The late, great Tina Turner was able to create a persona of pop\u2019s ultimate survivor, mainly due to the publication of her 1984 memoir I, Tina<\/i> and the 1993 film What\u2019s Love Got To Do With It<\/i>, which explored some of the adversity the legend faced in her life, including surviving a violent marriage with Ike Turner, the man many credit for her initial success. After they split in 1976, Turner had to rebuild her career, recording music while doing the cabaret circuit and appearing on cheesy variety shows.<\/p>\n
The diligent work paid off when, in 1982, she joined synth-pop outfit B.E.F. to record a cover of the Temptations\u2019 \u201cBall Of Confusion (That\u2019s What The World Is Today)\u201d and Al Green\u2019s \u201cLet\u2019s Stay Together,\u201d which brought her back to the charts, as far as the top 10 in the U.K. and top 40 in the U.S. It wasn\u2019t until her comeback album Private Dancer, <\/i> in 1984 that she cemented her solo superstardom. In the decade between Private Dancer<\/i> and Brian Gibson\u2019s 1993 biopic, the rock diva became one of the most iconic performers of the 1980s and early 1990s, with a series of hit albums and chart-topping singles and arena tours.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s Love Got To Do With It<\/i> was a popular hit, selling over a million copies and giving the singer another hit with \u201cI Don\u2019t Want to Fight\u201d (co-written by fellow \u201960s songbird Lulu). It\u2019s an odd album, a mixture of new songs and re-recordings of some of her previous material, to accompany the film\u2019s rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-superstardom narrative. As played by Angela Bassett, Tina Turner was an inspirational figure who faced crushing abuse and emerged triumphant\u2014so a lot of the music is pitched to that inspirational theme. What\u2019s Love Got To Do With It<\/i> doesn\u2019t work as a stand-alone album\u2014the many compilations out there do a better job of anthologizing Turner\u2019s incredible catalogue\u2014but it\u2019s a better-than-average release. So, it\u2019s a bit surprising that it\u2019s getting a 30th anniversary re-release; a generous five-disc release that includes a treasure trove of material that augments what was a stop-gap between her studio album releases.<\/p>\n
The soundtrack in its entirety is here, and it\u2019s fine. The new material is solid \u201990s-era Tina Turner. Some Turner enthusiasts will suggest that her superstar solo work, while successful, wasn\u2019t artistically as innovative or exciting as the rock-soul she sang with Ike in the 1960s. After the success of Private Dancer<\/i>, Turner created a musical sound of her own\u2014and yes, it\u2019s emotional and sometimes sentimental. Her solo work in the \u201980s and \u201990s often featured synth-heavy pop ballads that were very tasteful, bringing out an interesting contrast between Turner\u2019s whiskey-stained growl and the beautiful, gleaming production. The album\u2019s hit single is precisely the kind of record that Turner would be identified with during this late-career era: exquisite, elegant, with vaguely inspirational lyrics that are general enough to work as a love song but also allude to her troubled past. The revisits of her older material are good\u2014her voice hadn\u2019t aged much in the 20 years or so\u2014but the re-recordings feel superfluous, and suffer from the overly-clean \u201990s production. <\/p>\n
The draw of his re-release is the glut of extra tracks, which include remixes and live material. Depending on how much one seeks remixes, it\u2019s great to hear some alternate versions of the album\u2019s singles. The 7\u201d edit of Turner\u2019s cover of Trampp\u2019s \u201cDisco Inferno\u201d (which scored Turner\u2019s \u201970s career purgatory in the film) is a fun house-pop reimagining; there are also several versions of \u201cI Don\u2019t Want To Fight,\u201d including a mid-tempo R&B version dubbed the Urban Mix that would sound at home on early \u201990s urban-pop radio; other remixes of the singles don\u2019t alter the sound of the single significantly; the Jerry Moran Dance Mix is solid, low-key dance-pop that sounds like something Lisa Stansfield would have recorded during this time. The remix portion of this album is good, though it would have been great if other D.J.s were commissioned to produce material as Turner\u2019s relationship to her queer and club audiences was legendary, and it would have been great to hear more dance material on the release. The remixes are fine, but nothing stands out. <\/p>\n
The biggest coup of this release is the live material. Two discs are devoted to Turner’s concert work, recorded at the Blockbuster Pavilion in San Bernardino, California, in September of 1993, during her What\u2019s Love?<\/i> Tour in support of the soundtrack album. A recording of her live work doesn\u2019t capture the full power of her stage presence, but it\u2019s still worth listening to her masterful performances of her music, which often gets a harder reworking from the more antiseptic studio versions. Her singing is far less mannered, and she seems to be enlivened by the audience, so even a so-so song like \u201cSteamy Windows\u201d becomes an urgent, strutting rocker live. The live album works as a greatest hits compilation, and it\u2019s pretty awesome to hear the breadth of this woman\u2019s incredible work. <\/p>\n
The quality varies, of course. Her explosive performance of the self-penned \u201cNutbush City Limits\u201d is a marvel. But she also has to give her audience what they want, so included are some of her hits which haven\u2019t aged as well, particularly the hollow \u201cTypical Male.\u201d Also, she introduces material from the film, and though the songs are good, they pale in comparison even to the \u201980s material.<\/p>\n
None of the material on What\u2019s Love Got To Do With It<\/i> is essential, and casual fans won\u2019t necessarily be drawn to this album. It\u2019s more for completists. For a better overview of her work, folks should check out 2004\u2019s All The Best<\/i>, one of the few releases that condenses her work from the 1960s to the 2000s (just after she retired). What\u2019s Love Got to Do with It<\/i> feels a bit unnecessary, especially in light of the far more exciting work that she put out before and after, but still, it\u2019s Tina Turner, so there\u2019s going to be some fantastic music, even if it\u2019s not simply her best. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":35046,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7487],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-46923","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-tina-turner","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46923"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46923"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}