Tina Turner
All The Best

THE REVIEW

We are in 2004. And Tina was born in 1939, in a small town in Tennessee, Nutbush.

And she wasn't even called Tina Turner. Her birth name is Anna Mae Bullock.

She has come a long way, this lady standing five feet tall, since she was just a child kicked out of the church choir because her too "Blues" trills were disrespectful to the Lord.

Tina has gone through a life marked by music, masterpieces, and concerts, but also filled with violence, cocaine (used by her husband, the crazy but brilliant Ike Turner)... saved by Buddhism which restored her will to live, taken away by her husband's brainwashing.

In short, a real growth not just in years between "A fool in love," her very first song recorded with her husband when she was just seventeen, and her last single, "Open arms." Sixty years of career, collected in two remarkable discs that range from the rock'n'roll of "Proud Mary," a remake of the famous Creedence Clearwater song, to the song marking her return to the stage (after the divorce and financial problems), in 1986 "What's love got to do with it?". From the soundtrack of the James Bond film of the same name, "Goldeneye" to the nineties sound of "We don't need another hero." Naturally, the extremely famous "The best" couldn’t be missing (although in my opinion it's not one of the best, it’s a song where her inestimable vocal abilities are not fully displayed), nor the sweet and melancholic "I don't wanna fight"... we return to the seventies, still dealing with Ike's violence, to listen to "What you get is what you see", and again "River deep mountain high," her first song recorded without her husband, a real blow for Ike who will feel left in a corner... There are also some duets in this collection (certainly not easy to make, considering the size of Tina's discography. Then if we think that all the songs she recorded during her marriage are still owned by Ike Turner... with all the royalties Tina has paid him over the years to be able to perform "Proud Mary," surely Ike did not starve): names like David Bowie, our own Eros Ramazzotti, even Antonio Banderas uses his hyper-sexy voice in "In your wildest dreams," and finally Bryan Adams, Tina’s protégé who she discovered and launched into the international market.

A bit of everything in this "All the best": from the seventies of tyranny, to the eighties of personal affirmation of her talent (keeping in mind that apart from "Nutbush city limits," about her hometown, Tina is not the author of her songs), to the nineties of rock and pop blends, to the latest single. Despite her age and the Parkinson's that afflicts her, Tina does not feel at all like she has one foot in the grave: just think that she recently recorded a song with Beyoncé Knowles, another great contemporary voice (whether the songs are likable is debatable. But Beyoncé’s talent cannot be denied).

Just as no one can deny the charisma, inventiveness, grit, voice, imagination of Anna Mae Bullock, born in the cotton fields of Tennessee, and who became Tina Turner.

A name no one ignores. A legend.