Artist: Turner, Tina
Label: Capitol Records
Release: 2008
Tina Turner is returning to concert stages this year, and for her big comeback inside the walls of our living rooms, the lady has put together a collection of hits with the plain title Tina!. Judging by the hastily assembled tracklist, which randomly dresses up the singer’s latest “best of the best” medley, she clearly doesn’t want to stick her neck out on the music scene.
Content-wise, Tina! is a pretty half-baked piece of work for such an otherwise more-than-thrilling musical journey. Something more boldly chronological would surely have been more appealing, something that could at least roughly sketch the evolutionary currents of Tina’s career, from the shy Nut Bush girl Anne Mae Bullock to the undisputed pop-rock queen of the ’80s. Steamy Windows, Better Be Good To Me, Private Dancer and the rest of their iron-clad kin will no doubt put a smile on the average listener’s face in no time. That poor soul, though, might have a harder time wading through the older, more r & b-oriented material, whose ecstatic rawness keeps cutting, unannounced, through a thick layer of pop polished down to the last detail. Standing out here are Nutbush City Limits and Proud Mary, always welcome in other circumstances, but sadly both are parked right after the otherwise mighty showcase of live energy that is Let’s Stay Together and Addicted To Love, so they don’t really come into their own. What’s more, they nearly knock things off balance.
The most welcome additions to this latest retrospective flyover are definitely Townshend’s gem The Acid Queen and Phil Spector’s orchestrally armed masterpiece going by the name of River Deep – Mountain High. With the latter, way back in 1966, Tina first demonstrated the power and reach of her own musical identity, free from Ike Turner’s influence, which only really blasted across radio waves around the world years later. The legendary “wall of sound” version of the song is rarely found on the singer’s compilations. Much later, through the ’80s, Tina’s sound boldly sailed through all sorts of radical transformations. The drastic stylistic changes of the by-then thoroughly mature “post Ike” era are plainly visible in the now-evergreen We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome).
At the end there’s some room for new stuff too, but it only briefly sketches the curves of Tina Turner’s musical profile for the new millennium. I’m Ready and It Would Be A Crime are more than decent pop tunes, but it’s a bit sad that Tina just couldn’t escape modern production tricks, which certainly can’t do her astonishing vocal arsenal proper justice. Caution is the mother of wisdom, after all! Still, the most important fact is that Tina’s voice, after all these years, still sounds tip-top, and that’s ultimately what saves this obviously hastily launched compilation, too.
Production
Tina Turner & Roger Davies
Track List
1. Steamy Windows
2. River Deep Mountain High
3. Better Be Good To Me
4. The Acid Queen
5. What You Get Is What You See
6. What’s Love Got To Do With It
7. Whatever You Want
8. We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)
9. I Don’t Wanna Fight
10. Let’s Stay Together
11. I Can’t Stand The Rain
12. Goldeneye
13. Whatever You Need
14. The Best
15. Proud Mary
16. Nutbush City Limits
17. It Would Be A Crime
18. I’m Ready
Album length: 1h 16.33
