Sonny & Cher were an American pop and entertainment duo in the 1960s and 1970s, made up of spouses Sonny Bono and Cher. The couple started their career in the mid-1960s as R&B backing singers for record producer Phil Spector.

The pair first achieved fame with two hit songs in 1965, "Baby Don't Go" and "I Got You Babe". Signing with Atco/Atlantic Records, they released three studio albums in the late 1960s, as well as the soundtrack recordings for two unsuccessful movies, Good Times and Chastity, with Cher contributing vocals to one cut, "Chastity's Song (Band of Thieves)". In 1972, after three years of silence, the couple returned to the studio and released two other albums under the MCA/Kapp Records label.

In the 1970s, they also positioned themselves as media personalities with two top-ten TV shows in the US, The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour and The Sonny & Cher Show. The couple's career as a duo ended in 1975 following their divorce. In the decade they spent together, Sonny and Cher were nominated for two Grammy Awards and sold over 40 million records worldwide. Rolling Stone ranked them No. 18 on its list of the 20 Greatest Duos of All Time.

Performing under her first name, Cher went on to a highly successful career as a solo singer and actress, while Sonny Bono was eventually elected to Congress as a Republican U.S. Representative from California. The two performers were inducted to the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1998, following Sonny's death in a skiing accident.

Cheryl Sarkisian first met Salvatore Bono in a Los Angeles coffee shop in November 1962, when she was sixteen. Eleven years her senior, Bono was working for record producer Phil Spector at Gold Star Studios in Hollywood. The two became best friends, eventual lovers, and were supposedly married in 1964, but both Cher and Bono say in their autobiographies that it was not an official marriage. They were legally wed after their only child, Chastity (later Chaz), was born. Through Bono, Cher started as a session singer, and sang backup on several of Spector's classic recordings, including "Be My Baby" by the Ronettes, "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" by The Righteous Brothers and Darlene Love's "A Fine, Fine Boy". In Darlene Love's recording, the listener can clearly hear Cher and Sonny close to the mic (along with Love, who recorded her own backing vocals).

With Bono continuing to write, arrange and produce the songs, the couple's first incarnation was as the duo "Caesar and Cleo". They released some singles in 1964, including "The Letter", with Vault Records, and "The Letter", "Do You Wanna Dance" and "Love Is Strange", with Reprise Records.

In September 1964, they released "Baby Don't Go" under the name of Sonny & Cher, which became their first regional hit. The song was later included on the 1965 Reprise compilation Baby Don't Go – Sonny & Cher and Friends, which also included songs from artists such as Bill Medley, The Lettermen and The Blendells.^{[citation needed]}

The duo released their first album Look at Us in the summer of 1965. The album contained the number one single "I Got You Babe". Look at Us peaked at number two on the Billboard chart for eight weeks in the later part of 1965.