Turner, Tina – Foreign Affair – Used CD

VG/VG

I really didn't expect that much returning to this, don't really like most 1980s pop music unlike most people, figured I'd heard those hits more than enough, and the other cuts were probably lesser fare...but Tina just nails it on this album.  I certainly didn't think I'd find myself crying like a baby when that last cut came on, especially when I'd heard it a 163 times on the radio and never even gave it notice.  If Tina's glory days were in the 1960s, she was able to comeback with a vengeance.  It's 1984 so some of the production is overdone and over the top, but it doesn't matter one shit when Tina is guiding the proceedings.  She's the Acid Queen and the Queen of Thunderdome, and she whips this into action like a lion tamer with a bullwhip. --winch (green noise)

 

Alex Henderson: In 1984, a 45-year-old Tina Turner made one of the most amazing comebacks in the history of American popular music. A few years earlier, it was hard to imagine the veteran soul/rock belter reinventing herself and returning to the top of the pop charts, but she did exactly that with the outstanding Private Dancer. And Turner did so without sacrificing her musical integrity. To be sure, this pop/rock/R&B pearl is decidedly slicker than such raw, earthy, hard-edged Ike & Tina classics as "Proud Mary," "Sexy Ida," and "I Wanna Take You Higher." But she still has a tough, throaty, passionate delivery that serves her beautifully on everything from the melancholy, reggae-influenced "What's Love Got to Do With It" to the gutsy "Better Be Good to Me" to heartfelt remakes of the Beatles' "Help," Al Green's "Let's Stay Together," and David Bowie's "1984." A reflection on the emptiness of a stripper's life, the dusky title song is as poignant as it is depressing. Without question, this was Turner's finest hour as a solo artist.