The Story of Pop: 1998 (Chapter 43)

Offering up yet more huge hits from the year Alexander McCall-Smith published the first of his bestselling novels of The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency, and when Saving Private Ryan and There’s Something About Mary hit the cinemas, this is The Story of Pop: 1998. This week: how one hi-NRG dance pop track bought a showbiz icon back to the top of the chart…

• Artist: Cher
• Song: Believe
• Released: 19/10/1998
• Writers / Producers: Brian Higgins / Stuart McLennan / Matt Gray / Tim Powell / Cher / Paul Barry / Steven Torch / Mark Taylor / Brian Rawling
• Highest UK Chart Position: #1
• Weeks on Chart: 31

As we now draw into the last eight weeks of this series, one overriding theme you’ll have noticed is that 1998 did seem to be a bit of a young star’s game where the charts were concerned, with a wave of new teen pop acts. But of course, there was one mammoth exception to this overall rule – and how – with the artist behind this week’s featured hit.

First rising to fame in 1965 at the age of 19 with her then husband Sonny Bono on their chart topper “I Got You Babe”, Cher quickly established herself as a solo success throughout the 70s and 80s, with hits including “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)”, “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves”, “If I Could Turn Back Time”, “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)” and “Love and Understanding” amongst others, with worldwide record sales of 100 million.

She also hosted her own top rated TV variety show, and crossed successfully over into acting, winning acclaim critically and commercially for her roles in films such as Silkwood, The Witches of Eastwick and Moonstruck, the latter of which she notably won an Oscar for as Best Actress.

But by the middle of the 90s, she was somewhat faltering musically; her most recent album, 1995’s It’s A Man’s World, had been one of her least successful, selling only 700,000 copies worldwide. So by the time work started on the follow up in 1998, it was clear that the time was ripe for a change of tack for Cher.

Her A&R at the time at Warner Records, the legendary music industry bod Rob Dickins, had picked up on the fact that with her legendary flamboyance, daring outfits and big personality and voice, she had long been a gay icon for decades. Speaking in an interview in 2002 for the Channel 4 show Top 10: Camp Icons, Dickins recalled meeting with her prior to recording of what would become her 22nd studio album.

“I met with her and I said ‘Do you know what? You have a fantastic gay audience, and they adore you. And you keep giving them these macho rock ballads.’ And she said ‘Well, that’s what I do’. So I said ‘Well, why don’t we do a hi-NRG record?'” And it was Rob’s canny acknowledgement of a big sector of her fanbase – and a record that could easily appeal to them – that ultimately proved to be on the money.

The story of the album’s title track and first single, “Believe”, starts with a demo from a then little known team of writers; Brian Higgins, Matt Gray, Tim Powell and Stuart McLennan, the former three of whom would go onto form the forward thinking pop production powerhouse, Xenomania. They had already delivered one act signed to Warner Records – Dannii Minogue – her biggest hit to that point, the thundering dance pop banger “All I Wanna Do”, which had hit #4 in August 1997.

But whilst the chorus was an agreed winner, the rest of the song wasn’t. It was at this point that Mark Taylor, Brian Rawling and the team at fellow production house Metrophonic in Surrey were drafted in to beef the song up and ultimately turn it into the hit version we know today. Both Dickins and Cher were excited when they heard it.

Although uncredited at the time, Cher also contributed new lines to the song – namely the second bridge lyrics before the chorus – as she felt the voice of the song needed to come from a place of strength. Speaking in 2004, she said “I was singing [the song] in the bathtub, and it seemed to me the second verse was too whiny. It kind of pissed me off, so I changed it. I toughened it up a bit.”

However, that wasn’t the only thing added that grabbed the attention on this song that was so far removed from anything Cher had done to that point. At Metrophonic’s studios in Kingston-upon-Thames in Surrey, they cut together the final mix, adding in quirky vocal effects on Cher’s voice, using the then new pitch correction software Auto-Tune, which would go onto be widely used and influential on many other pop singles in the years that followed.

Bosses at Warner Records were allegedly wanting the effects removed, to which Cher famously told them “Over my dead body!” And so “Believe”, a triumphant “I Will Survive” for the late 90s (“Do you believe in life after love? / I can feel something inside me say / I really don’t think you’re strong enough, no”), all pounding disco beats and empowering lyrics, was greenlit for release as the first single from the album of the same on 19th October 1998.

Released in an extremely competitive week, including new singles from the artist we’ll discuss next week, as well as a returning Culture Club, U2 and Alanis Morissette, the following Sunday, “Believe” led – for a first in UK chart history – a top 5 consisting entirely of new entries, debuting straight in at number one on first week sales of 168,000 copies.

Having then recently turned 52, she was also – until Kate Bush assumed the crown just last year with her revived “Running Up That Hill” – the first female solo artist older than 50 to top the UK charts. But that, however, was not the only record that “Believe” set during its incredible chart career. It defied all logical chart moves for that time by spending an incredible seven weeks at the top – the longest such reign of the year, notching up six figure sales for each of those weeks.

In fact, it kept on selling even after it was finally knocked off the top, to the extent that it managed to overhaul Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” at the eleventh hour to become the biggest selling single of the entire year, as well as the biggest selling single of all time by a female artist in the UK, with total sales of 2.4m in this country alone, and 11m worldwide. And with this one single, Cher reasserted her position as a pop culture icon, legend and the moment that she still maintains to this day.

Don’t forget to follow our brand new playlist on Spotify – updated weekly so you never miss a song from the story of pop in 1998. And you can leave your memories of the songs below in the comments, Tweet us or message us on Instagram, using the hashtag #StoryofPop1998.