in the late '80s with "If I Could Turn Back Time" and becoming a Madonna-like dance-pop diva in the late '90s with the megahit "Believe." |
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| | Technical Info | | Release Date : 04/01/2003 | | Original Release Date : 2003 | | Catalog ID : 73852 | | Label : Warner Bros. Records (Record Label) | | Number of Discs : 1 | | Studio/Live : Studio | | Mono/Stereo : Stereo | | SPAR Code : n/a | | UPC : 00081227385224 |
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