It's a Man's World (Cher album)

It's a Man's World is the twenty-second album by American singer-actress, Cher released on November 6, 1995 by Warner Bros Records. This is also the start of her second stint with the label. It peaked at #64 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart, and only sold 9,000 copies in that week.

Album information

It's a Man's World found Cher singing 'unconventional' songs in a style more associated with the Deep South, rather than her more familiar pop and rock roots. The album also stands out for Cher stretching her vocals to head register for such songs as "One by One" and "The Gunman", getting out of her comfort zone of her trademark husky contralto.

Cher recorded It's a Man's World in London in 1995. That same year the album was released all over Europe with "Walking in Memphis" as its lead off single. In the same year, it was certified gold in the UK by the British Phonographic Industry.^[2]

The original album included fourteen songs, but when it was released in the United States in 1996 the setlist included only eleven songs. Three songs, "I Wouldn't Treat a Dog (The Way You Treated Me)", "Don't Come Around Tonite" and "The Shape of Things to Come" had been removed from the American release. The American release was also reviewed by critics as a 'mid-'90s R&B/pop phenomenon' due to the removal of these three rock songs and also due to five songs remixed to evoke a contemporary R&B feel. The new versions of those songs: "Not Enough Love in the World", "Paradise Is Here", "Angels Running", "What About the Moonlight" and "One by One" were labeled as album versions in the United States. Their new sound carried R&B influences, while their original versions were influenced by Southern rock and blues.

Because of the alterations, the American release was also compared to the style of Boyz II Men. One critic Jose F. Promis from Allmusic described the album as "one of the singer's finest", which justifies Cher as a true singer rather than a mere entertainer. While the album was temporarily sidelined by her dizzying worldwide success with Believe, in recent years it has been rediscovered and credited.

Track listing

Covers

These are the covered songs on the album and their original singers.

• Walking in Memphis (Marc Cohn)
• Not Enough Love in the World (Don Henley)
• One by One (The Real People)
• I Wouldn't Treat a Dog (The Way You Treated Me) (Bobby "Blue" Bland)
• Angels Running - originally titled "Good Thing" (Patty Larkin)
• Paradise Is Here (Tina Turner)
• I'm Blowin' Away (Linda Ronstadt)
• The Same Mistake (Marc Jordan)
• The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore (Frankie Valli)
• It's a Man's Man's Man's World (James Brown)

Credits

Production

• Executive Producer: Craig Kostich

Original versions

• Tracks 1, 5, 8, 9 original versions produced by Christopher Neil
• Tracks 2, 3, 6, 7, 14 produced by Stephen Lipson
• Tracks 4, 10, produced by Greg Penny
• Tracks 11, 12, 13, produced by Trevor Horn

American remixes

• Tracks 1, 2, 4, 5, were remixed by Sam Ward
• Tracks 3, was remixed by Daniel Abraham
• "The Gunman" was edited by the original song producer, Trevor Horn

Personnel

• Main Vocals: Cher
• String Arrangements : Anne Dudley
• Mixing: Steve Fitzmaurice

Design

• Photography: David Scheinmann

Chart performance

References

External links

• Cher at the Internet Movie Database