By the time Cher released “If I Could Turn Back Time” in 1989, she had already lived several careers in one lifetime. She had been a folk-pop star with Sonny Bono, a television personality, a movie actress, a disco singer, and a successful solo artist. But somehow, at 43 years old, Cher was about to have one of the biggest hits of her career.

Released on her album Heart of Stone, “If I Could Turn Back Time” became one of Cher’s signature songs and one of the most memorable power ballads of the late 1980s.

The song was written by Diane Warren, who had become one of the era’s most successful songwriters. Warren specialized in enormous emotional pop songs, and “If I Could Turn Back Time” fit perfectly into that tradition. Its subject was simple: regret over a damaged relationship and the desperate wish to go back and fix what went wrong.

Cher was an ideal singer for it.

Her voice had always possessed a distinctive combination of strength and vulnerability. She didn’t need to oversell the emotion. The slightly husky quality of her voice made the song sound like it was coming from someone who had actually lived through the regrets she was singing about.

The production, however, made it unmistakably 1989.

Big drums, synthesizers, layered backing vocals, dramatic guitar, and an increasingly enormous arrangement transformed the song from a relatively straightforward ballad into a full-scale pop-rock production. Everything builds toward the chorus, where Cher’s vocal becomes the emotional center of the recording.

Then came the music video.

And that is where “If I Could Turn Back Time” became permanently attached to 1980s pop culture.

The video was filmed aboard the USS Missouri and featured Cher performing for sailors. She wore a black, highly revealing outfit that became almost as famous as the song itself. The video generated controversy and received restrictions on some television outlets, but it also made Cher impossible to ignore.

The outfit became an enduring piece of pop-culture history, while the video itself became one of the defining visual moments of late-1980s MTV.

Ironically, all the attention surrounding the video could have overshadowed the song.

It didn’t.

“If I Could Turn Back Time” became a major international hit, reaching the top 10 in several countries and becoming one of Cher’s most recognizable recordings. In the United States, it reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100.

The song also demonstrated something remarkable about Cher’s career: she wasn’t simply surviving into a new decade. She was successfully adapting to it.

The 1980s had been full of musical reinvention. Artists who had been successful in earlier decades had to figure out how to compete in a world dominated by MTV, synthesizers, enormous productions, and increasingly image-conscious pop.

Cher understood the assignment.

By the end of the decade, she had transformed herself once again.

What makes “If I Could Turn Back Time” endure isn’t simply its gigantic chorus or unforgettable music video. It’s the emotion at the heart of the song. Regret is universal. Everyone has something they wish they could redo, something they wish they had said differently, or some moment they wish they could revisit.

Cher takes that very familiar feeling and turns it into a huge piece of late-1980s pop.

And the fact that she was already a veteran performer when the song became a hit makes the achievement even more impressive.

“If I Could Turn Back Time” wasn’t the beginning of Cher’s career.

It was another reinvention.

She had already been famous for decades, but in 1989 she managed to become something else again: an MTV-era pop superstar with one of the decade’s most recognizable songs and videos.

The song may be about wanting to reverse the past.

Cher, however, was doing the opposite.

She was moving forward—and proving that she wasn’t anywhere near finished yet.