For the last 15-20+ years, whenever I consume media, I almost always do it from the perspective of the performer. The first time, anyway. How much fun must it have been to play this role? What would it have been like to lay down that bass line? How would I sing that song? What would it be like to be the sort of person who can write a passage like that? Would I tell that joke the same way?
Absorbing work that way allows me to appreciate it completely differently than most people do, a feeling I think all artists know. One of the most delightful parts about being a performer myself now is that my appreciation for art and the artists who create it has only continued to deepen.
Then Cher showed up.
Cher came to Louisville’s Yum Center last Monday night as part of her Here We Go Again tour, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. As it turns out, she was right on time. (I’m pretty sure Cher is always inherently on time, no matter what time it is, where she is, or what she’s doing.) I am in a particularly delicious part of my artistic path right now, one where every break and every crumb means so much and is so appreciated. I’m really enjoying it, but it is difficult to have very much perspective or to see very far down the road. That night, I needed art and I needed my artistic community. I really needed this to be a night where I got to see an experienced artist killing it.
I wasn’t so sure it would be. Cher is fabulous, and it wasn’t that I doubted her, but she is 72 years old now. That only made me want to see her more, as it is really important to me to support older women in any way I can and I certainly hadn’t heard or seen any evidence that she’d lost a step, but at that age it happens quickly. That day in particular had been a rough one. My anxiety level rose as showtime approached, I love live music but I detest crowds. By showtime, I had the beginnings of a migraine and had already been photo- and sound-sensitive for hours. Add all that to the fact that we were late getting to the concert, being late anywhere always skyrockets my anxiety, and the end result was that by the time I made it to my seat I was quite out of sorts. I badly needed for this to be something good. I really needed her to deliver.
The first thing that struck me was how inclusive and diverse her crowd was. I knew that, of course, that’s one of the things I love most about Cher, but I really needed to be in that environment that night. What made me happiest was how many women there were, particularly women closer to Cher’s age. There were so many they had to convert some of the men’s bathrooms to women’s bathrooms for the night, which was particularly gratifying because there are never enough bathrooms for women at concerts. I have chosen to build a life that centers and celebrates women, and it was wonderful to be in a space that was so dominated by women.
Cher released her ABBA-themed album Dancing Queen in September, and in keeping with that theme, she chose Nile Rodgers and Chic as her opening act. Given that we arrived to the concert late, we missed almost the entirety of their set, but they were a very welcome choice for me given that disco and funk are my favorite music. They of course played their own music, but they also played music from the Bee Gees, The Trammps, and Sister Sledge. I enjoyed their set just as much as I did Cher’s, which is exceedingly rare for an opening act. Nausea and photosensitivity did not keep me from dancing. You’ve got to trust your funk. It is my North Star, the only one I really have.
It felt so good to finally be somewhere that played the music I know and love so much. In my mind and heart, I’ve always been a person of the ’70s. That’s what brings me joy. That has also caused me a massive amount of cognitive dissonance because I identify with that time so strongly and that’s the time I wanted so badly to be a young woman in, but I wasn’t even there for it; I was about 30 years too late to that party. I don’t belong here; I damn well know it, and the contradiction hurts.
When I was a kid, my ideal conception of being a young woman was that I would finally get to go to clubs and disco all night every weekend with my awesome outfits and my girl posse and have that young woman experience I wanted so badly, but when I finally made it to one they didn’t even have any disco. I was so disappointed. All I really wanted was to dance. I’ve tried to compensate for it by creating as much ’70s around me as I could, and I try as much as possible to ignore the pixel-out-of-place feeling, but when Chic played, that feeling disappeared, and I briefly got to feel a little of what might have been. For a brief moment I could envision how it would’ve been to be that young woman I always dreamed of being, walking into the club I always dreamed of, when they were playing all my songs and I knew the steps and all the words and my knees and hips felt like I always heard they did in young people, they didn’t hurt just like everyone else’s didn’t hurt, and I got to feel like a young person in a young person’s body instead of so prematurely old, and the nights stretched on forever, lasting as long as I needed them to in the way these nights never do.
I have long enjoyed Cher’s music and respected her as an artist and a woman, but I’m not as knowledgeable about her work as most other people there ostensibly were. Given that I’m a decidedly casual fan, I didn’t quite expect the visceral reaction I had once Cher appeared on stage.
Cher has this earthy gravitational pull to her, something timeless and elemental and so immediate. I felt it from across the damn arena. She is charming, funny, and a bit easily distracted, which was even more endearing. Having been a star for as long as she has, it would’ve been quite easy for her to have lost touch with those parts of herself, but she hasn’t.
In boxing, you will sometimes hear the term Ring Generalship. The definition is a little slippery depending on the context, but it generally refers to how well a fighter is able to implement their strategy during their match, their bearing and conduct in the ring, how self-possessed they are and how much presence of mind they have to stick to their plan and continue advancing their position despite adversity. As I watched Cher’s concert, I was reminded of that term because there was a whole lot happening on that stage. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
To say that Cher hasn’t lost a step is an understatement. Her concert was truly a production, and there are a whole lot of people, well known seasoned artists included, who could never hope to pull off anything like that. 4 nights before, I’d sat in the Bellagio in Las Vegas and watched Cirque Du Soleil’s O, and Cher beat the hell out of Cirque Du Soleil effortlessly. In performing 12-ish songs, she wore at least 9 different costumes, and I’m pretty sure I missed at least one more. I thought her stage technique was absolutely perfect, which didn’t surprise me a bit, but her concert could easily have fallen apart here if she weren’t as skilled and experienced as she is. Her show is high-energy, and there’s a lot happening on that stage even without the monster guitar in Bang Bang, the acrobats, or the costumes, but Cher has a very regal, unhurried air that might easily be a stylistic mismatch if it were someone else. She covered her stage to the degree she needed to, but she didn’t chew it, and it worked perfectly because of her bearing and who she is where it very well may not have for someone else. It was big, it was loud, it was extra as hell and I ate it up. I did not detect a single instance of lip-syncing, and I was watching and listening for it quite closely.
From a technical production aspect, I thought her concert was executed pretty well. There was a significant period of time between Chic exiting the stage and Cher appearing, and that felt like a bit of a miss to me given how high-energy Chic’s set was and how much I loved it, but the stage did need switching for Cher and, well, you wait for a Queen and that’s what Cher is. She’s the closest thing to royalty that the American music scene has. Her set was designed well, ornate enough to match Cher’s costumes but still feel appropriate.
There was a little capsule in the middle of the stage that she’d walk into for her costume changes, and it felt a little weird to me the first time or 2 because she walked into it as soon as she’d finished singing her part but her band was still finishing the song, but then I caught the rhythm. Not only was that capsule an effective quick-change area, but Cher entering and exiting from it frequently had the effect of her actually interacting with her set instead of relegating it to really ornate window-dressing as many artists do. Once I caught the rhythm, I was impressed with how efficiently Cher handled her costume changes. While she was changing, music would be playing onstage with acrobats and other interstitials, all of which felt thematically appropriate to me and didn’t detract from the pacing, although some of her fans never seemed to realize they were costume changes and continued to stand and block the view of others.
One of the things about being an artist with a history as long and well-publicized as hers is that you have to find a way to perform the hits everyone knows and loves, but that becomes difficult when a significant part of your personal and artistic history that everyone also knows is no longer here to do it with you. I’m referring, of course, to Sonny. I’d been wondering how she’d play I Got You Babe because that’s such an iconic song but it wouldn’t feel right to perform it with anyone but Sonny, and that’s exactly what she did. They displayed video of him on the screen and played his recorded part while she sang her part live. This was another place where the balance was really tricky, because it would have been really easy for that to feel synthetic and soulless and hacky, I’m a very hard sell on things like that. Not only did she manage to sell it, which is hard enough, but her technique meant that there was simply nothing to sell, she made it feel right. I was so impressed.
The only things that I hoped for from Cher’s concert but didn’t get were an encore, and for it to have been 15-20 mins longer because the costume changes ate into her on-stage time, but I’d have wanted more Cher no matter how long her concert was. She could’ve dismissed her band, sat down on the stage, and talked about packing peanuts and I’d have stayed all night if that’s how long she felt like talking.
I always dread having to fight my way out of a concert once it’s over. There are over 325 million people in this country now. Apparently they all came to the Yum Center that night to see Cher, and every single damn one of them was in my bubble.
I was cold and my head was pounding so hard my hair hurt and I felt like throwing up and every speck of light on the planet was beaming right into my eyes and every decibel that ever existed was screaming around in my eardrums, but as I broke away from the hoardes at the parking garage elevator and strode to my car, I was pleased to feel glide in my movement, fluidity I hadn’t expected and never take for granted, and I felt so much lighter.
Cher’s concert was everything I needed it to be, and so much more.