Cher is getting real about what it was like to sing to a royal audience. The superstar, 78, opened up in her new memoir, Cher: The Memoir, Part One, about her not-so-great experience singing for Princess Margaret in the '60s.
Cher Says Her Royal Family Performance Was a Total Disaster: 'I Was Mortified'
"it was like a bad dream"
Published Dec 30, 2024
•2:00pm
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The multihypenate writes candidly about the "fiasco" performance, explaining that, during a 1965 visit to L.A., the princess and her husband, Lord Snowdon, requested a private performance from the icon and then-husband, Sonny Bono. “This came as a surprise, because the old guard either had no idea who we were or thought we were freaks," she writes, per People. "It boggled the imagination how much that wasn’t our audience." Still, though she and Bono both wanted to pass on the offer, they concluded that they couldn't say no to the princess.
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What ensued sounds like a comedy of errors, between Frank Sinatra—scheduled to introduce Sonny & Cher—dropping out at the last minute, sound and stage issues and Princess Margaret having laryngitis. Recalling that very few people in the audience applauded, Cher revealed that "halfway through our set Princess Margaret asked for the sound to be turned down because she had a headache.” Oof.
She added, “I was mortified. It was like a bad dream that we couldn’t get out of; we just had to stand there and wait for it to be over.”
Disastrous performance aside, it sounds like there are *so many* incredible tidbits in the book. The first part of almost EGOT winner's—she's won an Emmy, Grammy and Oscar—two-part memoir follows her extraordinary beginnings through childhood to meeting and marrying Bono. In candid, fascinating detail, she reveals the highly complicated relationship that made them world-famous—and eventually drove them apart.
It's a must-read for diehard fans and casual enjoyers alike. An L.A. Times review reads, "Cher: The Memoir, Part One is a fun read, a candid and well-written book that will justifiably make her legion of fans excited for the release of the second volume. Like Barbra Streisand, who recently penned a 970-page memoir, Cher is one of the handful of artists whose extraordinary life merits the extra ink."
And who knows, maybe one day Cher will get the chance to do a redemption performance for other members of the royal family. (Something tells me Prince Harry and Meghan Markle would crush a karaoke cover of "I Got You Babe.")
