1989 Cher – Heart Of Stone

Heart of Stone is the nineteenth studio album by American singer-actress Cher, released on June 19, 1989 by Geffen Records. It is one of Cher’s best-selling albums with more than 4 million copies sold worldwide as of January 1991. The album was supported by her 1990 sold-out Heart of Stone Tour.

Heart of Stone was released in 1989 and was her second studio album for Geffen Records. As with her previous album Cher, Peter Asher, Jon Bon Jovi, Diane Warren, Guy Roche and Desmond Child performed songwriting and/or producing duties. Bonnie Tyler and Michael Bolton performed background vocals on the song “Emotional Fire”, which was an outtake from Bolton’s 1987 album The Hunger, as was “Starting Over” (Demo versions of the song exist in bootleg form). The album was recorded in late 1988/early 1989, during the third year of Cher’s relationship with Rob Camilletti, to whom she dedicated the album.

Heart of Stone reached number ten in the United States, number seven in the United Kingdom, and by topping the charts in Australia, Heart of Stone became Geffen’s first international number one album. It was her first solo album in the United States (Sonny and Cher’s debut album “Look at Us” reached number two and stayed there for eight weeks) to reach top 10. Further on in her career, Cher would go on to have four more top ten albums – Believe, Living Proof, The Very Best of Cher and Closer to the Truth. It peaked at #10 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart for sales of 209,000 copies. The album has sold more than 3 million copies in the United States, with 964,000 of those units sold since early 1991, according to Nielsen SoundScan, which began counting actual sales that same year.

The album was first released with artwork, and later re-released with more conventional studio photos. The original was a painting by Octavio Ocampo, featuring Cher sitting beside a stone heart, creating the illusion of a skull (see infobox picture). The artwork was changed shortly after its release, making copies with the original artwork collector’s items.

She recorded two other songs for the album, “Don’t Come Cryin’ to Me” and “Some Guys”, but neither made the final cut. A remixed version of “Don’t Come Cryin’ to Me” was included on the Geffen compilation album If I Could Turn Back Time: Cher’s Greatest Hits. The reissue of that album, per Cher’s request, does not include the song. A demo version of “Some Guys” was included on the “If I Could Turn Back Time” 7- and 12-inch singles.

“Heart of Stone” and “If I Could Turn Back Time” were both slightly remixed for the single. The “Heart of Stone” remix is available on CD on the compilation If I Could Turn Back Time: Cher’s Greatest Hits issued by Geffen Records.

The album produced three top 10 hits as well as a top 20 hit with the title track.