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Album Review
The Greatest Hits Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine from AllMusic
Released in 1999 after the massive success of "Believe," The Greatest Hits is a 19-track collection that samples the biggest hits from throughout Cher's career (including her time with Sonny), but concentrates the heaviest on her '80s/early-'90s material. This emphasis on latter-day material is emphasized by the reverse-chronological sequencing, as it begins with "Believe" and then turns back time by running through "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's in His Kiss)," "If I Could Turn Back Time," "Love and Understanding," "Just Like Jesse James," and "I Found Someone" before getting to "All I Really Want to Do," "Bang Bang," "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves," "The Beat Goes On," and "I Got You Babe." Not the most logical sequencing in the world and there are hits, such as "I Paralyze," missing, but this does have all the signature songs in one place, which may be enough for many listeners looking for a collection that does just that, regardless of sequencing.
Tracklist
Pick | # | Song | Writer(s) | Producer(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
We’re working on this section. Please check back soon. |
Singles
"Dovè l'amore" (1999)
💡 Originally from the album BELIEVE
💡 Remix by Emilio Estefan released as a single in October 1999
💡 Only single from THE GREATEST HITS (1999), where the remixed single version appears as the compilation's closing track
📍 Not released in the US
🥇 FIN: #1 (5w)
🥇 FIN Airplay: #1 (4w)
🥇 HUN Airplay: #1 (1w)
🥈 US Dance Sales: #2 (with "All or Nothing")
🌟 SPA: #4
🌟 EST Airplay: #4
🌟 FIN Sales: #5
🌟 US Dance Club Play: #5
🌟 GRC Sales: #7
🌟 ITA: #8
🌟 CZE Airplay: #8
🌟 POL Airplay: #8
🌟 EUR Radio Adds: #9
🌟 HUN Sales: #10
🚀 BEL Wallonia: #14
🚀 LAT Airplay: #14
🚀 EUR Airplay: #15
🚀 SCO: #16
🚀 SWI: #18
🚀 SCA Airplay: #20
🚀 UK: #21
🚀 EUR: #30
🚀 GER: #31
🚀 UK Club: #34
🚀 BEL Flanders: #36
🚀 SWE: #37
🚀 AUT: #38
🚀 CAN Quebec: #39
🪁 NLD: #44
🪁 FRA: #46
🪁 AUS: #49
🔎 THE CFC BREAKDOWN: "Dov'è l'amore" is often remembered as BELIEVE's fourth and final single—except, technically, it wasn't. Its story doesn't follow the neat arc of an official campaign; it unspools like a pop-culture cautionary tale that begins the very day after BELIEVE hit shelves.
On October 23, 1998, during rehearsals for the 4th VH1 Fashion Awards, Madonna was overheard absent-mindedly singing the chorus to "Dov'è l'amore" between takes (the footage survives on CherFlix), and the moment detonated among fans. The album had been out for barely 24 hours, but clearly Madonna had already played it and gotten the song lodged in her head. The fantasy took over immediately: had she rushed to buy BELIEVE on release day? Was she secretly a Cher devotee? The possibilities were too delicious to resist.
The truth is more mundane, and arguably more revealing. Cher and Madonna shared both a publicist (Liz Rosenberg) and a label (Warner) at the time, so their musical worlds regularly cross-pollinated. Whether Madonna genuinely loved the track, sensed a competitive threat, or simply wanted in on the moment, we'll never know. But what we do know is that she went to bat for "Dov'è l'amore" inside Warner, lobbying for it to be BELIEVE's lead single. She even floated the idea of directing the music video herself—on the condition, of course, that it be the campaign opener. It wasn't.
By January 1999, "Believe" had become a global supernova, topping charts across continents for months and showing no signs of slowing down. When ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT asked Madonna whether her offer to direct Cher's video still stood, she brushed it away: "When I first heard it, I was like, 'Oh my God, this has to be the first single! I'm directing the video!' Of course I don't have the time to do that, but I liked saying it at the time. It sounded right." The fan theory that emerged was deliciously cynical: Madonna had allegedly clocked "Believe" as the supernova and pushed for another track to be promoted first, ensuring Cher's actual weapon wouldn't get the full machinery of a lead single launch. Jamie O'Connor ultimately took the director's chair Madonna had only passed by, assuming she was ever seriously considered.
Cher shot the entire "Dov'è l'amore" video to the album version. It played on loop while she mimed, the timing and choreography built around that track, long before the label swapped it for the faster, louder, shorter Emilio Estefan remix. O'Connor had planned a loose storyline involving a love triangle with a flamenco dancer, a shirtless romantic lead, and a melodramatic villain, the whole thing barreling toward a wedding finale. The remix upended that. Warner carved the footage into one-second flashes for broadcast, scrambling the narrative until there wasn't one.
What aired was no longer a mini-telenovela but a rapid-fire collage, a cross-continental fever dream that weaves Spanish flamenco shapes, Mexican altar iconography—complete with a Chihuahua planted on Cher's lap in case the point needed underlining—Argentine accordion shadows, Brazilian carnival sparkle, Venezuelan telenovela melodrama, Andalusian torero flourishes, and Italian lyrics, with Cher in full Latina drag at the center of it all. None of the references are held long enough to settle into authenticity. The result is a maximalist chimera whose coherence comes solely from Cher's gravitational field, pulling every visual element into orbit around her. It is cultural syncretism as pop spectacle: excessive, committed, and delivered with the breezy self-awareness of someone who knows exactly how ridiculous this is and does not care.
The remix itself landed as the closing track on the European compilation THE GREATEST HITS (1999), and promotion for the single and the compilation ran side by side, with the single arriving two weeks ahead of the album to build momentum. Like everything Cher touched at the dawn of the new millennium, THE GREATEST HITS turned into a sales phenomenon, topping the composite European Top 100 Albums chart. Cher performed the remix live only once, on the UK's NATIONAL LOTTERY SHOW.
The single fared respectably for what it was, a would-be juggernaut that arrived only months after the Latin-pop boom peaked with "Livin' la Vida Loca." Had it come out in its original form as the follow-up to "Believe" in early 1999, nothing would have stopped it from becoming the Latin-pop smash of the year. By late 1999, though, it played like a cash-in, a mimicry of the sound Ricky Martin and Enrique Iglesias were riding to global saturation, even though Cher's recording predated both. Still, it topped the charts in Finland for five weeks, hit No. 1 in Hungary, and reached the top 10 in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Italy, Poland, and Spain.
📰 "Cher: Back to the Dance Floor!"—DANCE MUSIC AUTHORITY cover story by Johnny Danza and Dean Ferguson (Jan 1999): "With 'Strong Enough' already locked up as the next UK single, we asked what she thought the next American single might be. Cher said that it might be 'Dov'è l'amore.' Interestingly, 'Dov'è l'amore' is a Spanish song with Italian lyrics, and we asked Cher how that came to be. 'When the boys wrote "Dov'è," there was an Italian restaurant next door—there weren't any Spanish restaurants around—and they just kept running to the guy in the restaurant who spoke Italian and said "tell me how to say this," and "how do you say that?," and that's how they wrote it.' She laughs, continuing. 'And I love the Gipsy Kings, so we got one of the Gipsy Kings to do the guitar work.' We then asked if what we'd heard about Madonna's fondness for the track was true. 'When Madonna heard the song, she called Liz [Rosenberg, of Warner Brothers US], and then Liz called me. She said that Madonna insisted that "Dov'è" had to be the next single and that, if it was, she wanted to direct the video.'"
✍🏻 DOTMUSIC review by Sarah Davis (UK, Oct 14, 1999): "Is the world up for more Latino-inspired records after this summer's hits from Ricky Martin, Geri Halliwell, and Lou Bega? Apparently Cher thinks so. She's gone Latin on the lyrics and sploshed Spanish guitar over dance beats to create a song uncannily like the Spice Girls' 'Viva Forever,' from their first post-Geri album. Needless to say, it's catchy: written by the team behind 'Believe' and produced by Gloria Estefan's husband Emilio Estefan Jnr., who handled Ricky Martin's 'She's All I Ever Had.' Skilful writing and slick production on vocal effects and vibrant beats give the song its own appeal."
✍🏻 MUSIC WEEK review (UK, Oct 16, 1999): "Written and produced by the Metro team, who also produced and wrote 'Believe,' this sees Cher joining Geri Halliwell and Madonna in comfortable Latin territory. Will adequately promote her forthcoming best-of."
📰 MUSIC WEEK column by Alan Jones ("Chart Commentary"; UK, Oct 23, 1999): "Cher's 'Dov'è l'amore' had a terrific first week on the UK Club Pop chart and debuts at No. 2. Two different 12-inches are around, but it is the second, featuring Todd Terry and Tony Moran mixes, that is doing the dancefloor damage."
📰 MUSIC WEEK column by Paul Williams ("Chart File"; UK, Oct 30, 1999): "'All or Nothing' may have disappeared from the listings, but the arrival this week of 'Dov'è l'amore' ensures Cher keeps her record of having a presence on FONO's Top 20 chart for the biggest UK-sourced hits on European radio every week this year."
📈 Chart note by James Masterton (UK, Nov 6, 1999): "It has been 53 weeks since 'Believe' first exploded onto the chart and gave Cher's career an enormous shot in the arm, and she charts once more with the fourth single from the album. 'Dov'è l'amore' is an enormously camp piece of flamenco-driven Latin pop that unfortunately seems to have been released two months too late. Just imagine this single blaring out of radios at the height of summer—it would have worked perfectly, wouldn't it? Even so, the law of diminishing returns may not have helped the single's chart position much, and No. 21 is probably as good as she could have hoped for."
💡 Remix by Emilio Estefan released as a single in October 1999
💡 Only single from THE GREATEST HITS (1999), where the remixed single version appears as the compilation's closing track
📍 Not released in the US
🥇 FIN: #1 (5w)
🥇 FIN Airplay: #1 (4w)
🥇 HUN Airplay: #1 (1w)
🥈 US Dance Sales: #2 (with "All or Nothing")
🌟 SPA: #4
🌟 EST Airplay: #4
🌟 FIN Sales: #5
🌟 US Dance Club Play: #5
🌟 GRC Sales: #7
🌟 ITA: #8
🌟 CZE Airplay: #8
🌟 POL Airplay: #8
🌟 EUR Radio Adds: #9
🌟 HUN Sales: #10
🚀 BEL Wallonia: #14
🚀 LAT Airplay: #14
🚀 EUR Airplay: #15
🚀 SCO: #16
🚀 SWI: #18
🚀 SCA Airplay: #20
🚀 UK: #21
🚀 EUR: #30
🚀 GER: #31
🚀 UK Club: #34
🚀 BEL Flanders: #36
🚀 SWE: #37
🚀 AUT: #38
🚀 CAN Quebec: #39
🪁 NLD: #44
🪁 FRA: #46
🪁 AUS: #49
🔎 THE CFC BREAKDOWN: "Dov'è l'amore" is often remembered as BELIEVE's fourth and final single—except, technically, it wasn't. Its story doesn't follow the neat arc of an official campaign; it unspools like a pop-culture cautionary tale that begins the very day after BELIEVE hit shelves.
On October 23, 1998, during rehearsals for the 4th VH1 Fashion Awards, Madonna was overheard absent-mindedly singing the chorus to "Dov'è l'amore" between takes (the footage survives on CherFlix), and the moment detonated among fans. The album had been out for barely 24 hours, but clearly Madonna had already played it and gotten the song lodged in her head. The fantasy took over immediately: had she rushed to buy BELIEVE on release day? Was she secretly a Cher devotee? The possibilities were too delicious to resist.
The truth is more mundane, and arguably more revealing. Cher and Madonna shared both a publicist (Liz Rosenberg) and a label (Warner) at the time, so their musical worlds regularly cross-pollinated. Whether Madonna genuinely loved the track, sensed a competitive threat, or simply wanted in on the moment, we'll never know. But what we do know is that she went to bat for "Dov'è l'amore" inside Warner, lobbying for it to be BELIEVE's lead single. She even floated the idea of directing the music video herself—on the condition, of course, that it be the campaign opener. It wasn't.
By January 1999, "Believe" had become a global supernova, topping charts across continents for months and showing no signs of slowing down. When ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT asked Madonna whether her offer to direct Cher's video still stood, she brushed it away: "When I first heard it, I was like, 'Oh my God, this has to be the first single! I'm directing the video!' Of course I don't have the time to do that, but I liked saying it at the time. It sounded right." The fan theory that emerged was deliciously cynical: Madonna had allegedly clocked "Believe" as the supernova and pushed for another track to be promoted first, ensuring Cher's actual weapon wouldn't get the full machinery of a lead single launch. Jamie O'Connor ultimately took the director's chair Madonna had only passed by, assuming she was ever seriously considered.
Cher shot the entire "Dov'è l'amore" video to the album version. It played on loop while she mimed, the timing and choreography built around that track, long before the label swapped it for the faster, louder, shorter Emilio Estefan remix. O'Connor had planned a loose storyline involving a love triangle with a flamenco dancer, a shirtless romantic lead, and a melodramatic villain, the whole thing barreling toward a wedding finale. The remix upended that. Warner carved the footage into one-second flashes for broadcast, scrambling the narrative until there wasn't one.
What aired was no longer a mini-telenovela but a rapid-fire collage, a cross-continental fever dream that weaves Spanish flamenco shapes, Mexican altar iconography—complete with a Chihuahua planted on Cher's lap in case the point needed underlining—Argentine accordion shadows, Brazilian carnival sparkle, Venezuelan telenovela melodrama, Andalusian torero flourishes, and Italian lyrics, with Cher in full Latina drag at the center of it all. None of the references are held long enough to settle into authenticity. The result is a maximalist chimera whose coherence comes solely from Cher's gravitational field, pulling every visual element into orbit around her. It is cultural syncretism as pop spectacle: excessive, committed, and delivered with the breezy self-awareness of someone who knows exactly how ridiculous this is and does not care.
The remix itself landed as the closing track on the European compilation THE GREATEST HITS (1999), and promotion for the single and the compilation ran side by side, with the single arriving two weeks ahead of the album to build momentum. Like everything Cher touched at the dawn of the new millennium, THE GREATEST HITS turned into a sales phenomenon, topping the composite European Top 100 Albums chart. Cher performed the remix live only once, on the UK's NATIONAL LOTTERY SHOW.
The single fared respectably for what it was, a would-be juggernaut that arrived only months after the Latin-pop boom peaked with "Livin' la Vida Loca." Had it come out in its original form as the follow-up to "Believe" in early 1999, nothing would have stopped it from becoming the Latin-pop smash of the year. By late 1999, though, it played like a cash-in, a mimicry of the sound Ricky Martin and Enrique Iglesias were riding to global saturation, even though Cher's recording predated both. Still, it topped the charts in Finland for five weeks, hit No. 1 in Hungary, and reached the top 10 in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Italy, Poland, and Spain.
📰 "Cher: Back to the Dance Floor!"—DANCE MUSIC AUTHORITY cover story by Johnny Danza and Dean Ferguson (Jan 1999): "With 'Strong Enough' already locked up as the next UK single, we asked what she thought the next American single might be. Cher said that it might be 'Dov'è l'amore.' Interestingly, 'Dov'è l'amore' is a Spanish song with Italian lyrics, and we asked Cher how that came to be. 'When the boys wrote "Dov'è," there was an Italian restaurant next door—there weren't any Spanish restaurants around—and they just kept running to the guy in the restaurant who spoke Italian and said "tell me how to say this," and "how do you say that?," and that's how they wrote it.' She laughs, continuing. 'And I love the Gipsy Kings, so we got one of the Gipsy Kings to do the guitar work.' We then asked if what we'd heard about Madonna's fondness for the track was true. 'When Madonna heard the song, she called Liz [Rosenberg, of Warner Brothers US], and then Liz called me. She said that Madonna insisted that "Dov'è" had to be the next single and that, if it was, she wanted to direct the video.'"
✍🏻 DOTMUSIC review by Sarah Davis (UK, Oct 14, 1999): "Is the world up for more Latino-inspired records after this summer's hits from Ricky Martin, Geri Halliwell, and Lou Bega? Apparently Cher thinks so. She's gone Latin on the lyrics and sploshed Spanish guitar over dance beats to create a song uncannily like the Spice Girls' 'Viva Forever,' from their first post-Geri album. Needless to say, it's catchy: written by the team behind 'Believe' and produced by Gloria Estefan's husband Emilio Estefan Jnr., who handled Ricky Martin's 'She's All I Ever Had.' Skilful writing and slick production on vocal effects and vibrant beats give the song its own appeal."
✍🏻 MUSIC WEEK review (UK, Oct 16, 1999): "Written and produced by the Metro team, who also produced and wrote 'Believe,' this sees Cher joining Geri Halliwell and Madonna in comfortable Latin territory. Will adequately promote her forthcoming best-of."
📰 MUSIC WEEK column by Alan Jones ("Chart Commentary"; UK, Oct 23, 1999): "Cher's 'Dov'è l'amore' had a terrific first week on the UK Club Pop chart and debuts at No. 2. Two different 12-inches are around, but it is the second, featuring Todd Terry and Tony Moran mixes, that is doing the dancefloor damage."
📰 MUSIC WEEK column by Paul Williams ("Chart File"; UK, Oct 30, 1999): "'All or Nothing' may have disappeared from the listings, but the arrival this week of 'Dov'è l'amore' ensures Cher keeps her record of having a presence on FONO's Top 20 chart for the biggest UK-sourced hits on European radio every week this year."
📈 Chart note by James Masterton (UK, Nov 6, 1999): "It has been 53 weeks since 'Believe' first exploded onto the chart and gave Cher's career an enormous shot in the arm, and she charts once more with the fourth single from the album. 'Dov'è l'amore' is an enormously camp piece of flamenco-driven Latin pop that unfortunately seems to have been released two months too late. Just imagine this single blaring out of radios at the height of summer—it would have worked perfectly, wouldn't it? Even so, the law of diminishing returns may not have helped the single's chart position much, and No. 21 is probably as good as she could have hoped for."
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