When Buffy (The Vampire Slayer) went away to Sunnydale College, she had suspicions that her roommate Kathy was....well, a bit evil. Turns out she (Kathy) was a hideous demon in human form, but what was it that first aroused Buffy's suspicions that something wasn't right? Mainly the fact she drove Buffy nuts by playing 'Believe' on autorepeat at an unreasonable volume. Is that a fair comment on the song I wonder? Maybe, maybe not - there's no doubt Cher's song has an almost supernatural power to crawl under certain skins. Lots of people hate it, and their hatred stems mainly from 'Believe's filtering of Cher's vocal through Auto Pitch software (not a vocoder as many thought) to give it a distinctive underwater wobble. It kind of irritates me too to be fair - Cher's gutsy bellow was always distinctive enough by itself, yet without it here then Cher would clump over 'Believe's a dance gallop like a shire horse. Soft rock ballads yes, she's good at those, but there's not enough 'give' in her voice to bend around a dance track and it's the Auto Tune that coats her vocal with a playful sparkle (listen to the "It's so sad that you're leaving, it takes time to believe it") that rides the music like sunlight on water and 'makes' the song. But then by adding it, it does in part render Cher a remixed presence on her own single too. Ok, there's enough Cher-ness left not to leave her as anonymous as John Hurt under the Elephant Man prosthetics, but knowing that it is Cher means that 'Believe' becomes overly-reliant on that gimmick to hold my attention rather than the talents of the lady herself. And that doesn't seem right to me.
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