Sarcastically noting that answering questions is “my favorite thing to do,” Cher answered a number of from the press backstage on the 2024 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony on Saturday (Oct. 19).

After taking the Rock Hall to process throughout her speech for ready 35 years to induct her after she grew to become eligible, Cher acknowledges that, “I have a kind love hate relationship [with the Rock Hall], because I thought, ‘What do I have to f–king do , y’know, to be inducted into this place? What do you have to do to be a part of it?’”

Though tempted to inform David Geffen, who she mentioned wrote a letter to the Hall of Fame Foundation on her behalf, to “please take it back,” Cher mentioned that in the long run she was pleased with the way in which issues turned out. “I felt good. I can say that I’m happy that I’m in,” she says. “If I didn’t [think] it, I wouldn’t be here.”

Reflecting on a 60-year profession courting again to work together with her late ex-husband Sonny Bono and periods with Phil Spector’s Wrecking Crew, the singer mentioned that she struggles with ideas of legacy. “I [didn’t] have perspective, exactly — I just was busy living my life, so I wasn’t like thinking about it at all,” she says. “I was thinking about it from minute to minute, thing to thing. I thought of myself as a bumper car and when I hit a road I would just back up and turn in a different direction, because I wasn’t going to stop doing what I loved.”

And what about Sonny & Cher making it to the Rock Hall at some point? “I think that we deserve it, ” Cher tells Billboard. “Even if we weren’t exactly rock ‘n roll, we represented music. I know it’s not like … we were corny, but we were very avant garde for what was happening at the time, so, I don’t know. I didn’t expect to get in. I just thought, ‘They’re never gonna let you in, b–ch.’”

During her speech, Cher made positive to ship a message to all the ladies watching all over the world: “The one thing I have never done, is I never give up,” she defined. “And I am talking to the women, okay … we have been down and out, but we keep striving, and we keep going and we are somebody. We are special.”