"I'm just not a Cher fan," Cher likes to say , which is probably the only slightly disappointing thing about her. With her majestic voice and ever-daring outfits, she’s an enduring pop goddess and gay icon who’s managed to reinvent herself repeatedly over the decades without ever losing her quintessential Cher-ness. She’s also uncommonly funny and unfiltered for someone who’s been one-name-only famous for half a century, quipping a couple of years ago, “My mom once said, ‘You should marry yourself a rich man.’ I went, ‘Mom, I am a rich man!’”

Then, after brief dalliances with disco, Las Vegas, and Broadway, she reinvented herself in the 80s as a serious actress. She delivered an impressive performance opposite Meryl Streep in 1983’s Silkwood, earning an Oscar nomination, then won one for her performance in the charming 1987 romantic drama Moonstruck. The following year, she straddled a cannon in the “If I Could Turn Back Time” video, creating one of the decade’s most brazenly iconic images. Has any other Oscar-winning actor ever straddled a canon? Then again, what other Oscar-winning actor is remotely like Cher?

Nearly 55 years after her first hit—“I Got U Babe,” with then-husband Sonny Bono—Cher has lived the kind of life that no one could ever make up. Back in the 60s, she got her start working as a backing singer for legendary producer Phil Spector, contributing vocals to hits like The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby.” (Because her voice was so powerful, she was sometimes asked to stand back from the mike to avoid drowning out the other singers.) In the 60s, she and Bono became the family-friendly faces of the hippie movement, racking up hit singles and presenting TV variety shows that introduced the world to Cher’s flawless comic timing . In the 70s, she bounced back from their divorce—which Sonny warned would end her career—to become a solo star. Her TV show, Cher, produced unforgettable moments like this firecracker duet with Tina Turner .

It’s also worth checking out lesser-known 70s hits like “Train of Thought,” which begins with a train sound effect because of course it does, and “The Way of Love,” a gloriously maudlin cover of a French chanson. It’s been called “sexually ambiguous,” with one critic reading it as either a depiction of a woman expressing her love for another woman, or that of a woman saying goodbye to a gay man she has loved. That’s Cher for you: setting the gay agenda from the start.

Whether or not you enjoyed the tongue-in-cheek 90s cover she recorded with Beavis & Butt-Head , Sonny & Cher’s “I Got U Babe” remains one of the 60s’ best-loved songs. Their other big hit, “The Beat Goes On,” is nearly as iconic, but Cher’s solo career soon outshone her recordings with Sonny. She covered Bob Dylan’s “All I Really Want to Do” as her debut solo single in 1965, then scored a hat-trick of number-ones in the early 70s with songs that it’s impossible to imagine anyone else pulling off. “Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves” is an irresistible slab of pop melodrama, and “Dark Lady” gave Cher the first (but far from last) tasteless key change of her career.

Because Cher’s life is so extraordinary that it’s been turned into a Broadway musical , it’s easy to forget what a dazzlingly distinctive vocalist she actually is. So while Cher may not be a Cher fan, most people who love pop culture really, really are, and her back catalogue is a treasure trove of hits. It’s never the wrong time to Cher the love, so here’s where to start.

Cher continued cementing her gay icon status throughout the 90s, even dressing up as a kind of drag king Elvis for a 1995 British TV performance of “Walking in Memphis,” before scoring an unexpected enormo-hit with 1998’s “Believe.” Its innovative use of Auto-Tune would go on to inspire the likes of Kanye West and T-Pain. Since then, she’s never really stopped surprising us. She’s embarked on two tours since her supposed farewell tour of 2002 through 2005. She’s consistently one of the most gloriously unfiltered and emoji-loving people on Twitter , though she wasn’t too happy when President Trump unexpectedly endorsed one of her recent tweets. And her scene-stealing cameo in last year’s Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again led to a tremendously entertaining album of ABBA covers, Dancing Queen.

Playlist: “I Got U Babe” / “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” / “All I Really Want to Do” / “The Beat Goes On” / “Alfie” / “You Better Sit Down Kids” / “The Way of Love” / “Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves” / “The Way of Love” / “Dark Lady” / “Train of Thought”

So you want to get into: Disco Diva Cher?

Of course Cher went disco in the late 70s —she already had so many fabulous Bob Mackie outfits! Her only huge hit during this period was “Take Me Home,” a dance-floor glitterball that still sparkles hard four decades later, though “Wasn’t It Good” and “Hell on Wheels” —also produced by “Take Me Home”’s Bob Esty—shimmer infectiously, too. Though it’s not on Spotify, it’s also worth checking out Cher’s largely forgotten Giorgio Moroder collaboration “Bad Love,” which sounds pretty similar to Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff,” another Moroder production. And though it doesn’t fit chronologically, Cher’s post-“Believe” hit “Strong Enough,” a total disco throwback, rounds off this playlist perfectly.

Playlist: “Take Me Home” / “Hell on Wheels” / “Wasn’t It Good” / “Bad Love” / “Strong Enough”

So you want to get into: Soft Rock Cher?

In the late 80s, just as Cher was establishing herself as a genuinely credible actress, she also revived her music career—this time, by throwing herself into ultra-glossy soft rock. By this point, she was already a solid-gold gay icon who could have continued along the dance-pop route for another decade before becoming an actual club queen with "Believe." Still, Rock-Chick Cher actually made a strange kind of sense at the time: She looked great in a black leather jacket; her mighty voice wasn’t overshadowed by the cheesy metal riffs of 1989 deep cut "Emotional Fire"; and the sound that collaborators like Diane Warren concocted for her—camped-up Bon Jovi, essentially—appealed to your dad and queer uncle alike.