Tina Turner: 7 lovely songs

2- “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine” (1961)

In contrast to her terrible real-life marriage to Ike, Tina presents the most alluring picture of monogamy in this early R&B classic. However, it’s difficult to ignore the underlying uncertainty or perhaps a light threat in the way she sings, “If your love is half as true/As the love I offer you/I think it’s gonna work out fine.”

3- “River Deep, Mountain High” (1966)

After a few R&B singles in the early 1960s, the Ike and Tina Turner Revue’s recording career had stopped when Phil Spector first heard them in a Hollywood bar. Although he prevented Ike from attending the sessions, Spector had a song called “River Deep, Mountain High” that he was confident would be a hit. He wanted Tina to sing it. Later, Tina remarked, “I must have sung that 500,000 times.” “I was covered with perspiration. I had to remove my shirt and perform there while wearing only my bra. Even though “River Deep” ultimately fell just short of the Top 100, it remains one of her most outstanding performances.

4- “Funkier Than a Mosquita’s Tweeter” (1970)

The song “Mosquita,” which was written by Tina’s older sister Alline Bullock, is better known as a Nina Simone composition. Nina’s version, which uses the word “Mosquito,” was so popular that subsequent printings of the Ike & Tina version followed Nina’s spelling. But avoid making the original disappear because of one famous cover. Ike & Tina’s 1970 CD Workin’ Together featured “Mosquita” alongside their cover of “Proud Mary” and two Beatles songs (“Get Back,” “Let It Be”), as well as other tunes. When Turner sings “You’re nothin’ but a dirty, dirty old Man” on a song with the spouse who was making her life hell at the time, you can’t help but find it apt because Turner demolishes the rumbling funk rhythm with her voice.

5- “Nutbush City Limits” (1973)

In her artistic and romantic partnership with Ike Turner by the early 1970s, Tina Turner was having difficulties. Years later, she recalled, “I wanted to do something to help us out of our career slump, so I decided to try songwriter.” “I began by talking about a subject I knew best: my own life.” The outcome was “Nutbush City Limits,” a gritty R&B-meets-country-rock stomp that Francesca Royster describes in Black Country Music as “a perfect marriage of rural and urban, country girl and city slicker, Tina and Ike.”

The song, which marked a creative triumph for Turner, was also a signal, in more ways than one, that the days of Ike & Tina were numbered: In addition to being the first song she ever wrote, it also gave a taste of the Tennessee roots she’d fully explore just a year later, on her first solo album.

6- “Proud Mary” (1971)

Turner begins her unforgettable remake of this Creedence Clearwater Revival hit with the unforgettable line, “We never, ever do anything nice and easy,” which is immediately followed by an explosive R&B showstopper. John Fogerty, who wrote the song, was afraid that the world would forget he had ever had anything to do with it because of how memorable her performance was.

7- “Acid Queen” (1975)

Tina was starting to establish herself as a solo performer in the years before she permanently parted ways with Ike. Tina Turns the Country On, her debut album, was released in 1974. Then she traveled to London to begin filming Tommy, the ambitious rock opera by the Who. She performed as the Acid Queen and won praise for her exuberant, crazy performance. Turner was wild and exciting while singing her character’s main song, going above and beyond to reflect the tense (and slightly scary) nature of her interaction with the young pinball wizard at the story’s centre. Turner released a second solo album the same year, this one influenced by her character in the film Tommy.