For her biggest hit, “Believe,” which turns 20 on Oct. 19, all the way to “Dancing Queen,” her new album of Abba covers that drops Friday, Cher has enlisted Mark Taylor as her go-to producer.
“There’s no one like Mark for me,” Cher tells The Post over email. “We work like a team, we sort of read each other’s minds. And if he says I can do it better, I do it again.”
Here, Taylor tells the stories behind some of their most memorable songs.
“Believe”
After hearing an Andrew Roachford track using a vocoder, Cher wanted to try something similar with her “Believe” vocal. “That night I got a copy of this new program called Auto-Tune, and I was just messing around with it on the chorus,” says Taylor, who played his experiment for Cher the next day. “And she went, ‘That’s f - - king amazing!’ But we had no idea that everyone was gonna react that same way. The way her voice reacted to the Auto-Tune was a match made in heaven.” Not only did “Believe” become a No. 1 smash, but it made history as the first big song to use Auto-Tune. “For a long time people called it the ‘Cher effect,’” says Taylor.
“Strong Enough”
“We just really went for that classic disco thing. It was a full swing at one of those big diva records like ‘No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)’ [by Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer]. She has the power, the image as an icon, to be able to pull something like that off.”
“Song for the Lonely”
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Cher dedicated this 2001 song “to the courageous people of New York.” Taylor notes that the uplifting track was actually recorded before the tragic events. “Then 9/11 comes, and it’s got a whole other dimension to it,” he says. “On the surface, it’s an anthemic dance record, but when you dig deeper there is that air of melancholy.”
“You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me”
Cher made a special request for Taylor to produce her vocals for this Golden Globe-winning ballad from her 2010 film “Burlesque.” “We had done so many records together that I made her feel more comfortable in the studio,” says Taylor. “She’s an amazing singer, but she has a surprising lack of confidence in her vocal performance. It’s bizarre, because she smashes it.”
“Fernando”
Cher cut her big “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” number in London while she was filming the movie. On the first day of recording, “she was finding her way a bit,” says Taylor. “And then she shot her main scene the following day, came back to the studio straight from filming dressed in full Ruby regalia [her character], and just nailed it. It was brilliant.”
“One of Us”
Taylor says that transforming this Abba song into a ballad was the “standout moment” of making “Dancing Queen.” “When I was playing it back with just the piano and the vocal, it sounded stunning. It was one of those ‘wow’ moments,” he says. “The original has a kind of upbeat feel to it. You don’t really realize how sad the song is when you’ve got this bouncy track.”