Music Monday #11: The Greatest Hits of Cher

If there was a training course that taught people how to be gay, in all the stereotypical senses that would entail, then Madonna and Cher would most certainly be artists that would have entire modules devoted to their work.  I can't remember how old I was when I first discovered Cher or her music, but all I remember is knowing that she was an artist that people automatically assumed if you were a guy and you listened to her then you were gay.  I grew up in a very working class community, attending all-male schools for the first 12 years of my education, there wasn't much room for diversity or tolerating anything that didn't conform to toxic notions of what made someone straight, male, and "normal" although I hate using that word in this context because of the vitriol attached to the idea of conflating normality with a given sexuality.

What I did realise quite early was that certain artists I would have to appreciate from a distance and Cher was one of those artists, keeping the secret that I liked her and her music was like keeping the secret of my sexuality, if my closet really existed then the Cher CDs we owned would have been in there with me.  'The Greatest Hits' of Cher, one of many that have been released but this one in particular was released in 1999, I was 11 years old, the decade, and the millennium were coming to an end.  We also moved house for the first time, something we would go on to do several other times when I was growing up but this was the first major change for me. 

I had just started High School having attended it for three months when this album was released.  I had a mentality that was hopeful at the time because there was a sense of new beginnings and abandoning the burdens that I had been carrying over for years prior.  I realise for some to think that an 11 year old can hold burdens is melodramatic but this was after a very traumatic experience that would go on to cause PTSD later in life and still leaves me with issues that I have never truly been able to resolve.  To say that my childhood and teenage years were disrupted is an understatement, my parents never knew just to what extent that reached and in many ways they still don't, but they knew the environment I was living in was not healthy, even if they didn't understand the reasons why, and they did the best they could for me, things might have been different had they known everything I was going through but I can't change the past so there's no point dwelling on that now.

At age 11, 'Believe' a song about moving on and leaving toxic people behind, 'If I Could Turn Back Time' a song about going back and changing your mistakes to make things right, 'Heart of Stone' a song about how easy life would be if you could just not feel anything at all and be heartless, 'Strong Enough' a song about finding strength within yourself to be move on and live your life, these songs all fit the narrative that existed in my head, the feelings that I had, and the internal conflict I was dealing with. 

On a lighter note this album also included 'Dov'è l'amore' another example of music that incorporated lyrics that weren't in English which really appealed to me and led me for a while to learn to speak Italian, that didn't last long though as the learning curve was too steep for me, but it did lay the groundwork for my pursuit of another romance language a few years later as mentioned in my post about Celine Dion's 'A New Day Has Come' - and yes Celine Dion was another singer I was acutely aware that people would assume you were gay if you as a teenage boy openly showed interest in.  I should point out these assertions are made in respect of stereotypes, what music you like and what artists you love doesn't determine your sexuality, this was just the reality of the environment I grew up in.

Surprisingly, this is the only Cher album that actually features on this list for the simple fact that her career since then for me has mostly been marked by singles and the album itself sums up a few decades of her career up until that point which again if I had included individual albums would have dominated this list.