With her induction into the annals of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on Saturday night (Oct. 19), Cher made sure to set expectations early on: “This speech is gonna be such a crapshoot — I wrote it the other day, and then I rewrote it tonight, and I’m dyslexic,” she declared.
A crapshoot it was not — across her presentation at the annual ceremony, Cher stunned the crowd at the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse with renditions of “If I Could Turn Back Time” and “Believe” — the latter featuring special guest Dua Lipa — before cedeing the stage to Zendaya, who introduced her idol with aplomb. “Where do I even begin?” the actress said, dressed in an outfit inspired by one of Cher’s many Bob Mackie looks. “There is not one person in this room, in this country, and pretty much in this world who doesn’t know the name of the artist I am here to honor tonight. She’s so iconic, she only needs one name.”
In a video tribute, stars appeared to pay tribute to Cher, including Cyndi Lauper, Shania Twain and P!nk, with the latter making it abundantly clear that the mononymous singer was a “f–king rockstar.”
But once into her speech, Cher made it clear that her induction was never guaranteed: “It was easier getting divorced from two men than it was getting into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame,” she cracked. “I want to thank my guardian David Geffen, because he wrote a letter and sent it to the directors, and now, ha ha, here I am!”
While the singer made sure to occasionally make fun of herself (“I’m a good singer, not a great singer,” she cracked), she didn’t shy away from acknowledging her impact throughout her decades-spanning career. In one particular highlight, the star looked back on how her biggest songs nearly didn’t happen.
“[With] ‘Believe,’ I changed the sound of music forever, and it was an accident. My producer and I were having a fight, with my producer saying, ‘Cher, do it better,’” she recalled. “I said, ‘Dude, if you want it better, get a different singer.’ He called me later and said, ‘Cher, I’ve been playing around with the pitch machine, and I think I’ve got something.’ I went back and listened to it, and when it was over, we both jumped up and high-fived each other. And then the head of my record company said ‘we can’t do that because no one will know it was you.’ And I said, ‘Yes, that’s the deal! That’s the great part!’”
Cher also recalled the advice that she had been given by her mother from a young age that guided her career to where it is today. “She said to me, ‘You might not be the prettiest, you might not be the smartest, you might not be the most talented, but you’re special,’” she said. “She kept instilling it into me: ‘If you’re down and you’re out, you get up again.’”
Smiling at the crowd, Cher made sure that the women in the audience had heard her. “The one thing I have never done, is I never give up. And I am talking to the women, okay — you guys are on your own,” she offered with a smirk. “We have been down and out, but we keep striving, and we keep going and we are somebody. We are special, as my mother would say.”
Cher was just one of the icons honored at Saturday night’s event — fellow inductees included Mary J. Blige, Ozzy Osbourne, Kool & the Gang, A Tribe Called Quest, Dave Matthews Band, Foreigner and Peter Frampton.
