FEATURE:
Groovelines
Cher - Believe
_________
I am covering this song for Groovelines…
as it is one of the music iconic of the 1990s. Perhaps Cher’s best-known track, Believe was released on 19th October, 1998. The lead single from the album of the same name (released on 22nd October, 1998), I wanted to go into detail about this incredible song. A chart-topping smash (including a number one in the U.K. and U.S.), it is one of those classics that even non-Cher fans love. It is noted for its Auto-Tune. Rather than use it as a vocal aid, instead it a device that adds this power and punch. In 1998, not many artists were playing with Auto-Tune. As NPR (incorrectly stating Believe was released on 22nd October, 1998 (that was the album date release; the song came out on 19th October) wrote in 2018, Cher sort of acted as a lead and inspiration for those who followed and used Auto-Tune:
“It could've easily been simply a gimmick; instead, Auto-Tune became a very prominent tool in a lot of pop, R&B and hip-hop production. There's a long history of artists using different vocal modifications, but in the past, producers aimed to keep those alterations disguised. Instead of using effects in hopes that the audience wouldn't notice — just to make a vocal a little cleaner, clearer and more on pitch — "Believe" brings the Auto-Tune front and center.
Auto-Tune sounds like digital stretching or flexing, as you hear a singer kind of slide up and down the register in a way that doesn't sound natural. And though the tactic is used seemingly arbitrarily in today's pop soundscape, the impetus for music's infatuation with Auto-Tune can be traced back to Cher's dance pop song from 20 years ago. The deliberate distortion of her vocals could have been perceived as a gimmick, but, decades later, the success behind "Believe" lives on”.
There are a couple of features that I am going to bring in that talk about the background to Believe and how this megahit was born (I would also recommend people check out this feature too). Apologies for any repetition and crossover, but I do think that each article offers something new and different. I will start with Stereogum’s article. Even if they are feel there were better Dance songs of the '90s, there is no denying that few came bigger than Cher’s Believe:
“In 1989, Cher released Heart Of Stone, the biggest album of her career to that point. Heart Of Stone is top-shelf late-’80s corporate rock. It went triple platinum, and it launched three singles into the top 10. The biggest of those hits was the Diane Warren belter “If I Could Turn Back Time,” which was the first time that Cher’s name ever really impressed itself into my kid brain. In the song’s video, Cher famously straddled cannons and danced across a battleship deck in an ass-tattoo-baring thong while sailors cheered her on. (“If I Could Turn Back Time” peaked at #3; it’s a 9.)
Cher went into another career lull after Heart Of Stone, and she didn’t land another top 10 hit for nearly a decade after “Just Like Jesse James” peaked at #8. (That one is a 7.) In the early ’90s, Cher came down with chronic fatigue syndrome, which made acting and recording difficult. So she made a couple of fitness videos and became an infomercial pitchwoman. That infomercial gig led to Christina Applegate clowning Cher on Saturday Night Live.
In 1998, Cher’s ex-husband Sonny Bono, who’d gone on to become a Republican Congressman, died in a skiing accident at the age of 62, and Cher gave a tearful eulogy at his funeral. At that point, Cher was not a terribly relevant pop artist. Her previous album, 1995’s It’s A Man’s World, bricked, and it only sent one single into the Hot 100. (“One By One” peaked at an anemic #52.) When Warner UK boss Rob Dickins got the idea that Cher should record a dance album, he signed her to the UK branch of the label, and the idea was that her next album would only come out in Europe. Cher herself wasn’t into the idea of a dance album, since she didn’t think the genre had any good songs. Dickins set out to find one.
The British songwriter Brian Higgins, who eventually founded the production group Xenomania and made UK hits with groups like the Sugababes and Girls Aloud, had started writing “Believe” years earlier, when he had a go-nowhere office job at a paper company in Sussex. Eventually, Higgins broke into the music business. He co-wrote and co-produced 1997’s “All I Wanna Do,” a UK hit for Kylie Minogue’s sister Dannii. On a visit to the Warner office, Higgins ran into Rob Dickins, who asked if he had any songs for Cher. Dickins sent a tape over, and a version of “Believe,” a song that Higgins had been tinkering with for years, caught Dickins’ attention.
After “Believe” hit, Rob Dickins told The New York Times what he’d heard in the song: “I thought: ‘Cher could do this chorus, especially the lyrics, with her private life the way it is. She’s gone through all these things.'” By that point, Brian Higgins had already enlisted a bunch of collaborators to work on “Believe,” and it already had four songwriters. Dickins loved the chorus but thought the verses were trash. He told Higgins that he was taking “Believe” away from him: “You’ve done no justice to your own song.” A bunch of other songwriters went to work on “Believe” before Dickins thought it was acceptable. By the time it reached #1, “Believe” had six songwriters — not including Cher, who’d changed at least one line herself but who went uncredited.
Another team that had submitted songs for the Cher album was the duo of Mark Taylor and Brian Rawling, two British producers who had also done some work with Dannii Minogue. For whatever reason, Dickins decided that the two of them should produce the bulk of Cher’s Believe album. She recorded a few tracks with big-deal house-music names Todd Terry and Junior Vasquez, but most of the album came from a few weeks of sessions in Taylor and Rawlings’ dumpy studio in Surrey. (Taylor and Rawlings’ work will appear in this column again.)
When both Rob Dickins and Cher were finally satisfied with “Believe,” it was a song about surviving a shitty breakup and imagining your life afterwards. Cher’s narrator sings the entire song to the person who’s left her. She’s crushed, not sure she’s strong enough to keep going, but she comes to a couple of big epiphanies. By the time the song is over, she’s gotten it together enough to move on: “I’ve had time to think it through/ And maybe I’m too good for you.” (Cher apparently wrote that line, and it’s the best line in the song.) She believes in life after love.
There’s a light sprinkling of guitar in “Believe,” but Taylor and Rawlings put together most of the track in the digital program Cubase, and virtually everything in there is electronic. The track shamelessly dials up the sound of cheesed-out Euro-house, and Cher commits to that style. Cher had been making records for decades before anyone could’ve even conceived of Auto-Tune, which weirdly makes her the perfect singer to bring that sound to the masses. Cher belts the hell out of the chorus, and her voice is deep and rich and distinctive. But for whatever reason, it sounds better when it’s been digitally diced into atoms.
Taylor and Rawlings tried out the zero effect Auto-Tune setting when they were messing around with Cher’s vocals in the studio late one night. They were afraid that she would reject that filter right away, but she loved it, even demanding that the duo delete her original vocal tracks. When Rob Dickins demanded that the effect be taken off of the vocals, Cher absolutely refused: “I said, ‘You can change that part of it, over my dead body!’ And that was the end of the discussion. I said to Mark before I left, ‘Don’t let anyone touch this track, or I’m going to rip your throat out.'” For a while, Taylor and Rawling lied about the Auto-Tune, claiming that they’d achieved that effect with a Digitech Talker vocoder pedal, but the truth eventually came out.
These days, we mostly remember “Believe” as the song that introduced that freaky Auto-Tune effect into the world. For that alone, “Believe” is hugely historically significant. I’d originally planned to include a chapter on “Believe” in my book, which comes out in November and highlights 20 pivotal #1 songs, but then I decided to devote that chapter to someone who pushed the whole Auto-Tune thing even further. The effect definitely lends a weird novelty to “Believe,” which is otherwise, I think, a pretty average Euro-dance track. It’s catchy, and I like the interplay between Cher’s grand belting and the swooshing robot sounds around her, but the song always sounded a little thin and brittle to me.
There were better dance tracks coming out in the late ’90s, but there weren’t any bigger ones. “Believe” went to #1 in the UK first, and when Warner decided to release the track in America, it took off just the same. When “Believe” reached #1 here, it followed three chart-toppers from literal teenage girls — Brandy, Britney Spears, Monica. Cher was almost as old as the three of them put together. Britney Spears had ended her debut album Baby One More Time with a cover of “The Beat Goes On,” a song that Sonny and Cher had released all the way back in 1967. Cher was a relic, a boomer icon. With “Believe,” she didn’t just compete with the new wave of teenage pop stars; she beat them. Billboard eventually named “Believe” the biggest hit of 1999. (As it happens, The Matrix opened in theaters while “Believe” sat at #1 in the US. The pre-Y2K zeitgeist was very into the idea of “what if everything real is really fake because technology?”)”.
Before getting to some reviews for Believe, The New York Times’ article from 1999 talks about this ‘resurrection’ of Cher. A legendary artist that many felt was past her very best, she proved everybody wrong! You look out to artists such as Kylie Minogue doing the same thing. They can remain relevant and contemporary decades after their beginnings. Believe arrived near the end of an incredible decade for music. An anthem that is still played widely to this day, it is interesting how it came to life and formed over time:
“Believe'' began nine years ago in a small flat in Sussex, England. Brian Higgins had returned home from his job selling advertising space for Reed, a paper company. He was 23, and trying to teach himself how to write songs. He sat at one of the keyboards in the far end of his bedroom, lifted his fingers to play a few chords and it happened. ''The lyrics and the melody just flowed out at the same time,'' he said. ''Normally you play a few chords, establish a melody and then start to apply a few lyrics. But this time, I promise you, the whole thing came out at once, which is really weird.''
Five years later Mr. Higgins's career began to blossom, and he started getting odd jobs with such pop stars as Diana Ross, Dannii Minogue and Pulp. Practically every time Mr. Higgins met with an artist, manager or record executive he played them his unborn dance song, ''Believe.'' But no one showed the slightest interest. Mr. Higgins knew the song wasn't perfect; the choruses were great but the verses were only skeletal. As he began gathering his own team of songwriters, he had them tinker with the verses every so often. But no matter what they did there were no takers.
In the meantime, Rob Dickins, president of London-based Warner Music U.K., had decided that the only thing Cher could do to make up for her last album, ''It's a Man's World,'' a set of rock ballads that sold disappointingly, was to focus on her gay audience with a high-energy dance record. Mr. Dickins, who would oversee the album, was in his 27th year with the company, and this would be his last project with Warner Brothers. He did not know it at the time, but he was on the verge of being dismissed.
''He said, 'I want you to make a dance album,' '' Cher said the other day in a telephone interview from Paris. ''I said I didn't want to. But I have that problem: If someone says I want you to do something and I'm not sure, I usually just say I don't want to do it.''
Cher said she was not interested in dance music anymore because it was not a genre with real songs. Mr. Dickins walked away, intent on finding real songs to disprove her argument. That was when luck intervened, and a chance encounter set the wheels in motion that would make Cher a pop star again. Mr. Higgins was visiting Warner Brothers to talk about the Minogue album he had worked on. As he waited outside the office of an executive who was on the phone, Mr. Dickins happened to walk downstairs and down the corridor, where he met Mr. Higgins.
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Mr. Dickins asked the songwriter if he would be interested in submitting a song or two for consideration for the Cher album. Three days later, a tape with 16 of Mr. Higgins's songs arrived. ''I lay on my bed and put the tape on and listened to every song,'' Mr. Dickins said. ''The ninth song was 'Believe.' I thought: 'Cher could do this chorus, especially the lyrics, with her private life the way it is. She's gone through all these things.' ''
Mr. Dickins called the songwriter the next day and asked him to complete ''Believe.'' ''About a week later he comes in with the finished song and it's terrible,'' Mr. Dickins said. ''I've got this great chorus and this terrible song. So I told him, 'We're taking it away from you.' He says, 'What do you mean?' I said, 'You've done no justice to your own song.' ''
Mr. Higgins handed over the song, admitting that he was probably too close to it. Meanwhile Mr. Dickins had found a song for the album called ''Dove l'Amore,'' which was written by Paul Barry and Mark Taylor, an English songwriting team. Cher visited their studio in a suburb west of London with the intention of recording only that song. She said she remembered the studio, called Metro, as ''this little dungeon of a place, the smallest studio I've ever been in in my life.'' Even Mr. Dickins had second thoughts about the place: ''I went down and saw Cher sitting in this horrible room on this horrible sofa and thought, 'What have I done to her?' '' But the chemistry was good.
When Mr. Dickins sent ''Believe'' to Metro studios a staff songwriter, Steve Torch, took a crack at the verses. Mr. Dickins was not happy with the result. ''I said, 'What is wrong with all you people? I've got a hit chorus and none of you can write a song,' '' he said.
Brian Rawling, the producer who runs Metro, begged for another chance and got it, handing the song to Mr. Barry, who kept hitting brick walls. ''I remember one version in particular that Cher didn't like,'' Mr. Barry said. ''My son had just been born and I was ecstatic. One lyric Cher said was total garbage. She said, 'You're too happy.' ''
Try, Try Again,
And Again and Again
It was during this time that Mr. Dickins was asked to leave his job at Warner Brothers as a result of a personality clash with Bob Daly, a chairman of Warner Brothers and Warner Music. That this album would be his last word at Warner Brothers was ''probably why I was so relentless with the song,'' Mr Dickins said.
(Last month, a fellow ad salesman and songwriting partner, Mark Scott, sued Mr. Higgins and Warner Music, saying he helped write ''Believe' in 1991.)
Finally Mr. Barry's partner, Mr. Taylor, turned in a version good enough to begin working on. The lyrics began to match the strength of the chorus. The first verse now ended: ''It's so sad that you're leaving/It takes time to believe it/But after all is said and done/You're going to be the lonely one.''
Mr. Barry began putting together the music, starting with a rough drum track he made on a computer program called Cubase, a crude keyboard melody and a bass line. He and Mr. Taylor remember trying to make a dance song that was a little different, with subtle melodies and quiet backing vocals tucked away; verses in the style of Lamont Dozier and soulful 80's funk touches influenced by Stevie Wonder and Prince.
But Mr. Dickins was still dissatisfied. He thought the eight-bar section of the song, known as the middle eight, before the final chorus which simply repeated the lyric ''I don't need you anymore,'' was too repetitive and didn't take the song anywhere. This time he was ignored. But Cher had a more pressing problem. She said the second verse was simply a repetition of the ''so sad that you're leaving'' sentiment expressed in the first one. ''I thought, 'You can be sad for one verse, but you can't be sad for two,' '' Cher said. ''That night I was lying there in my bathtub with my toe in that little faucet, playing around with the words, and it came out in one line. I thought, 'I've had time to see it through/Maybe I'm too good for you.' ''
But when the song was finished the verses still seemed lifeless, no matter how many different ways Cher sang them. And that was when luck smiled on ''Believe'' again.
One morning Cher turned on her television set and saw a program featuring a singer named Andrew Roachford, whose CD she instantly bought.
'We were tackling 'Believe' for the gazillionth time,'' she said. ''And I said: 'I'm so tired of doing this. Let's just put on this CD and listen to music and get away from this.' '' On one song the vocals were processed through a vocoder to sound mechanical. Cher remembers suggesting that they add something like that to ''Believe.''
In the interim a new voice-tuning program for Cubase had arrived in the studio, and Mr. Taylor decided to teach himself how to use it. He randomly chose two bars of ''Believe'' and looped it on the computer. In his tinkering, he came across the wavering, soulful, robotic vocal sound that is now the song's most loved and recognizable element. But he was afraid that if Cher heard it, she would object to his experimenting with her vocals. ''But something just snapped, and a couple of beers later we decided to play it for her, and she just freaked out,'' he said.
Victory
And a High-Five
That is, freaked out in a good way. ''We high-fived,'' Cher said. ''It was like some stupid 'Rocky' film.'' When Cher left the studio to begin filming ''Tea With Mussolini'' Mr. Taylor put together a quick mix of ''Believe'' and sent it to Cher and Mr. Dickins, who thought they had gotten carried away with the robotic sound.
''He said, 'Everyone loves that song but wants to change that part of it,' '' Cher said. ''I said, 'You can change that part of it, over my dead body!' And that was the end of the discussion. I said to Mark before I left, 'Don't let anyone touch this track, or I'm going to rip your throat out.' “
I will end with some reviews for Believe. The standout cut from the Believe album, there is no doubt, at the time in 1998 and years since, this titanic hit has resonated and resounded far and wide. Those who were too young to remember the song the first time around are discovering it now:
“Upon the release, Chuck Taylor from Billboard said that it is "the best darn thing that Cher has recorded in years". He added, "Some songs are so natural, so comfortably sung, that you wonder that somebody didn't think them up decades before. With this, you'll be whirling around the floor, tapping hard on the accelerator to "Believe," a simple ode to those feelings that we all search out and cling to. Cher is just a prize here; even her hardy detractors will be fighting the beat on this one." Music critic Robert Christgau highlighted "Believe" as the best song on the album. A reviewer from Entertainment Weekly described the song as "poptronica glaze, the soon-to-be club fave..." and noted Cher's voice as "unmistakable". Deborah Wilker from Knight Ridder said that "her electronically altered vocal" on "Believe" "is like nothing she's ever done."
Knight Ridder also described the song as "present-tense disco, with Cher an anthemic, Madonna manqué." New York Daily News described the song as a "club track so caffeinated, it not only microwaved her cold career to scorching-hot but gave dance music its biggest hit since the days of disco." They also noted the song's "killer hook and amazing beat." Neil Strauss from The New York Times wrote that "the verses are rich and bittersweet, with the added gimmick of breaking up Cher's voice through an effect that makes her sound robotic. And the choruses are catchy and uplifting, with Cher wailing, "Do you believe in life after love?" All of it bounces over a bed of 80s-style electronic pop. It is a song with a universal theme—a woman trying to convince herself that she can survive a breakup". Another editor, Jim Sullivan, noted the track as a "hooky, defiant, beat-fest of a song".
“In 2019, Bill Lamb from About.com declared it as a "perfect piece of dance-pop", including it in his list of "Top 10 Pop Songs of 1999". AllMusic editor Joe Viglione called "Believe" a "pop masterpiece, one of the few songs to be able to break through the impenetrable wall of late 1990s fragmented radio to permeate the consciousness of the world at large." Another editor, Michael Gallucci, gave a lukewarm review, writing that the Believe album is an "endless, and personality-free, thump session". Stopera and Galindo from BuzzFeed noted it as "iconic", featuring it in their "The 101 Greatest Dance Songs of the '90s" in 2017. Damon Albarn, frontman of the bands Blur and Gorillaz, called the song "brilliant".
In 2014, Tom Ewing from Freaky Trigger wrote that "Believe" "is a record in the "I Will Survive" mode of embattled romantic defiance – a song to make people who've lost out in love feel like they're the winners." He added that "it's remarkable that it took someone until 1998 to come up with "do you believe in life after love?", and perhaps even more remarkable that it wasn't Jim Steinman, but the genius of the song is how aggressive and righteous Cher makes it sound." Bob Waliszewski of Plugged In said that Cher "musters self-confidence to deal with a failed romance". In 2018, Dave Fawbert from ShortList described "Believe" as a "really great pop song with, as ever, an absolute powerhouse vocal performance from Cher".
One of those songs that everybody knows and still holds weight to this day, there is no doubting how influential it was for artists coming through. If it does divide some people, Believe has ranked high in lists of the best songs from the '90s. Iconic Dance hits. As I said, it is played a lot today. It has endured and started this new wave of affection and recognition for Cher. In the same year Madonna had this renaissance with Ray of Light, Cher was modernising and changing her sound - and, with it, she was back in the spotlight. On 19th October, the world will mark twenty-five years of a song that has this great legacy. One simply cannot deny…
IT'S power and importance.