Less than a year ago, Cher told Kelly Clarkson exactly what she felt about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. “I wouldn’t be in it now if they gave me a million dollars,” she said. “I’m not kidding you. I’m never going to change my mind. They can just you-know-what themselves.”
Her rage was understandable. Despite all her accomplishments as a solo artist and half of Sonny and Cher, she’d never even appeared on a Hall of Fame ballot prior to this year. But when voters decided that this was finally her year, Cher reconsidered her position and decided to go. “I’m going to have some words to say,” she told Entertainment Tonight. “I’m going to accept it as me.”
Her speech wasn’t quite as incendiary as one may expect though, minus one cheeky joke about it being “easier to divorce two men” than to get into the Rock Hall. Cher thanked her longtime “guardian” David Geffen and attributed her mother for teaching her to never give up. She hopped between the humility of acknowledging she was “very lucky” while facing extreme adversity, while also stating that she “changed the sound of music forever.”
Giving Cher’s introduction speech, Zendaya said that the legendary singer and actress “does it all, and really, really fucking well.”
“Her voice is so singular that any song she sings becomes a Cher song,” Zendaya said. “She’s navigated a multitude of musical genres, defined new ones and reinvented others.”
Read Cher’s speech below.
Thank you.
So this speech is going to be such a crap shoot. I’m not kidding you, because I wrote it the other day and then I rewrote it tonight, and I’m just like, ‘what the fuck.’ I don’t know what’s going to happen, okay? It was easier getting divorced from two men than it was getting in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I want to thank my guardian, David Geffen, because he wrote a letter and sent it to the directors, and so here I am. Thank you David. Thank you for caring so much about me.
So obviously, here I am, but I want to tell you some stories about my life, because I hope to make them small. When I was four years old, I saw Cinderella, and that’s what I knew I wanted to be. I wanted to sing, and I wanted to make people happy, and I wanted to have fun, and I wanted to be famous. I’m not sure how a child knows about being famous, but I do. I had a crazy, amazing mother. She said to me, ‘you know, you might not be the prettiest, you might not be the smartest, you might not be the most talented, but you’re special.’
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And so my mom kept instilling it into me, because it was hard. I didn’t do well in school. I just couldn’t get it. I couldn’t read, I couldn’t do any of that stuff. But she said, ‘you know, if you’re down and you’re out, you get up again. And in my life, I’ve been so down. As my mother would say, lower than a snake’s belly. That’s how down I’ve been. People have told me that I was finished, that I was through that I have 10 minutes. The one thing that I think I got from my mom is I never gave up. When Sunny and I split, I nothing. I had a car and my clothes, and I had to go to Vegas.
At that point, Vegas was the elephant’s graveyard. If you went there, you had nothing. Now it’s cool, everybody has a residency. But one night, Francis Ford Coppola came to one of my shows, and he came back stage and he said, ‘you know, you should be an actress.’ And I went, ‘Okay!’ He said, “Go to New York.” So I went to New York, and by accident, I got a play, and from the play I got a movie with Meryl Streep.
Honestly, I believe what my mom said, but I’m lucky. I’ve had really bad things happen. I was dropped by four labels, When it was completely over, I did “Believe” and it was like, “yes!” I just been really lucky, and I have had number ones for seven decades, which surprises me, because I’m a good singer, you know, I’m a good singer. I’m not a great singer. You know what? I’ll take it. And also, I changed the sound of music forever, all right? And and “believe” really changed the sound of music.
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It was an accident because my producer and I were having a fight because he said, “share, do it better.” And “believe” was kind of a bitch in the beginning. It wasn’t that good. So he said, “do it better, and do it better.” I went “dude if you want it better, get another singer, because I can’t do it better.” And then he called me later in the afternoon. He said, “Cher, I’ve been playing around with the pitch machine, and I think I got something.” So I went back and sitting down, and he started to play it. And it was like “Jesus”.
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When it was over, we both jumped up and we high-fived each other. It was so great. It was like a moment. And then the head of my record company, who I adore, said, “we can’t do that because no one will know that it’s you.” I went, “yes, yes. That’s the deal. That’s the great part. You know?” That’s the great part. My life has been a rollercoaster and and the one thing that I have never done is I never give up. I never give up.
I’m talking to the women. I’m talking to women. You guys are on your own. We’ve been down and out, and we keep striving, and we keep going, and we keep building, and we are somebody. We are special. As my mom would say, we’re special. So I want to thank my family, Chaz, Elijah, my sister back home, my brother in law, and my little friend, baby Slash Electric, and Alexander. Good night, and thank you so much.”
