Cher is ready to pack her bags if a certain former president finds his way back into the Oval Office. In a broad-ranging interview with the Guardian, the singer was asked how she felt about Donald Trump being potentially re-elected.
“I almost got an ulcer the last time,” Cher replied. “If he gets in, who knows? This time I will leave [the country].”
She also discussed the issue of trans rights, reflecting on the ongoing pushback from the right and the constant laws being passed against trans people in the U.S.
“It’s something like 500 bills they’re trying to pass,” Cher said in the interview. “I was with two trans girls the other night – and of course my own child [Chaz is trans]. I was saying ‘We’ve got to stand together.’ I don’t know what their eventual plan is for trans people. I don’t put anything past them.”
The interview was done to promote Cher’s forthcoming holiday album, Christmas, which her first of the genre. The LP, out Oct. 20, features guest appearances by Stevie Wonder, Tyga, Cyndi Lauper, Michael Bublé, and more. The 13-track album features four original singles and new interpretations of “Santa Baby,” “Run Rudolph Run,” and “Please Come Home For Christmas.”
“Everyone has done one, so, when my manager called and said, ‘We’d like you to do this,’ my immediate answer was ‘No!’” Cher told the Guardian. “He said, ‘Just think about it.’ So, I sat down and thought, ‘What can I do that’s different?’” She added that she decided to make a holiday album “that doesn’t scream ‘Christmas’ every second and isn’t filled with songs you know by name.”
The album features a rendition of “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” which was originally released as part of the Phil Spector Christmas Album in 1963 with Darlene Love on lead vocals and Cher on backup. She recounted her experience making the song with Spector and Love, remembering how it was released on the same day John F. Kennedy died.
We had been working like crazy on that album,” Cher said. “I kept thinking, I’m only 17 and I’m exhausted, what are these other people doing?’ What I didn’t realize then was they were all doing drugs! The day of the release I remember I was in bed with Sonny and the telephone rang and it was Phil, and I knew by the look on Sonny’s face that something terrible had happened. I was pretty sure somebody died but I was thinking it was somebody in our group. Then Sonny turned to me and said, ‘The president’s dead.’ And I just got hysterical.”
She also recalled dealing with Spector as a 17-year-old girl. “Phil asked me, in French, if I would have sex with him,” Cher explained in the interview. “And I said, in French, ‘Yes – for money.’ He almost fell off his chair. He didn’t expect that from anyone.”
Earlier this month, Cher unveiled “DJ Play a Christmas Song,” her first single from Christmas.
She recently denied hiring four men to abduct her own adult son to keep him from reconciling with his then-estranged wife, telling People, “That rumor is not true.”
The accusation emerged last month in newly surfaced divorce documents regarding Elijah Blue Allman — Cher’s son with Gregg Allman — and his wife, Marie Angela King. According to the documents, the couple filed for divorce in 2021, but in Nov. 2022, they allegedly reconnected for 12 days. It was during this period, on Nov. 30 — their wedding anniversary — that four men allegedly entered their New York hotel room and abducted Allman.