1984
Link to listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdbaDpB9_3w&list=PL7F4952EFF0012323
Back in the 80s, Tina's transformative story from the abused wife of Ike Turner to an independent powerhouse making it on her own was well known. The album Private Dancer was not just an album packed with big hits; it was her comeback album. She had always been a star too big to remain in the shadow of a blues soul man, especially a megalomaniac like Ike Turner.
Private Dancer seemed to the speak to the arc of her entire career, but especially from this perspective: safe, looking back, and reclaiming her rightful crown of "soul survivor." Rubert Hine and Terry Britten may have written the hits with her in mind, since Capitol records (not Tina) did hire everyone to make the album to capitalize on the sudden and unexpected success of her cover of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together." But it's the combination of Tina's back story - escaping from Ike with 36 cents to her name back in 1975, working as a cleaning lady to pay bills, having two solo records completely flop, and then rising out of the ten-year-old ashes of her abandoned career - and that equal-parts plaintive/yearning/threatening voice that packs every song with an emotional conviction that seems like Tina herself is conjuring the words, and is not just interpreting them.
The style of the album fits with other acts/albums from 1984, like Prince's Purple Rain: more anglo-centric than one might expect from a previously blues or soul-focused artist. The album WAS made in England by two white dudes ... and even Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits is due writing credit on the title song (where Tina sadly states her lonely case as a private escort willing to "do what you want me to do" while keeping her "mind on the money" and keeping her eyes "on the wall." However, Private Dancer echoes Tina's southern gospel musical roots in "Let's Stay Together" and the soulful rendition of the Beatles' "Help."
"Better Be Good" to me is a personal favorite, a track where Tina seems to be singing to the next Ike-wanna-be that she doesn't take anything at face value. And it's also a great to dance to while mimicking Tina's menacing tone. "What's Love Got to Do With It" won the grammy for Record of the Year, a great look at how attraction sometimes needs a protective, emotion-dismissive plan if a woman (or man) is to survive. And one last note: check out "Steel Claw," a case for Tina as the hardest rocking woman of the 80s.
In the mid-80s she rivaled Madonna at the top of the charts. It was a long, steep climb from her Nutbush City Limits, so when she sings "Show Some Respect," I have no problem giving it to her.
(Tina Turner is one of my top three favorite women artists of all time - Aretha Franklin and Annie Lennox are the other two.)
No comments:
Post a Comment