Cher wrote the album in 1994 while attending a semiannual songwriters' workshop hosted by entertainment executive Miles Copeland III in his castle in France.

Controversy arose when the lyrics of the song "Sisters of Mercy", which refers to nuns as "daughters of Hell" and "masters of pain", flustered religious groups.

In 1994, Cher attended a semiannual songwriters' workshop hosted by entertainment executive Miles Copeland III in his castle in France.

After the workshop, Cher enlisted members of David Letterman's CBS Orchestra and recorded an album within a week in New York, doing her 10 songs plus two others.

[1] However, after presenting them to the head of her company, Rob Dickens of Warner Music UK, he refused to release the material, as he felt it was "nice, but not commercial" enough.

[2] The second song, "Sisters of Mercy", was written inspired by the time Cher lived in a Catholic orphanage surrounded by nuns, and its lyrics refer to them as "daughters of hell", "masters of pain" and "a cruel and heartless mob".

Fourth track "Born With the Hunger" is one of the two songs not composed by Cher; it was written instead by her friend Shirley Eikhard around the time of the album's recording sessions, and features slide guitar sounds.

AllMusic's Jose F. Promis commented that the songs "prove effective, and the album is a must for the singer's legions of fans", despite being "tad muddled", and noting its "1970s singer/songwriter feel" and its "somewhat country and twangy, other times somewhat bluesy, but always completely different from her previous effort Believe" sound.

[9] David Browne from Entertainment Weekly magazine rated the album as B−, saying "whether telling us she's 'always pushed it to the limit', spewing the F-word, or castigating our 'heartless, godless culture' in her Kurt Cobain tribute(!