narrowcast: Deep Album Cuts Vol. 227: Tina Turner

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 227: Tina Turner

When Stevie Nicks became the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice a couple years ago, I speculated on who could repeat that feat, and the two most likely names I came up with were Diana Ross (already in with The Supremes but not as a solo artist) and Tina Turner (already in with Ike & Tina Turner but not as a solo artist). And this year Turner has a shot of making that happen as one of the 2021 Hall of Fame nominees, along with Jay-Z, Foo Fighters, Mary J. Blige, LL Cool J, Todd Rundgren, The Go-Go's, Rage Against The Machine, and New York Dolls, among others. And she's the subject of a new documentary, Tina, that will air on HBO this Friday.

I thought about whether to do one playlist including Tina's solo work as well as the Ike & Tina Turner records. But since both are Hall of Fame-worthy catalogs, I'm going to give each its own playlist, and the Ike & Tina group playlist will follow tomorrow.

Tina Turner deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. I'm Movin' On
2. He Belongs To Me

3. Bootsy Whitelaw

4. Backstabbers

5. I Might Have Been Queen

6. Steel Claw

7. 1984

8. Overnight Sensation

9. Till The Right Man Comes Along

10. I'll Be Thunder

11. Ask Me How I Feel

12. Falling Like Rain

13. Not Enough Romance

14. Stay Awhile

15. Confidential

16. All Kinds Of People

17. Unfinished Sympathy

18. I Will Be There

Tracks 1 and 2 from Tina Turns The Country On! (1974)

Track 3 from Acid Queen (1975)

Track 4 from Love Explosion (1979)

Tracks 5, 6 and 7 from Private Dancer (1984)

Tracks 8, 9 and 10 from Break Every Rule (1986)

Tracks 11, 12 and 13 from Foreign Affair (1989)

Track 14 from What's Love Got To Do With It (1993)

Tracks 15, 16 and 17 from Wildest Dreams (1996)

Track 18 from Twenty Four Seven (1999)

I was pretty disappointed to find that Tina Turner's first 4 solo albums from the '70s are all missing from streaming services and out of print. I was able to include a handful of tracks from three of them that have turned up on quick cash-in Ike & Tina compilations, but there's nothing at all from 1978's Rough that I could find. Obviously this era wasn't as successful as her work with Ike, and not nearly as successful as her '80s solo work, but there's some good music in there and I really wish those records were commercially available in full. "He Belongs To Me" is a gender-swapped cover of Bob Dylan's "She Belongs To Me," and of course "Backstabbers" is the O'Jays classic.

Obviously Private Dancer is by far Turner's biggest album, and it's one of those '80s blockbusters that only had 3 songs that weren't released as singles, including a cover of David Bowie's "1984" from Diamond Dogs. One of them, "I Might Have Been Queen," was later featured on the What's Love Got To Do With It soundtrack alongside some of her biggest hits and a few new songs.

The writing team behind "What's Love Got To Do With It," Terry Britten and Graham Lyle, continued writing more songs for Turner, including "Till The Right Man Comes Along" and "Stay Awhile." I've never been a fan of Private Dancer's Mark Knopfler-penned title track, but the song he wrote for Turner's next album, "Overnight Sensation," is a great song that really sums up her career well. The Bee Gees wrote 1999's "I Will Be There" for Turner, and that's another song so well tailored to her life, I'm surprised neither of those were singles.

1996's Wildest Dreams had a pretty interesting mix of songs -- the Pet Shop Boys wrote "Confidential," Sheryl Crow wrote "All Kinds of People," and Turner covered Massive Attack's "Unfinished Sympathy." One of the singles featured Barry White on the U.S. version of the album and Antonio Banderas on the European edition, which is just weird. But I think that kind of speaks to how big and how respected Tina Turner is, at one point just about everybody across the spectrum of rock and soul and beyond was happy to work with her or write a song for her.