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The Sonny Side of Chér

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Allmusic[1]

The Sonny Side of Chér is the second studio album by American singer-actress Cher, released on April, 1966 by Imperial, as her second album, Cher again collaborated with Sonny Bono and Harold Battiste. The album is by-and-large a covers album and contains two songs written by Bono. The title of the album is a pun on the name of Cher's first husband Sonny Bono. After its release, the album garnered positive reviews from critics. The album was Cher's second successful album of the sixties.

Album information

After the success of her previous album, Cher quickly recorded another album. The Sonny Side of Chér was in the chart with the second studio album of Sonny & Cher, The Wondrous World of Sonny & Cher. The album follows the same formula of the previous album with rearranged covers and new songs written by Bono. The Sonny Side of Chér was overall less successful than the previous release, but produced bigger hits than the first album did. It contains Cher's first solo Top Ten hit, the Bono-penned song "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)". With "Bang Bang", Cher was definitively settled in the American pop culture. The album also had two songs with French influence, "A Young Girl" and "Our Day Will Come" and Edith Piaf's famous "Milord".

Like her previous album All I Really Want to Do, Cher covered one song written and performed by Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone".[2] The album also included Tom Jones' "It's Not Unusual", the popular song "Our Day Will Come" and "The Girl from Ipanema".[2] Other covers are "A Young Girl" and "Ol' Man River" (which shows the huge vocal power Cher already had on this early album).[2]

The Sonny Side of Chér received mixed reviews from music critics. Tim Sendra of Allmusic gave two and a half stars for the album and compared it to the previous album, saying "Sonny Bono tinkers with the folk-rock formula that had made [Cher's] previous album such a delight and ruins everything, leaving the album as nothing more than a chuckle-inducing curiosity, just the kind of silly record casual listeners might expect from the duo." About the album said that "is doomed by its lack of heart and inability to rise above the formulaic."

In 1992 the original album and Cher's debut studio album All I Really Want to Do were reissued by EMI on one CD which featured all tracks from both.[3] After in 1995 EMI re-released this version together with the album Cher.[3] The last version of the album was released in 2005 only in UK by BGO Records. The original The Sonny Side of Chér album in its entirety remains unreleased on compact disc.[3]

Chart performance

The Sonny Side of Chér, like Cher's previous album, was a success in the Billboard 200. The album entered into the chart while The Wondrous World of Sonny & Cher was also charting, eventually reaching up to #26. The album also entered in the UK Albums Chart and debuted at #28 in May, and reached its highest position (#11) three weeks later.[4] The album remained in the chart for eleven weeks and exited in July.[4] The Sonny Side of Chér was also Cher's last album that entered in the UK Albums chart until her 1987 comeback album Cher (released by Geffen). The Sonny Side of Chér also entered in the Norway albums chart and peaked at #17.

Singles

Two singles were released from this album; both were written by Bono. "Where Do You Go", the album's first single release, was a Dylan-mimic [2] and reached number twenty five in the Billboard Hot 100 and number seventeen on the Canadian Single Charts. The second single released was Cher's most successful song of the sixties, "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)", which peaked in the US at #2 and which was also a hit in the UK Singles Chart at #3. The song was covered by Bono in the Sonny & Cher live album Live in Las Vegas Vol. 2, and was later re-recorded for the 1987 studio album Cher.

Track listing

Side one
No.TitleWriter(s)Length
1."Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)"Sonny Bono2:40
2."A Young Girl (Une enfant)"Oscar Brown, Jr., Charles Aznavour, Robert Chauvigny3:22
3."Where Do You Go"Sonny Bono3:12
4."Our Day Will Come"Bob Hilliard, Mort Garson2:12
5."Elusive Butterfly"Bob Lind2:30
6."Like a Rolling Stone"Bob Dylan3:45
Side two
No.TitleWriter(s)Length
1."Ol' Man River"Oscar Hammerstein II, Jerome Kern2:50
2."Come to Your Window"Bob Lind2:48
3."The Girl from Ipanema"Vinicius de Moraes, Norman Gimbel, Antonio Carlos Jobim2:09
4."It's Not Unusual"Gordon Mills, Leslie Reed2:08
5."Time"Michael Merchant3:16
6."Milord"Lewis, Marguerite Monnot, George Moustaki2:43

Credits

Chart positions

Chart (1966) Peak
position
UK Albums Chart[5] 11
Norway Albums Chart 17
United States Billboard 200 26

References

  1. ^ Allmusic review
  2. ^ a b c d "The Sonny Side of Chèr Review". CherScholar.com. Retrieved 2009-02-05.
  3. ^ a b c "All I Really Want to Do albums". Homepages.ihug.com.au. Retrieved 2009-08-11. [dead link]
  4. ^ a b "The Sonny Side of Chér UK chart". Chartstats.com. Archived from the original on 2013-01-19. Retrieved 2009-08-12.
  5. ^ UK Albums Chart [1] . Retrieved October 31, 2010.
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