When I was 15, I developed a mild obsession with the song featured in this week’s video; I recall a period of a several weeks when I listened to it every single morning as I got ready for school, doing the classic lip-sync-into-a-hairbrush routine. (The fact that I was ‘syncing a female vocalist didn’t matter in the slightest to me.)<\/p>\n
“Better Be Good to Me” was the fourth single from Private Dancer<\/em>, Tina Turner’s enormously successful album released in the epochal year 1984. With a tough, street-smart attitude underlying a polished pop-rock sound, the album was widely seen as Tina’s big professional comeback some eight years after the demise of the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. Songs like “I Might Have Been Queen,” “Show Some Respect,” “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” “Steel Claw,” and the title track also led to Private Dancer <\/em>being read as an ode to female empowerment, as well as Tina’s personal declaration of emancipation from Ike himself (even though their divorce was finalized in 1978).<\/p>\n Of course, I wasn’t aware of any of that at the time, or would have cared if I had been. All I knew was that the slinky, sexy voice of that woman with the million-dollar legs and wild hair did good things to me when it hit my ear canals. “Better Be Good” — which, honestly, I’ve always thought was a better song than Private Dancer<\/em>‘s (and Tina Turner’s) biggest hit, “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” — especially appealed to me. I don’t have any particular reason for liking it, no association with an event or place or anything like that. I just like the song’s sonic profile: the slow, mysterious intro, the confident middle portion that rises to a big dramatic climax… it’s just cool<\/em>. I’ve owned Private Dancer<\/em> in several different formats over the years, and I still listen to it fairly often, although apparently not recently, because it gave me a bit of a start, followed by a big smile, to hear “Better Be Good” this morning as I crossed the plaza below my office building on the way into work. I’ve been humming it all day.<\/p>\n I don’t recall ever seeing the video before this afternoon; it’s not anything remarkable, but it is representative of the era, and Tina looks damn fine in her leather ensemble:<\/p>\n
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