Cher – Believe

You Can Change That Part Over My Dead Body

Released on October 19, 1998, “Believe” debuted at number one in the UK on Halloween and spent seven consecutive weeks at the summit, becoming the biggest-selling single by a female solo artist in British history with 1.84 million copies sold. The track topped charts in 23 countries including the United States, where it reached number one on March 13, 1999, making 52-year-old Cher the oldest female artist to achieve this feat, breaking a record that stood until Kate Bush and Brenda Lee surpassed it decades later. But here’s the fascinating backstory: when producer Mark Taylor played Cher the Auto-Tuned vocals, Warner Music executives wanted the effect removed completely. Cher’s response became legendary: You can change that part of it over my dead body. That robotic wobble almost got buried by record company fear, and instead it changed pop music forever.

The numbers told an extraordinary story. “Believe” was the UK’s best-selling single of 1998 and topped the US Hot 100 year-end chart for 1999, marking the longest gap between chart-toppers for any artist—25 years since Cher’s previous number one, “Dark Lady” in 1974, breaking the Beach Boys’ 22-year record. The album Believe peaked at number four on the Billboard 200 and went four times platinum in the United States, topping the European album charts for eight consecutive weeks and selling over 11 million copies worldwide. The single alone sold over 11 million copies globally, won the Grammy for Best Dance Recording, and earned Record of the Year nomination. At 52, Cher proved you could reinvent yourself after three decades in the business and dominate youth-oriented dance music while everyone else chased teenage audiences.

The song’s creation was anything but smooth. Six songwriters worked on it over nearly a decade before it reached completion. The chorus originated in 1990 when Brian Higgins shopped an early demo to various artists without success, including Nick Van Eede of Cutting Crew, who tweaked the melody in 1992. Warner chairman Rob Dickins liked the chorus but hated the verses, so he brought in Steve Torch and Paul Barry to rewrite them. When sessions began with producers Mark Taylor and Brian Rawling at Dreamhouse Studio in Kingston upon Thames, London, Taylor hated Cher’s initial vocal approach and kept demanding she do it better. They had a massive fight. Cher walked out of the studio telling him to get somebody else if he wasn’t satisfied. She came back the next day only after seeing UK singer Roachford using a vocal effect on morning television, which inspired her to ask Taylor if he could try something similar.

Recording took place in mid-1998 using Cubase VST on an early Power Macintosh G3, with synthesizers including a Clavia Nord Rack and Oberheim Matrix 1000. Taylor experimented with Auto-Tune pitch correction software, setting the Retune Speed to zero to create unnaturally rapid corrections that removed the natural slide between pitches. He was terrified showing it to Cher, unsure how she’d react to her voice being so dramatically altered. Instead, she loved it immediately. They high-fived and jumped around like some stupid Rocky film, as she later described it. The entire track took approximately ten days to complete. Taylor initially produced it twice, scrapping the first version because it was too hardcore dance, then rebuilding it with sounds that were dance-based but not obviously so. To protect their method and prevent imitation, the producers initially lied to interviewers, claiming they’d used a vocoder rather than Auto-Tune.

“Believe” appeared as the title track and lead single from Cher’s 22nd studio album, released October 22, 1998, and dedicated to her former husband Sonny Bono, who’d died earlier that year in a skiing accident. The album marked a complete departure from her previous rock-inflected work after 1995’s It’s a Man’s World received lukewarm response. Warner Music UK head Rob Dickins suggested Cher record a dance album to better connect with her gay audience, advice she initially dismissed as a sound without real songs. The album generated four singles including “Strong Enough,” which peaked at number 57 in the US and number five in the UK, plus “All or Nothing” and “Dov’è l’amore.” To support the release, Cher embarked on the Do You Believe? tour, which became one of the highest-grossing tours ever for a female artist at that time.

The song’s cultural impact proved immense and immediate. Auto-Tune’s fifth-release manual described the zero speed setting as the Cher effect, cementing her role in popularizing the technique even though Kid Rock had actually used similar processing a few months earlier on “Only God Knows Why.” The sound paved the way for Daft Punk’s Discovery, Kanye West’s 808s and Heartbreak, and essentially T-Pain’s entire career. By some estimates, 99 percent of contemporary chart music now uses Auto-Tune in production. Australian band DMA’s covered it on Triple J’s Like a Version in October 2016, stripping away the electronic production to reveal the song’s emotional core. Their acoustic version accumulated over 10 million YouTube views, ranked number six on Triple J’s Hottest 100 2016 chart, was released digitally in April 2017, achieved double platinum certification in Australia, and eventually won Triple J’s inaugural Hottest 100 of Like a Version in 2023.

Two decades later, “Believe” stands as one of the defining songs of the 1990s and a masterclass in creative risk-taking. Cher took a dance album concept she initially hated, fought with her producer over vocals, walked out of the studio in frustration, then came back with a bizarre idea inspired by a morning television appearance that her record company desperately wanted removed. Every rational commercial instinct said strip out the robotic effect and deliver something safe. Instead, at 52 years old, she insisted on keeping the weird part and became the oldest female solo artist to top charts on both sides of the Atlantic. As Blur’s Damon Albarn said, it was brilliant. Sometimes the best career comebacks happen when you refuse to change that part of it, even if they threaten to do it over your dead body.