Cher says she is finally “taking baby steps” toward recording her first new album in eight years!

We’ve been so deprived of any new Cher movies and recordings for so long that I am now officially beside myself that the icon has Burlesque coming out in theaters in November and is recording a new album!

It has been eight long years since the release of Living Proof, the follow-up album to Cher’s worldwide smash Believe. I’ve been buying Cher albums since Take Me Home in 1979 and am more than ready for something other than her latest greatest hits compilation.

The woman who had at least one number one single in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s talked about what she’s working on with Entertainment Weekly:  “I just got some of the songs and I’m just learning [them] so I’m kind of at that beginning stage where you’re taking baby steps.”

The diva is working with hitmaker Diane Warren who also wrote one of Cher’s two big Burlesque tunes, the big power ballad You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me.

Cher says fans shouldn’t expect the same dance music heard on her 1998 album, Believe: “It really won’t be Believe-ish,” she says. “It will be more…I don’t know how to say it. I can’t put a genre to it. It’s a little bit more real instruments, like guitars and stuff like that.”

Sounds good to me!