Taking Stock of Cher (cher.com)

Member Name: stoffy

Product:	cher.com
Date:	18/01/03 (167 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: the album samples are quite useful if you haven't bought the albums

Disadvantages: no full discography, lack of up to date info, serves no purpose

Whether she's straddling a cannon wearing what looked to be only a shoelace over her crotch or singing like a robot with an expression of paralysis thanks to overdoing the Botox, Cher has managed to be a curious figure of fascination over many decades.

Starting out with her late husband Sonny (whom she divorced in the 70's) recording tracks such as 'I Got You Babe' and appearing on their own TV show, she soon eminated into a disco diva for the 90's with her million-selling chart-topper 'Believe' via an Oscar for her role in 'Moondance' and numerous looks and fashions.

Her official website, cher.com is the www Mecca for Cher fans everywhere with lots of info about the star. Upon reaching the homepage, we are treated to a burst of 'The Song For The Lonely' which she later tributed to firefighters everywhere. Loading up pretty quickly, we are treated to a slick, if slightly cold-looking site with Cher's mug posted everywhere.

The left side of the page gives you a number of different menus to choose from. The first option, 'Discography' should, in theory, give you a list of all the songs and albums that Cher's released. However, instead, it manages to airbrush away everything that she did before 1994... this gives you merely a snapshot of her career rather than the full story. However, you can sample snippets from every tracks from each of the three featured albums quickly and clearly, so it is extremely useful if you want to try before you buy.

The second menu is information about all the tours that Cher is doing (incidentally, there are none scheduled for the UK in the near future, so no need to start limbering up and trying to remember all the dance moves pop-pickers).

A nice bit of nostalgia comes into play in the gallery section, where we get to look at Cher through the ages, and how a bit of plastic surgery can actually make the recipient better loo
king rather than ending up looking like a Madame Tussaud waxwork during a heatwave. However, some of these do take an absolute age to load up. However, the 80's picks are worth the wait, if only to check for proof that Cher does indeed have the biggest hair ever.

Surprisingly for a professional looking site of a singer who's just had an album out, there are two ghosted links labelled 'movies' and 'postcards' - surely the least they could have done was put a 'under construction' sign up or something? Overcoming the disappointment of not being able to look at Cher's postcards, you can instead try and get an insight into her life by looking at her web journal. Proving that she's no Adrian Mole, she has chosen to write two entries, both two sentences long. Cheers for that Cher. Another example of how this site doesn't really seem to care about how many repeat hits it gets...

The news section is equally vacuous, which some bumf about how her songs have reached the top of the dance club play chart, which is presumably to cover up the fact that the album is probably nestled in the Billboard chart at the wrong end. No other info about TV appearance is here either, which would probably be more useful to fans.

Links pages are always interesting on these official sites. Here, there is the unlikely motley crue of hyperlinks to her fan-club website, the Elijah Blues Band (whoever they are) and the Craniofacial Association, with whom she has been associated with since her portrayal of the mother of a boy with a facial disfigurement in the film 'Mask'.

Passing on the opportunity to visit these, I instead proceeded to the store. Hoping for the opportunity to purchase some embroidered cushion a la Eartha Kitt, I was redirected to an external site selling her t-shirts what was described as 'assorted merchandise'. Passing on the $45 'Muscle shooter' which looks as thou
gh you should only wear it on Miami Beach, it was on to her 'forum'.

Like the shop, this is on an external site, and is pretty unappealing aesthetically. Of the 5515 posts in Cher forum there are the usual array of worshippers and megafans. One particular thread was dedicated to how far people had travelled to see her live in concert. Not sure that I'd even be arsed to put her CD onto my player, let alone travel 1000 miles, I decided that maybe this wasn't the place for me...

Whilst not a huge Cher fan (or even a moderate one, I'm not sure if I like any of her songs come to think of it), her website is very corporate and very shoddy. A complete void of information about her films, scant description of her music and nothing about her background suggests that this site is only there for the sake of it, and serves no great purpose. If you are a fan of the Diva, you're probably best off going elsewhere if you want something more meaningful and enjoyable...

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