Cher’s feud with Madonna goes far back to the 1990s. The so-called Goddess of Pop, who also happens to be the Queen of Shade, first made her disdain towards the singer public during an interview with Steve Kmetko in 1991. “There’s something about her that I don’t like. She’s mean, and I don’t like that… It seems to me that she’s got so much that she doesn’t have to act the way that she acts, like a spoiled brat all the time,” Cher said, per Entertainment Tonight. Cher was friends with Sean Penn during his marriage to Madonna and had hosted the couple at her home from time to time. “It seems to me that when you’ve reached the kind of acclaim that she’s reached, and can do whatever you want to do, you should be a little more magnanimous and be a little less of a c**t.”
The “Believe” singer doubled down on this statement in the same year when she spoke with the late Sir Terry Wogan in an interview with the BBC. “She’s unbelievably creative,” Cher said. “Because in my day, I was pretty good at doing the same thing that she’s doing, but she does it so much better. She’s unbelievably creative because she’s not unbelievably talented, she’s not beautiful, but she’s kind of — she’s rude.”