All I really want to do is, baby, be friends with you

Continuing my trip back through the 1965 album charts.

31/10/65 : All I Really Wanna Do - Cher


This is our second visit with solo Cher and I suspect it will be very different from our last visit - but almost identical to our previous visit with Mr & Mrs Cher.

Yeah, it's certainly not far off their joint effort - it's a combination of covers and original tracks with most unremarkable arrangements. I do think it's improved by the absence of Sonny though - there's less faffing about. I only recognised "I Go To Sleep" (which isn't a million miles off The Pretenders' version), "Needles And Pins" and "Blowing In The Wind" and I'm pleased to say she doesn't ruin any of them - and the other tracks were all pretty listenable. I actually like Cher's voice on this - it's got quite an early Motown feel to it but interestingly, there are a few bum notes on there which you can't help but feel they could have re-recorded. Also, the sound quality isn't the best we've heard this year - all in all, it just feels to have a lack of care to it. Apart from that, I liked this a lot more than I was expecting to - she's also amusingly unvarnished on the album cover compared with later efforts.

We're at #11 in the charts this week on her sixth week of a nine week run, with it having peaked at #7 - we've seen a lot of albums with that sort of profile recently. And that's possibly because the top five this week were the usual TSOM, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Mary Poppins, and Andy Williams and we had one new entry for Donovan (#20 - and that was as high as it ever got).

Wikipedia tells us it's her debut album and, like their debut album, was rushed out to capitalise on the success of "I Got You Babe" with Sonny merely doing the production here. Three of the songs are Dylan covers and I never knew that "I Go To Sleep" is a Ray Davies song, but has never been recorded by The Kinks - three people covered it in '65, but it never charted until The Pretenders did it in '81. I also never knew that "Needles And Pins" (which was originally a hit for The Searchers in '63) was written by Sonny Bono. Back to Cher, the critics were nice enough about it and it got to #16 in the US. 

"Customers also listened to" Tina Turner, Barbra Streisand, S Club 7 and Pet Shop Boys - which is a curious mix. I didn't mind this at all but do feel it could have been considerably better with not that much effort - either way it continued a strong showing from the ladies in '65.

24/10/65 - A fine folky album
07/11/65 - An entertaining first visit

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