There’s never been a musical trend that Cher has been afraid to jump upon.  From watered down hippie-dippy love songs to disco to adult contemporary schlock, the Dark Lady has matched only maybe Bowie in appropriating the current musical climate for her own campy needs.  And New Wave was no exception.

Cher’s flirtation with New Wave started as the ’80s blossomed - she had just released a second, much less successful follow-up to Take Me Home, and the Casablanca disco sound she was currently trading in was on the wane.  Enter Black Rose, a “punk” band that featured Cher on vocals and her then-current boyfriend on guitar.  The idea was that Black Rose was a real band, not a vanity project, so Cher’s image was purposely left off the front album cover art and the press materials downplayed her presence.  The result was a universally ignored album and Black Rose soon withered and died.

Flash forward two years later - Cher signed to Columbia Records for a one-album deal and was teamed with a group of hot writers to record her pop comeback, 1982’s I Paralyze.  Paired with Olivia Newton-John songwriter/producer John Farrar, who was on fire with a streak of hits for John that appropriated New Wave’s synths and drum machines, Cher released the title track (download) as the lead single.  Sounding like an outtake from Physical, “I Paralyze” had all the makings of a sure-fire hit.  However, the single suffered from scant promotion - no video was shot and Cher only made dulsatory appearances on “Solid Gold” and a rapidly aging “American Bandstand” to market it.

Cher’s then-diminished standings in the pop world and the weak promo push resulted in a non-charting lead-off single, not a good sign for the I Paralyze album as a whole.  While most of the world couldn’t hum a bar of the song, it remains a favorite of diva - she even mentions it in her VH1 “Behind the Music” episode as a song she loves and would like to re-record someday. (more…)

It’s the age-old story in pop music — when the hits start drying up, it’s time to grab the current “hot” producer and jump on the latest trend, hoping to ride it to the top of the charts. You know what I’m talking about, Madonna. After all, it worked at the dawn of the ’80s, when Streisand rode the Bee Gees’ heat to score a few huge hits from her collaboration with Barry Gibb on the Guilty album. But Streisand hadn’t had a Top 40 hit in four years when 1985 rolled around, yet she wasn’t quite ready to become relegated to standards and schmaltz yet (that would come with her next release, The Broadway Album). Babs wanted a hit, so the call went out and producer Richard Perry answered it.

Perry was white-hot at the time, coming off his production of the Pointer Sisters’ mega-platinum smash, Breakout, which just seemed to spawn hit after hit after hit (an astounding six singles were drawn from that album). Perry brought a song called “Emotion” (download) to Babs’s attention, and it was chosen to not only be the album’s namesake, but its first single. While not really new wave, per se, it was definitely awash in the synths and drum machines of the day, sounding much like a Pointer Sisters outtake. That could also have to do with the fact that the Sisters provide backing vocals on the tune.

Streisand’s longtime label, Columbia, must have had high hopes for “Emotion,” since they pulled out all the promotional stops. A sumptuously lavish video featuring guest stars Roger Daltrey (?) and Mikhail Baryshnikov (?!?) had thousands of dollars thrown at it, including securing heavy rotation as an MTV exclusive. The result was a camp-tacular spectacle. Make sure you at least get to the 2:30 mark to witness … PUNK-ROCK STREISAND! (more…)