A good song is a story. There’s a beginning, middle, and end driven by emotion and tension to some resolution. But none of those story elements matter until they’ve got the right storyteller.
And “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” waited for Tina.
The iconic song passed through the hands of Sir Cliff Richard, Phyllis Hyman, and Donna Summer, idling for years before it found its way to the former Anna Mae Bullock.
She’d divorced Ike Turner 6 years before its release, left with nothing but two cars and her stage name. But the very public demise of the dynamic duo also left Tina Turner as just another fantastic African-American female soloist. It wasn’t that they didn’t love her, but as the public is known to do, they craved drama and the band had literally broken up. THE END.
But Tina’s new beginning never included leaving everything she loved behind, so she forged ahead, recording new music like a 1983 cover of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” that put her back on the charts. With its success, Capitol Records greenlit Tina’s first solo studio album… but gave her 2 weeks to deliver it.
“What’s Love Got to Do with It?” was the very first song she recorded for 1984’s “Private Dancer.” She actually hated the track, but laid its vocals first so she could give it everything she had in an effort to avoid re-recording.
And you hear every bit of that attitude and inner conflict in the vocals. For 3 minutes and 46 seconds, all that emotional tension and Tina’s voice nearly break under the weight of the song. Combined with her own personal backstory, “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” symbolized so much more. Hope for new love in the eyes of her audience. Hope to do it alone for the woman who used to be Anna Mae. It was perfect.
So perfect in fact, that it catapulted Tina to the number 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 Charts for three straight weeks, making her the oldest female vocal soloist (at age 44) to hold the honor until Cher’s “Believe,” another song anxiously hopeful about “life after love,” released 15 years later.
So much for the end.