The atmosphere at the Forge Warehouse in Sheffield was anything but ordinary. Under muted blue lights and glowing white LED ropes, Jeremiah Abiola stood before a smiling crowd, his hands moving in time with the music before he exchanged their enthusiasm with a broad smile of his own.
Dressed in blue jeans, a matching denim top and a white turtleneck sweatshirt, Abiola took command of the room with a warm, dulcet voice as the Groove Chorus stood behind him. What followed was a performance that occupied an unusual space between a concert, a club night and a communal singalong.
The Groove Chorus concert is built around the revival of familiar songs—music that has lived in the public imagination long enough to trigger memories almost instantly. On this occasion, the group turned its attention to Cher’s 1998 hit, “Strong Enough”, a song about emotional resilience, self-respect and the difficult decision to walk away from a relationship that has become unbearable.
The choice seemed particularly suited to the evening. The warehouse, with its restrained lighting and intimate atmosphere, provided a romantic backdrop, while the audience supplied the energy of a dance floor.
As the Groove Chorus delivered the chorus, Abiola allowed the ensemble to carry the song before returning for the second verse. The lyrics address a partner who “feels misunderstood”, but whose behaviour has become increasingly difficult to tolerate. The narrator, having spent years hoping for change, has reached a breaking point.
“On being used, I could write the book,” Abiola sings, his voice almost choking with emotion. “But you don’t wanna hear about it / ‘Cause I’ve been losing sleep.”
The lines capture the exhaustion at the centre of the song: the frustration of being hurt repeatedly while the person responsible refuses to acknowledge the damage.
Originally performed by American singer Cher, “Strong Enough” appeared on her 1998 studio album Believe. The album, Cher’s 22nd studio release, became a major commercial success and helped cement her late-1990s pop revival. The song itself became one of the era’s defining dance-pop anthems, driven by electronic production, prominent synthesizers and Cher’s unmistakable vocal presence.
Abiola’s version remains close to that familiar musical blueprint.
Rising synthesizers and carefully placed horn blasts provide the instrumental foundation, while the Groove Chorus supplies soaring vocals that enlarge the song beyond a straightforward solo performance. The result is a rendition that recalls the dance-pop sound of the late 1990s while retaining the communal quality that has become central to Groove Chorus performances.
The audience responds enthusiastically.
As the performance progresses, people sing along at full volume, dance vigorously and wave their hands above their heads. Some scream in approval. The reaction suggests that the song has retained considerable emotional currency decades after its original release.
For many in the room, the performance appears to function as more than a live cover. It is a trip into memory.
The age profile of the audience makes it easy to imagine that Abiola’s performance is reconnecting listeners with a period of their lives when the song was part of the soundtrack. The enthusiasm may therefore be partly about the performer, but it is also likely tied to the memories attached to Cher’s original.
That nostalgia, however, presents an interesting challenge for Abiola.
By beginning with the second verse rather than the first, the performance loses some of the narrative progression embedded in the original. Instead of gradually introducing the emotional circumstances that have brought the narrator to a point of defiance, listeners are placed almost immediately inside the resentment.
The decision gives the performance momentum, but it also removes some of the story’s emotional build-up. The audience receives the conclusion before fully experiencing the journey that leads to it.
There is another limitation. Apart from changing the narrator from a woman to a man, Abiola offers little new interpretation of a song that has traditionally been associated with a female perspective. He performs the familiar melody largely as written, relying on vocal delivery rather than a substantially altered arrangement, phrasing or musical conception to distinguish his version.
That approach has an obvious advantage: familiarity. Audiences know the song, know its rhythm and know where the emotional peaks should arrive. Abiola does not ask them to relearn it.
But familiarity can also become a constraint.
The performance is technically assured and faithful to the original, yet it rarely pushes the song into unfamiliar territory. Even Abiola’s voice, which becomes the primary vehicle for creating individuality, briefly falters when he reaches for a higher note. The crack interrupts an emotional spell that had been building and reminds the audience that the performance is, after all, a live reinterpretation of a song with an exceptionally recognisable original.
Still, the reaction from the crowd is difficult to dismiss.
Abiola succeeds in creating a moment of collective excitement, with the Groove Chorus adding scale and energy to a song already designed for communal movement. His rendition gives the audience something they clearly recognise and enjoy, even if it does not radically reshape the original.
The question, then, is how much of that response belongs to Abiola and how much belongs to Cher’s enduring song.
There is no easy answer.
Abiola’s performance demonstrates that “Strong Enough” still possesses the ability to move an audience, decades after its release. But it also illustrates the difficulty of covering a song whose identity is so deeply embedded in the voice, production and cultural memory of its original performer.
At the Forge Warehouse, nostalgia may have opened the door. Abiola’s voice and the Groove Chorus kept the audience inside.
What remains less certain is whether the performance gave listeners a new reason to remember the song—or simply reminded them why they loved it in the first place.