Private Dancer

Tina Turner

1984: Capitol CDP 7 46041 2


  1. I Might Have Been Queen
  2. What’s Love Got to Do with It
  3. Show Some Respect
  4. I Can’t Stand the Rain
  5. Private Dancer
  6. Let’s Stay Together
  7. Better Be Good to Me
  8. Steel Claw
  9. Help
  10. 1984

With an opening track that jumps out of the gates and right off the field and out of the racetrack into open countryside, this is an album that commands your respect and often earns it.

Apart from a general impression of Turner’s “Ike & Tina” days’ style, this was my real introduction to Tina Turner’s music (leaving aside her general presence in the news), and I have no regrets about that: she’s so intense, so vital, so strong, and (most importantly) so very much in jet-fueled motion here that I still bow a bit toward the speakers when I play this album. Whatever she was before this, whatever she was afterward, well, that’s “afterward” when such a coup has reset all the settings so thoroughly.

And yet “I Might Have Been Queen” (which I would swear was autobiographical but apparently isn’t) establishes Turner’s persona on this album as a phoenix, implying heavily that she’s some kind of post mortem incarnation following on a substantial reign and simultaneously bursting into new flame; I don’t know if she sustained it, but the bursting flame sure impressed me as being hotter and brighter than anything she’d done before.

The tracklist for the CD isn’t that of the original LP order: besides the addition of the completely discardable cover of “Help,” the title track has been shifted here from its original album-closing position to follow “I Can’t Stand the Rain,” midway through the set, and from there on things are arranged quite differently and result in something far removed from the impressions of the LP. Here’s the original order:

  1. I Might Have Been Queen
  2. What’s Love Got To Do With it
  3. Show Some Respect
  4. I Can’t Stand the Rain
  5. Better Be Good To Me
     
  6. Let’s Stay Together
  7. 1984
  8. Steel Claw
  9. Private Dancer

So while the CD ends with “1984” (which was perhaps intended to be ominous but to me doesn’t quite convince of anything in particular), the LP closed with the title track and thus provided a closure which was practically the antithesis of the guns-blazing opening track’s empowerment. And perhaps it’s just that I’ve had this tracklist’s order in my mind’s ear for so long, but I think the transition from “I Can’t Stand the Rain” to “Better Be Good To Me” is far stronger than it is going into “Private Dancer.” But hey, I’m not privy to the decisions that determine these things…although I’d like to know if Turner herself agreed with the reworking of the storyline.

But let’s move on to “Better Be Good To Me,” while I’m in its vicinity: it’s a fine merging of her more manic-energy past styles and this cooler/tighter format, the song’s instrumental track plugging along gamely regardless of what vocal is laid on top of it…it’s just that her vocal is FINE and enlivens and humanizes this track immeasurably. (As does the guitar work, actually—it’s flirtatious and graceful as a backup trio.) And mercy does this woman know how to deliver a STRUT of a number…it compares nicely with Eurythmics’s “Would I Lie to You?” come to think of it, although this one has more of a storyline/development curve.

“Let’s Stay Together” has never really moved me, as I can say of a few other tracks, but “I Can’t Stand the Rain” was my introduction to the song and remains cherished. “Steel Claw” seems to be a kind of frantic rock ballad of a type that doesn’t really register with me, but I appreciate the speed and concision she imbues it with.

The title track caught my attention more than I thought it would, even back in ’84 when I wasn’t particularly attuned to its nuances, and that’s part of the reason I bridle at its being buried mid-album in the CD release. Her excellent delivery of the jaded tone goes almost without saying…I was surprised that Turner could give such a convincingly worn characterization and still make the song sweep along on its course dispassionately.

Really, it’s a lovely album, regardless of the order of its songs; but if it had started with any other track I doubt it would have been so compelling.


HOME   •   MUSIC