Tag: tina turner

Ranked as being among the five hundred greatest songs of all time by Rolling Stone, as well as being a “Song of the Century” in the RIAA’s book, “What’s Love Got To Do With It” took the world by storm in 1984. As part of what was deemed “one of the greatest comebacks in music history,” Turner reanimated in a big way after the Ike & Tina Turner Revue broke up in 1976. Having spent decades under the Svengali-like control of her husband, independence had never been worn so well. After all, this was a woman who was made entirely in Ike’s image, right down to molding her stage persona (specifically, after Sheena, Queen of the Jungle and Nyoka the Jungle Girl) and trademarking the name Tina Turner so he could replace her with another singer going by the same moniker if she ever left.

Her first single as Tina Turner was, appropriately, “A Fool in Love,” described by Kurt Loder as “the Blackest record to ever creep into the white pop charts since Ray Charles’s gospel-styled ‘What’d I Say.’” Released in 1960, it was completely on-brand for a woman to say things like, “And listen, without the man, I don’t wanna live/You think I’m lyin’ but I’m telling you like it is/He’s got my nose open and that’s no lie/And I, I’m gonna keep him satisfied.” And no, “he’s got my nose open” wasn’t a cocaine reference, but rather, one to being like a dog sniffing out another in heat. As the early 60s wore on, other tellingly-named singles from Ike and Tina included “I Idolize You” and “Poor Fool.”

Eventually catching the eye of Phil Spector in 1965, the Wall of Sound producer worked out a deal where he would have creative control over the sessions he produced with Turner, resulting in what he viewed as his greatest work, “River Deep – Mountain High.” To Spector’s dismay, the single only charted favorably in Britain. And yet, were it not for that favorable charting, Ike and Tina probably wouldn’t have been asked to tour with the Rolling Stones. It was during the Stones’ U.S. leg of the tour that the Ike and Tina Turner Revue finally started to get more acknowledgement from American audiences. By the 70s, the duo was among the most successful R&B acts before Tina couldn’t endure Ike’s cocaine addiction and irascible temper any longer. She jumped ship from her marriage of horrors in 1976, with the divorce finalized in 1978.

Left essentially penniless despite all the work she had done for two decades, Turner commenced the 80s continuing to tour so that she could pay off debts (many incurred from cancelled Ike and Tina gigs as a result of their breakup). Written off as nothing more than a “nostalgia act,” Turner showed her record label, Capitol, that she was still a viable tour de force on the charts after releasing a cover of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” in 1983. Making it into the number twenty-six position on the Billboard Hot 100, Capitol decided Turner was worth greenlighting a new studio album for. Enter Private Dancer. An absolute game-changer for women in the music industry. At forty-four, Turner would become the “oldest” female solo artist to nab a number one hit (what would turn out to be her only number one single ever). Although technically the third single from the record, the previous two tracks were covers (including the aforementioned Al Green hit and The Beatles’ “Help!”). Indeed, a little-remembered fact about “What’s Love Got To Do With It” is that it’s something of a cover, too. Originally recorded by Eurovision sensation Bucks Fizz, the band removed it from inclusion on their record after hearing Turner’s recording. For there is no one who could have made the song so decidedly “her own” other than Tina.

Paired with a music video that features Tina sporting, let’s just say, “indelible” hair, the cautionary message of the song comes across in her intervening with the “young love” stylings of a couple dancing together on the street, warning them, “What’s love got to do/Got to do/With it?/Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?” And who should know the answer to that question better than Tina after her tenure with Ike? As she said, “It was my relationship with Ike that made me most unhappy [complete with a suicide attempt]. At first, I had really been in love with him. Look what he’d done for me. But he was totally unpredictable.” His ability to wield his status as her “savior” is likely what kept her around for so long, but, in the end, every woman has a breaking point. Especially with someone with the audacity to say, “Sure, I’ve slapped Tina. We had fights and there have been times when I punched her to the ground without thinking. But I never beat her” (this declared in Ike’s absurdly-titled 1999 autobiography, Takin’ Back My Name).

That Tina had only one other long-term “boo” after Ike (Erwin Bach) is perhaps indicative of her overall commitment to the warning sentiments of her biggest single. The fact that it appeared on an album called Private Dancer also plays up the transactional nature of love in the twentieth century (and beyond)—particularly as the Decade of Excess arrived. An emphasis on avoiding emotions getting involved for the sake of keeping one’s steeliness intact was not merely for the sake of staving off the ramifications of a broken heart, but also keeping one’s eyes on the financial prize. For, when love figures in, dividends can suffer (Turner also learned that much after losing most of her bag to Ike in the divorce settlement, as he was allowed to keep the rights to the publishing royalties for his compositions as well as hers).

In the 80s, there was no better time to disseminate such a message. Love complicates not only your personal life, but your banking life—indeed, can serve as a great hindrance to it. Unless you keep things nice and tidy. View “love” as nothing more than a way to satisfy physical urges and attempt to pretend that you’re not totally alone in the world just like everyone else. Thus, the lyrics to “Private Dancer” tie in quite nicely when Turner, from the perspective of a prostitute and/or stripper sings, “Well, the men come in these places/And the men are all the same/You don’t look at their faces/And you don’t ask their names/You don’t think of them as human/You don’t think of them at all/You keep your mind on the money/Keeping your eyes on the wall.” Performing seduction and sex rotely, in other words, was (and is) the name of the game for many women to secure their livelihood (this also being made apparent on City High’s 2001 hit “What Would You Do?”).

What’s more, the 80s saw the rise of the “businesswoman”—a “career-minded lady” who supposedly placed emphasis on her income over her family. Invoking the type of fear in men and women alike that would prompt the release of a movie such as 1987’s Baby Boom, wherein J. C. Wiatt (Diane Keaton) ultimately prioritizes her newly-inherited baby ahead of her high-powered career in Manhattan. Then there was 1988’s Working Girl, which isn’t content to have Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith, whose hairstyle rivals Tina Turner’s in the “What’s Love Got To Do With It” video) succeed in her own right without a little help from her romantic interest, Jack Trainer (Harrison Ford). The point being, with women becoming—gasp!—CEOs and other assorted corporate beacons, the notion of “love” seemed especially quaint as the decade passed, and women realized that they could engage in the same behaviors as men. That is to say, treating “love” transactionally. A one-night stand here, an affair there. None of it had to be such a “big deal” like it was in the 50s or some shit.

And maybe that’s why the adultery level started to ramp up in the 60s, as Mad Men would have us believe. And yet, articles like the one Monica Furlong wrote for a May 1968 issue of The Observer indicate that extramarital affairs seemed the best way to avert the staleness of legally recognized monogamy. After all, per Furlong, “People in love seem to capture some childish freshness of vision, to see, smell, touch, caress, kiss as if they never have before,” while marriage “is the gradual death of curiosity and uncertainty which make the early stages of a love affair so exciting.” Better yet, fleeting. Non-messy because there is a lack of genuine emotion involved. Just as Tina would advocate for.

Despite being from a “bygone generation” when she released “What’s Love Got To Do With It,” nothing had ever spoken so keenly to the then-current generation of youths (/yuppies) who had all but dissociated entirely from the idea that “storybook love” could ever be real—least of all without some sort of major heartbreak in the end. As Turner reminded, “It’s physical/Only logical/You must try to ignore that it means more than that.” Because, ultimately, it doesn’t. “Coupling” is, in this modern world, really only about finding someone financially stable to keep the vicious capitalist cycle going and propagate a new “middle class” over and over until this system goes kabluey (likely because the Earth did).

“I’ve been thinking ‘bout my own protection,” Turner declares, privatizing her emotions unless the highest bidder can afford to make her perform…like a private dancer.