Cher<\/a> made a special appearance at the 2026 Grammy Awards to accept the Lifetime Achievement Award and pass on some wisdom for generations of musicians. The music legend received a standing ovation but instructed the crowd to sit down as she delivered her speech.<\/p>\n\n\t\u201cI knew what I wanted to be when I was five years old, and I was famous at 19, and had a top rated show in my twenties, actually,\u201d Cher said. \u201cBut it didn\u2019t occur to me how rough my career was going to be and my life was going to be. And I\u2019m not saying, \u2018Oh, poor me,\u2019 but whatever. I was either a loser or winning an Oscar. I\u2019m sure a lot of you in the audience know what I\u2019m talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tShe added: \u201cIn the early Eighties it got so bad that I had to go to Las Vegas. It was called the \u2018elephant\u2019s graveyard\u2019 in those days. Then I got dropped by my label. Another label picked me up and I recorded a song called \u2018Believe.\u2019 I was the first artist to use autotune. We didn\u2019t call it that. There wasn\u2019t such a thing as auto-tune \u2014 it was a pitch machine. You guys are going to know what I\u2019m talking about, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tCher continued after the camera missed an opportunity to cut to Charli XCX, but continued with advice that could apply to any artist in the audience. \u201cThe thing I want to tell you, the only thing I wanted you to take away with you, and I\u2019ve been in this business,\u201d she said. \u201cNever give up on your dream, no matter what happens. Live it, be it, and if it\u2019s not happening now, it will happen soon. So that\u2019s all I have to say. Thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n
\n\tCher briefly exited the stage and seemed somewhat thrown by the extra responsibility of presenting Kendrick Lamar and SZA with the award for Record of the Year for their collaboration \u201cLuther.\u201d In announcing the winner, which the 79-year-old initially mistook for Luther Vandross (an inspiration for the song), Cher quickly corrected herself and could be seen apologizing to the song\u2019s producers Jack Antonoff and Sounwave. Now a two-time Grammy winner herself, the last time Cher took the trophy home was in 2000 for \u201cBelieve,\u201d which won Best Dance Recording and was also nominated for Record of the Year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 79-year-old fumbled in announcing the winner for Record of the Year, but Kendrick Lamar took it in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316334,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[268],"tags":[434,27912,18,117,62287,19,17],"class_list":["post-316333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-cher","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-grammys-2026","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116001067666479678","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}