Cher gets honour in wrong era
Singer no fan of current President, writes Michael Cidoni Lennox
The phone call telling Cher she was a Kennedy Centre honouree was welcome — but she admits she wanted to get it earlier.
The Grammy, Emmy and Oscar winner, whose ABBAtribute album has just been released, acknowledged she’d long hoped for that call. She said she “wanted to get it so badly” during the Obama Administration.
Now she will, at 72, during the Trump Administration, which might make for an awkward gathering.
A regular at anti-Trump rallies and marches, Cher is among the most outspoken celebrities against him. The White House said no decision had been made on whether Trump would participate in this year’s Kennedy Centre Honours programme.
The Kennedy Centre prize is given to those in the performing arts for lifetime contributions to American culture. This year’s other recipients are composer and pianist Philip Glass, country music entertainer Reba McEntire, and jazz saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter.
The co-creators of Tonywinning musical will receive a special award as trailblazing creators of the transformative work.
Cher missed out on the first wave of Abba-mania, which began to sweep most of the planet with the Swedish quartet’s 1974 Eurovision Song Contest winner and was confirmed by the successes of and
a year later.
“I was most Americans,” Cher said. “I knew
and