the first round
(6) cher, “half-breed”
beat down
(11) michael jackson & paul mccartney, “the girl is mine”
145-81
and will play on in the second round

Read the essays, listen to the songs, and vote. Winner is the aggregate of the poll below and the @marchxness twitter poll. Polls closed @ 9am Arizona time on March 5.

stacy murison on “half-breed”

If you observed me alone in my bedroom at the height of my Sonny & Cher obsession, here’s what you would have seen: me, holding an unplugged curling iron as a microphone and wearing a beach towel on my head mimicking Cher’s long hair. I would have made sure I pushed the towel back from my shoulders, shifted my weight purposefully to one hip, licked my lips, and let my other wrist flop just so, as Cher would have. I would have rolled my eyes at something stupid Sonny would have said and then, only then, would I have stepped forward and begun singing,

Half-breed, that's all I ever hurled
Half-breed, how I learned to hate the world
Half-breed, she's no good they borned
Both sides were against me since the day I was born!

I misheard some of the words and made up others as I went along because I was five when the song first came out (aw, hell, I still do this and I’m now in my 50s). When Cher sang “Half-Breed” on The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, she sat on a white horse in an almost blinding white headdress while lip-synching. She looked like a dream: glowing and partially blurred. My grandmother explained the fogginess of Cher’s image was probably a petroleum jelly-covered lens like they used for the soap operas we also watched together. I didn’t really understand all of the lyrics and didn’t realize that Cher may not have actually been Cherokee (more on that later). What I did know at that age was the emotional core of the song—that she felt like she didn’t belong anywhere. And if someone as glamorous and beautiful as Cher didn’t belong, what chance did a moon-faced, snaggle-tooth kid like me have?

What I saw was this: Cher, tall and beautiful, with a huge smile and many eyelashes, good humored and tolerant of that weird, goofy guy, Sonny, who was (incredibly) her husband. My grandmother and I snuggled on her sofa as we watched the show every week. Grandma would bring out peanut butter and celery or saltines and butter for snacks and we’d laugh at the skits, which were not as funny as those on The Carol Burnett Show but pretty good. Once, Cher sang my other favorite song, “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” which had an accompanying cartoon. Grandma’s house was the best kind of escape: somewhere I could relax while watching glamorous people on television after another bad week at school. 

The other children always laughed at me…

When we drew self-portraits in class, I used a protractor to guide the circle (half moon + half moon = whole moon) that I perceived as my face. Later, I would switch to a compass, but it was still a challenge to get the curvature just so, to match up the ends of the curve without overlapping. There were circles in the playground too: at recess, I would find myself alone until other kids would circle me and chant, “you’re adopted, you’re adopted.” It was like a bad game of Monkey in the Middle with no hope for escape. I figured they knew something I didn’t. A few years earlier, my parents had tried to adopt a boy, a baby brother for me, so it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that I was also adopted. I remembered asking my parents about this, but instead of answering, they would ask, where’d you hear that?
Eventually I had to stop drawing my face because I was fitted for headgear to fix a prominent overbite. I could not figure out how to draw the angle of the headgear in relation to my head on the page. When the taunts at school got worse, I settled into the dual escape routes of books while I was at school and Barbie® dolls while I was at home. Fueling my Cher obsession, my parents bought me a Cher doll in a magenta halter gown. Because she was slightly taller than the other dolls, she needed her own wardrobe. With the accumulation of Cher clothes (including what passed as a Native American-style dress with beads) and accessories (shoes, shoes, and shoes), my parents eventually bought me a storage case that was supposed to resemble Cher’s dressing room. This was the first time Cher really let me down. In television commercials, it appeared that the dressing room came with even more clothes. Unfortunately, it was a slight-of-hand trick. The Cher doll, dressed in a black leotard, would stand in front of the dressing room “mirror” and appear to be wearing an outfit featured on a cardboard card behind the mirror. There were no extra clothes in the box. When I find the images of the dressing room on Pinterest, I notice the desert colors and indigenous-appearing drawings, the toy manufacturer perhaps choosing these images to bolster Cher’s claim of 1/16th Cherokee ancestry on her mother’s side.

When I tell friends who are of my vintage that I’m writing this essay, they fall into two camps. The first repeat back to me that Cher was part Cherokee and I feel like an ass telling them that in all likelihood this was an adopted persona in order to sell the song. If Cher only sang her autobiography, it would also call into question her time as part of a traveling show and if her father did indeed actually sell “doctor good” (Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves, 1971). This is perhaps part of Cher’s enduring legacy: making listeners believe whatever she sang to them. She could completely inhabit the characters of her songs—this, I reason, is how a five-year-old homely kid could feel kinship with a singer like Cher. I would argue that this is a quality we look for in our favorite musicians—they seem to know our hearts, what we’re thinking, what our dreams and hardships are—and they put all of these emotions into lyrics and orchestrate them in such a way that we feel understood and less alone in the world. 
The second group of friends encourage me to write a socio-historical treatise on colonization and ongoing oppression. This is more challenging because of my own limitations as a researcher and the privilege I have experienced—there’s no way that I can do this topic justice, but I can call attention to what I notice and ask questions. For example, the more I research the early 1970s, the more I find trends toward embracing the culture and identity of indigenous people, often signified by the term “American Indian,” which I find in expressions of fashion, including these embroidery patterns.

One of the first indigenous representations that I noticed when I was younger was the Keep America Beautiful campaign (1971) featuring the “Crying Indian,” an actor known as Iron Eyes Cody. This actor also claimed partial Cherokee ancestry but was later found to be Italian-American. The historian Finis Dunaway posits that part of this appropriation of indigenous cultures may have been caused by Americans trying to move toward being less commercially motivated. Through the critical lens of time, we can view this behavior as exploitation. I do wonder what motivated many members of a society to appropriate another culture except to understand this as part of the backlash from the ongoing cultural revolution in the United States and protests of and reverberations from the Vietnam War.

Although I was never (nor have I ever been) fashionable, I remember my parents and their friends wearing different forms of ponchos, headbands, and fringe. My mother ironed her long wavy brown hair at night at the ironing board, hoping for that super-straight look—she was my own version of Cher, except for making me eat the string beans I hated so much. A neighbor often told me that I looked like an “Indian princess” as she stroked my long, black braids. I did not correct her and tell her that I was part Ukrainian-American and part German-American. Other pictures I find of Cher from the 70s show her wearing embroidered clothing and turquoise and silver jewelry that she may have thought would enhance her Cherokee persona, or that was on-trend in the style of clothing worn in the 1970s, or a combination of both.

But I can't run away from what I am…

We can’t know what anyone is thinking at any given time and it’s in these moments that I find myself feeling some compassion for Cher. In her mid-twenties when “Half-Breed” came out and reached number one on the Billboard charts (where it remained for two weeks), she was in the process of divorcing from Sonny Bono, her de facto career and image manager since she was 16 years old. I try to put myself in the place of a woman whose entire life and career revolved around another person so completely and whose name always got top-billing. An interview with her by People Magazine in 1974 was titled, “Cher Without Sonny: Can the Show Go On?” It seemed in my Cher-worship that she was always the bigger star—the better singer, the better performer—and I’m curious that the writer implied Cher couldn’t go it alone. Interviews like this one must have been challenging for Cher. I can imagine her at age 27, facing divorce and an unknown future as a solo artist. It’s possible that Half-Breed became a kind of anthem for her striking out on her own. I can also just as easily imagine that many people believed the song was actually about her life and that it might have been easier to perpetuate the story that she was part-Cherokee than to explain to her fans and to reporters that it was just a song someone wrote for her. I think about the questions I field about my own writing and the pressure I sometimes feel to be more interesting. It is always tempting to be something other—someone better—than who I really am.
I write this knowing that there are many sides to the story of Cher’s identity. There are multiple articles that quote Cher claiming Cherokee ancestry as well as others where she claims it was something a publicist made up. Other people who have researched her ancestry believe they have disproved these claims. I don’t feel it’s responsible to not acknowledge all of these statements: what Cher may have been told by her own family about her family history, what she may have invented about her lineage, what someone may have made up about her background, and what others have been able to research about her family history. And, although it is wrong to claim to be someone we are not, I can see the appeal of it. I can also understand how it would be hard to dig out of a lie that has gone on for so long. It is not always possible to ask for forgiveness in our culture, although there is almost always some credit given for at least trying.  
What is perhaps more difficult to understand is why Cher continues to perform the song in concert wearing variations of her original costume. As recently as 2017, she performed “Half-Breed” in concert with a dancer/model who walked the stage wearing a floor-length headdress and outfit that mimicked the one Cher wore during her 1973 television performance of the song. After being asked to explain and to apologize for the song and costume via a Twitter campaign, Cher acknowledged that it was “way past time” to retire the costume and the song and, in what could be described by some as an “ok, Boomer” moment, asked people to remember that this song came out almost 50 years ago. But Cher also calls herself out on her own bullshit as well. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the follow-up thread to see if she was indeed “better” at dialog the next day.

The Twitter exchange partially highlights the challenge to engage in meaningful dialog, to ask questions, and to provide context on social media. In situations of cultural appropriation, we want an honest exchange that culminates in a better understanding and also an apology and other reparations. Today, we are often quick to “cancel” someone based on information-in-the-moment and without context. When we do call someone out and are met with defensiveness or with excuses (and without explanations or apologies), how do we continue to engage in the processes of education and discussion? When neither side feels it is being heard, both sides feel betrayed and angry. Or, as the lyrics from “Half-Breed” indicate: When you're not welcome you don't hang around. I contend that the emotional truth of the song still remains, and, if anything, more people than ever feel alienated and “othered” in our society precisely because we have lost the means to engage in honest and open dialog. If we can’t make space to discuss the issues of cultural appropriation around “Half-Breed,” and if Cher can’t move beyond “I didn’t know,” we remain at an impasse. But it is worth continuing to ask the questions so that we may be educated and, in turn, educate others.  

Works Cited

Blagden, Neil. “Cher Without Sonny: Can the Show Go On?” People Magazine. 25 March 1974. Accessed 3 January 2020.

Breihan, Tom. “The Number Ones: Cher’s Half-Breed.” 22 April 2019. Accessed 13 November 2019: https://www.stereogum.com/2040423/the-number-ones-chers-half-breed/franchises/the-number-ones/

Cher (@cher). “I Did Song 50 Yrs Ago…” 22 December 2017, 6:37 pm. Tweet.

Cher. “Half-breed.” MCA Records, 1973. Lyrics by Al Capp and Mary Dean

“Cher the Half Breed.” DNA Consultants. 12 March 2019. Accessed 13 December 2019.

Dunaway, Finis. “The ‘Crying Indian’ Ad That Fooled the Environmental Movement.” Zocalo Public Square. 9 November 2017. Accessed 15 November 2019: https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2017/11/09/crying-indian-ad-fooled-environmental-movement/ideas/essay/

Gambaccini, Paul. Half Breed. Rolling Stone. 14 February 1974. Accessed 13 November 2019: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/half-breed-206106/

Stacy Murison’s work has appeared in journals such as Assay, Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog, Hobart, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, River Teeth, and The Rumpus. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Northern Arizona University where she now teaches composition and is known by her students for hosting Dance Party Fridays and singing (poorly) before, during, and after class.

j. ken stuckey on “the girl is mine”

Cards on the table: I like “The Girl Is Mine.” I can remember where I was when I heard the song the first time. I’m not comparing it to the moon landing, but the song made an impression on me. My family was in my mom’s car and my brother said of the unfamiliar half of the duo, “That’s Paul McCartney.” “Whaaat?” I said in disbelief. I suspect that reaction was exactly the one McCartney was trying to elicit. The song is a cultural skeleton key which few people seem to recall fondly now, but at the time it did precisely what it was designed to do.
But let’s rewind. The Beatles were groupies for black music from the beginning. Their cover of Barrett Strong’s “Money (That’s What I Want)” is one of their more impressive efforts to capture a soul sound. In fact the influence of black music on their sound was apparent on every album. But for reasons likely owing to the systemic biases of the music charts, no Beatles, whether as a group or as solo artists, ever reached the Billboard R&B/soul charts in the 60s and 70s. Black acceptance may not be crucial to white artists’ sales, but perennially it has been central to their sense of credibility. Among the Beatles’ many successes, one that seems somewhat less remarked upon is the mutual respect between the Fab Four and the American R&B establishment. The Beatles recorded numerous Motown tracks, but African American singers covered quite a few Beatles songs too, from Aretha Franklin’s “Eleanor Rigby” to Wilson Pickett’s “Hey Jude.” YouTube contains an agonizingly brief clip of the Jackson 5 performing a mesmerizing rendition “Let It Be” a cappella, with the piece de resistance coming right at the beginning as Michael does a long riff on the word “When” that blends the Beatles opening with the first word of “Who’s Loving You.”
In 1982, Paul would finally get chart evidence of his R&B bona fides. Before his duets with Michael, he sang with Stevie Wonder on “Ebony and Ivory,” a song whose lyrics offered a plea for racial acceptance. It peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard pop chart and, tantalizingly, No. 8 on the soul chart. Shortly thereafter, although the song would not be released for another two years, McCartney and Jackson recorded “Say Say Say.” And in the spring of 82, as Ebony and Ivory climbed the charts, Mike and Paul recorded “The Girl Is Mine” and it became Paul’s first R&B No. 1.
The lore of the 1980 Grammy awards is that Michael came home furious after winning only one award for R&B male vocal. Legend has it he told his mother that his next album would compel their acknowledgement. The seeds of Thriller (which, by the way, won seven Grammys) were planted that night. Michael spent the next several months putting together the greatest Rorschach test in American pop culture history — everyone looked at that album and saw something they wanted to see. And that jack of all genres effort was launched with “The Girl Is Mine,” which was released as an advance single from the album to prevent it being leaked as an album track.
The Wikipedia page for “Ebony and Ivory” creates an impression of bad reviews for the song with no contemporaneous evidence to support that. Similar reception is cited for “The Girl Is Mine”, but with appropriate documentation. This of course is in an era when the overt acceptance of “crossover” music is at an all time low, so such reviews come as no surprise. Both Michael and Stevie had just spent many years immersed in disco, only to witness the stark backlash that followed in the 80s. Their shift to less polarizing pop only made sense. Michael also felt, with some justification, that Off the Wall had been ignored by the Recording Academy and by the industry in general. Stevie had commanded recognition throughout the 70s as one of the world’s greatest, but Michael was still under a glass ceiling. Pairing up with a Beatle was a rather logical if also cynical move for a black artist who did not want to renunciate his race but did not want to be reduced to it either. So while Michael is authenticating Paul to a black audience, Paul is serving as a bridge for Michael to a white one. Try to find a song on the Billboard Hot 100 now that isn’t using a similar strategy?
The potential flaws of “The Girl Is Mine” could scarcely be more obvious. The languid midtempo groove seems designed to ruffle no feathers and to call as little attention to itself as possible, as if Michael wrote it not only for the grocery store but in it. The chorus goes, “The girl is mine … the doggone girl is mine.”  That language is square now (as is the expression “square”), but I find it refreshing. Anyone who has tried recently to make a playlist for a workplace or a fitness class knows that every popular recording is now laced with profanity. The Billboard pop chart is like Times Square in the 70s—children should be prohibited, and respectable adults move through furtively, terrified of what they might encounter.
But there is one more good reason to defend this song. Tina Turner’s “Let’s Stay Together” was the lead single from Private Dancer, and is a fascinating study as a career turning point — it harkens back to her bygone days with Ike, but also forward to her hybrid rock sound, which would define the rest of her career. “The Girl Is Mine” too stands apart from everything else on Thriller. Despite the fact that the song’s narrative premise is an argument, you can hear Michael smiling all the way through it. It’s a boyish, jovial vocal on an album that contains no jocularity—the only other laughter is the demonic cackle from Vincent Price at the end of the title track. The Thriller LP is an astounding achievement, but it marked the beginning of Michael’s angry period, when singing was more like yelling. It is delightful to hear Michael on this one track using the joyful tone he used on “Rock with You.”
But there is one final irony here. In interviews, Michael described his time in the studio with Paul as tremendous fun, which the smiling vocals would affirm. But amid all that fun, Paul innocuously suggested to Michael that he look into music catalogs as a form of long-term investment. Michael took it under advisement, and a short time later when the Beatles catalog went up for sale, Michael outbid Paul, a perceived betrayal that reportedly ended their friendship. That one investment has provided financial stability for the Jackson estate long after Michael’s death. Fifty years into his career, Paul is still finding R&B success through collaboration. “FourFiveSeconds,” his smash with Rihanna and Kanye West, reached No. 1 on the R&B chart in 2015. But one imagines that he must still wish that he had not so thoroughly underestimated his duet partner. You keep dreaming, Paul. 

J. Ken Stuckey is a senior lecturer in English and media studies at Bentley University. He is also a contributor to the Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide.