Cher’s Cover of The Beatles’ ‘The Long and Winding Road’ Is Awful

Cher has given us a lot of good pop music over the years. She tried her hand at one of The Beatles‘ most famous pop ballads, “The Long and Winding Road,” and fell flat on her face. In fact, she covered two lackluster Paul McCartney ballads on one album!

Cher’s ‘Half-Breed’ was paired with The Beatles’ ‘The Long and Winding Road’

If you are a Cher fan, you probably know her song “Half-Breed.” The protest song about a woman who is half-Cherokee and half-white was made with good intentions but it hasn’t aged very well. What you don’t know is that the track was part of an entire album called Half-Breed.

Half-Breed seems like nothing more than an excuse to sell its hit single. The slapdash nature of the record is apparent because it features too many covers of recent easy-listening hits. Half-Breed includes renditions of the Bee Gees’ “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” Paul McCartney & Wings’ “My Love,” and The Beatles’ “The Long and Winding Road.” If you thought Cher might bring some life to this 1970s radio cheese, you have another thing coming.

Cher was the wrong artist for this song

“The Long and Winding Road” was never one of The Beatles’ more impressive ballads. It’s too precious and those strings make it overly melodramatic. The worst thing you could do for this song would be to give it to an actor with a powerful voice.

There’s a reason why we don’t remember any Cher ballads that weren’t power ballads. Slow, tender songs don’t work with her vocals. And “The Long and Winding Road” was already bad when Paul sang it with the right timbre.

On top of that, Cher’s voice needs to be employed with care because her oversinging can be downright painful. She hams it up on “The Long and Winding Road” to the point where she sounds like a braying barnyard animal at a few points. She was probably more subtle during some of the comedy skits on The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour. The only way anyone could enjoy this cover is if they are a die-hard Cher fan who enjoys every song she ever performed or if they think it’s so bad it’s good. Most people, however, will see this as a combination of the worst of The Beatles and the worst of Cher.

What John Lennon thought of The Beatles’ ‘The Long and Winding Road’

During a 1980 interview from the book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, John discussed the origin of “The Long and Winding Road.” “Paul again,” he recalled. “He had a little spurt just before we split. I think the shock of Yoko and what was happening gave him a creative spurt including ‘Let It Be’ and ‘Long and Winding Road,’ ’cause that was the last gasp from him.”

John seemed to give “The Long and Winding Road” a modest recommendation. That’s surprising, as he often trashed sentimental songs that Paul wrote. Whether you love “The Long and Winding Road” or think it was a poor end to The Beatles’ string of No. 1 hits, we can all agree that Cher should have stayed a million miles away from the song.