Celebrate The Birth Of Cher With An Equally Timeless Tune: “The Music’s No Good Without You”

As Jimmy James once said: “After a nuclear holocaust, all that will be left are cockroaches and Cher.”

Toady is Cher’s birthday which, at this point, is all but a national holiday. And so, I thought I’d celebrate the timeless treature with one of my favorite (underrated-ish?) Cher gems: Living Proof‘s “The Music’s No Good Without You.”

“The Music’s No Good Without You” was released in November of 2001 — that’s over thirteen years ago, for those who needed a reminder of one’s mortality. Unlike the general uplifting air of Living Proof (“A Different Kind Of Love Song” and “(This Is) A Song for the Lonely”), “Music’s No Good” is downright devastating — even hopeless. (I guess, morbidly, that’s why I’ve always liked it.)

The song is Auto-Tuned within an inch of its sonic life — the kind of chilly robo-makeover that Heidi Montag dreams are made of. And since we all know Cher can sing, that’s not a particularly bothersome thing. (Besides, Cher’s an Auto-Tune pioneer — the global success of “Believe” really did set the vocoded voice trend into motion in pop culture.)

The lost love anthem lingers like a sad, droning lullaby being beamed in from space, as Cher monotones above a throbbing early ’00’s Euro-club beat: “The music’s no good without you, the music’s no good at all…” Like so many dance floor anthems, the best variety is almost always sad disco.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Cher classic without heaps of glittery camp being drizzled on top — “Dazzle, dazzle, dazzle!” as well as brief shout-out to the dance floor in one almighty wailing bridge (“‘Cause my world stopped spinning. Nothing I can do. So I pray that a DJ lifts my heart!“). And if you thought the song was camp, brace yourselves for the video — it’s like a sequel to The Fifth Element staged by RuPaul’s Drag Race, or the gayest unaired episode of Star Trek to date. The bottles floating in space! Tears4ever.

Fun #SomethingMorePersonal fact: Post-college breakup, I used to drive slowly past the beach weeping to this song (among others) which, admittedly, was not an uncommon scenario at the time. I’m a fun time!

And if this song alone wasn’t enough to appreciate Cher, there’s always her Twitter feed.

And my favorite piece of Cher advice that I apply to my daily life — for real:

Happy birthday, Cher!