"Dark Lady" is an pop rock song recorded by American singer
actress Cher from eleventh studio album,
Dark Lady. Produced by Snuff Garrett, it was released as
the album's first single in early 1974. The song became Cher's
third solo U.S. number one hit on March 23, 1974 and her last
until "Believe" a quarter-century later.
"Dark Lady" was written by The Ventures keyboard player
Johnny Durrill. He recalled: "I spent a week in his (Snuff
Garrett's) office playing him songs, one of which Cher
recorded. Later, when I was on tour in Japan with the Ventures,
I was writing an interesting song. I telegraphed the unfinished
lyrics to Garrett. He said to 'make sure the bitch kills him.'
Hence, in the song both the lover and fortune teller were
killed."
The "Dark Lady" of the song's title is a fortune teller. The
narrator of the song learns that her lover has been unfaithful
to her with, as the fortune teller says, "someone else who is
very close to you." The narrator returns home in a state of
shock and then realizes that she had once smelled, in her own
room, the perfume the fortune teller had been wearing. She
races back to the fortune teller's place with a gun and catches
her lover and the fortune teller "laughing and kissing", and
shoots them both to death in a fit of rage.
In 1974, "Dark Lady" topped the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 for
one week, becoming Cher's third solo #1 hit. The song was also
a #1 hit in Canada and Sweden, a top ten hit in Norway and a
top twenty hit in the Netherlands. Like
Half-Breed, the song struggled in Germany and the UK,
though it managed to reach top forty status in the UK.
There are two version of the video. The first version of the
video is a live performance that was aired in the third season
of The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour in 1973. In this
performance Cher was dressed in all black and was wearing a
black veil on her head. The second video of the song is a
cartoon. This second video follows the whole story of the
song.
In 2002, a special remix medley was created by Dan-O-Rama
for a video montage that was used in Cher's Living Proof: The
Farewell Tour. The medley contains videos of "All I Really Want
to Do", "Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves", "Half-Breed" and "Dark
Lady". Unlike the other videos "Dark Lady" was unique because
both, the live and the cartoon videos had been mixed.
In 1999, Cher performed this song throughout her Do You
Believe? Tour, for the first time in twenty-five years. In
2002, she performed the song 325 times in her Living Proof: The
Farewell Tour.
Cher performed the song on the following concert tours:
In 1974, Finnish singer Lea Laven covered this song under
the title "Tumma Nainen", and the song proved successful in
Finland.