Cher ‘Chickened Out’ While Writing Her Memoir, Has to ‘Man Up’

Cher was hesitant to share details of her life in her forthcoming memoir and she’s still struggling to turn back time.

“I just totally chickened out,” Cher, 77, shared on the Thursday, November 23, episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon about taking a first pass at the tell-all. “I didn’t put in some things that needed to be in. And they’re not comfortable, but they need to be in, so I have to go back and man up.”

The singer noted that once finished, the book will be quite a lengthy read. “I’ve lived too long and done too much and so it’s like it should be the encyclopedia,” she said, before jokingly telling the audience, “Not that you guys know what that is.”

When Cher admitted she hadn’t settled on a title for the book, host Jimmy Fallon threw out a couple of suggestions, like I Got Scoops, Babe and Over-Cher-Ing, to which Cher shook her head “no” as the audience groaned.

Cher first announced her plans to write a memoir in 2017. She gave an update to The Hollywood Reporter in August, telling the outlet she’s nearly finished with the book thanks to her publishing company applying pressure to move things along.

“Well, we’re almost finished because [HarperCollins] goes, ‘Cher, how long are you going to work on this?’” she said. ‘That’s difficult too, but we’re so close.”

It’s not as if the Grammy winner doesn’t have other projects in the works. She closed out the 2023 Macy’s Day Thanksgiving Parade on Thursday, singing her holiday hit “DJ Play a Christmas Song” off her new album, Christmas.

Like her memoir, Cher confessed that Christmas took her some time to make. “Because I couldn’t, this sounds so stupid, because I couldn’t find myself, I couldn’t see myself in a Christmas album,” she told Fallon, 49, on Thursday. “I just said to the record company, ‘If you just leave me alone,’ right? And I recorded most of it in my house. I just picked out these songs that don’t necessarily together but when you put them together they’re really good.”

There was also the task of asking legendary musicians Darlene Love and Stevie Wonder to lend their voices to a few tracks. “I was so terrified, I’m not kidding,” Cher said of calling up Wonder, 73, after realizing there were some parts of “What Christmas Means to Me” that were “just Stevie.”

Cher revealed in September that she was dropping her first holiday record. She opened up about creating the album the following month during an appearance on Good Morning Britain.

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“It’s a Cher Christmas album. It’s not your mother’s Christmas album,” the teased at the time, noting that the decision to add more voices — including Wonder, Love, Michael Bublé, Cyndi Lauper and Tyga — was a “last-minute” thing.

“I’ve never had duets,” she explained. “I’ve never had people on any of my records. … But they’re special: all of them.”