Music Reviews

If you read my review of Jack Bruce’s most excellent Harmony Row 2CD/2BD box set that posted here on Thursday, July 24, 2025, you found me regaling the re-uprising (if you will) of the not-dead-yet CD revolution, not to mention applauding the ongoing CD-oriented box set cavalcade. So, what’s next on the digitally inclined box set reviewing slate? Glad you asked.

TINA TURNER
PRIVATE DANCER – 40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
5CD/1BD (Parlophone)

That more abbreviated preamble above brings us directly to my extended assessment of today’s historic box set subject/object at hand—namely, the 5CD/1BD 40th Anniversary Edition of Tina Turner’s career-reviving comeback LP on Capitol, May 1984’s Private Dancer. Once relegated to the second- and third-tier touring circuit—as recounted in her no-holds-barred 1986 autobiography I, Tina and ensuing hit/acclaimed 1993 biopic, What’s Love Got to Do With It—Turner scratched, shimmied, and vocally clawed her way back onto the international stage with Dancer. The album proper was preceded by her late-1983 sultry hit remake of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together”—which hit No. 6 in the UK, and No. 26 in the U.S.—but once the gate-opening Dancer track “What’s Love Got to Do With It” emerged as a No. 1 hit in mid-1984, Turner catapulted right to the top and never left, remaining on her fully earned Queen of Rock ’n’ Roll perch until she effectively retired from the big stage, undefeated, in 2009. (Sadly, Turner passed away in Switzerland at age 83 in May 2023.)

A few years back, Parlophone began reissuing Turner’s Capitol albums in box set form, saving the best for last—or at least, for now—as the Private Dancer 5CD/1BD set was released earlier this year on March 21, 2025. The 5CDs in this compact box include (deep breath) scores of B-sides, single edits, extended versions, unreleased tracks, non-album tracks, and numerous live tracks, including a previously unreleased show recorded at Park West in Chicago on August 2, 1984.

The quite-sturdy black box itself measures 5.83 x 1 x 5.75in (w/h/d), so it’s a bit wider than other CD rectangles of a similar ilk—that said, it will fit perfectly alongside Parlophone’s previous trio of Turner boxes: 2021’s Foreign Affair 4CD/1DVD, 2022’s Break Every Rule3CD/2DVD, and 2024’s 4CD/1DVD set. Do note that the latter three boxes sport smooth white finishes and minimal colorized type on their front covers, while Dancer is in all black with silver type. (All of them boast complete tracklistings on their respective back covers.)

The Dancer BD includes a concert film consisting of 11 tracks that comprise Private Dancer Tour – Live From NEC, Birmingham 1984 (all tracks of which are also on CD5, which itself is housed in the left pocket of the rightly subtitled Private Dancer Tour gatefold sleeve), plus eight of-era promo videos. The 55-minute Birmingham, England show was lensed during two nights, March 23 and 24, 1985, at the NEC, as directed by David Mallet, who “restored” (their words) the video content for this collection. Five of the promo videos have also been upgraded, with the full-length version of “Private Dancer” now fully restored to 4K from its original 35mm film. (More on that particular clip shortly.)

The SRP for the Private Dancer box is $59.98, and it can be purchased directly from the official Rhino site store here. If you’re as completist-inclined as I am, you can also go to said Rhino store to obtain the abbreviated 2CD set ($24.98), 1LP pearl-color vinyl of the core album ($24.98), and 1LP picture disc ($24.98).

Revisiting Private Dancer on CD1 was a refreshing treat, reminding me of just how in sync Turner, her multiple producers, and cabal of guest musicians were in presenting the best material to showcase her full vocal range and personality. On CD2, the keyboard-swooshed cover of “When I Was Young” (Track 4)—best known via its 1967 version by Eric Burdon and The Animals—shows how Turner makes first-person narratives seem like they’re part of her own personal C.V. On CD3, “Total Control” (Track 6) unfurls at an almost too controlled clip but yet again reinforces Tina’s sense of pacing—plus I love the organ break in the back half, while “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)” (Track 8) remains one of the defining soundtrack moments of the ’80s—bold balladry, big hooks, instant fist-pumping singalong chorus (kids included near the end!), and high drama galore.

The unreleased 1984 gig from Chicago on CD4 includes some vintage Tina tracks not part of the BD show’s edited-down setlist, including the elegiac “River Deep, Mountain High” (Track 4), an unrelenting “Nutbush City Limits” (Track 5), the 8-minute “rollin’ / rollin’” tour de force that is “Proud Mary” (Track 12), and a sizzling audience-participation 10-minute take on the no-accident show-closing cover of ZZ Top’s “Legs” (Track 13). She knows how to cover it, that’s for damn sure.

“Tell me now—are you ready for me?” That’s Turner addressing the crowd near the opening of the NEC Birmingham gig on the BD, not long after she emerges as a vision in laced-up white. This follows a dressing-room intro sequence, replete with her heels clacking across the soundstage directionally from right to left as she walks through the video-stylized opener directed by the aforementioned David Mallet. The vocal pauses Tina takes ahead of the posed vamps between each verse line on her No. 1 hit “What’s Love Got to Do With It” reflect the acumen of an artist in full control of her stage, staging, and audience in full. (We also get to see more than a few mid-set costume changes, of course.)

“I Might Have Been Queen” sounds like Tina fronting The Fixx—which makes total sense, given that Fixx guitarist Jamie West-Oram was guesting in the band. (He’s also the song’s co-writer, along with its producer Rupert Hine.) Turner’s lower-register vocal on “Private Dancer” is riveting, initially sung from her slow-swaying singular position on a riser behind drummer Jack Bruno. She then moves slowly, deliberately down to the front during the piano, sax, and guitar solo break—and that’s how you command a stage, folks.

Tina’s gospel/ballad empowerment recasting of The Beatles’ “Help” leads into a pair of top-tier guest-star turns, commencing with, in her words, “a guy from Canada”—i.e., a guitar-strapped Bryan Adams, who emerges sidestage for a muscular, eye-to-eye rendition of their hit power duet “It’s Only Love.” Take special note of how well their fully emotive voices blend on the line “You can live without the aggravation” on the chorus. And then, a white dinner-jacketed David Bowie emerges for a magical two-fer, starting with the reggae-flavored “Tonight” followed by a clever two-part twist on “Let’s Dance”—first as a ’60s pop homage of sorts, then a full victory-lap duet on his 1983 chart-topping hit of the same name. “Wasn’t that a great surprise?” Tina says after the credits roll—and who could argue with her?

In just 55 tautly edited minutes, Turner displays what live performance is all about. Her voice is as river-deep and true as it ever has been on her studio records, the result of years of live-circuit throat belts ’n’ elbow grease paying off on the international stage. Listen up, all you budding vocalists who use Auto-Tune, AI enhancements, and/or other forms of studio trickery, as Tina’s set is a master class for how you can sing with unbridled emotion, nuance, and the very essence of having lived life itself.

Besides the Birmingham concert, eight Dancer-era videoclips are included on the BD, all of them chock full of iconic ’80s imagery as can be, and as affecting and powerful now as they were back then. The extended version of “Private Dancer”—written by Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits, with backing from then-Straits bandmembers Alan Clark on keyboards (who would eventually become Tina’s live bandleader for decades to come), Hal Lindes on guitar, and John Illsley on bass—is sharper-looking than the grainier original, plus the color palette is much more vibrant here in 4K, no question. For his part, Knopfler felt the song’s female-POV narrative was much better served with a vocalist of Turner’s caliber and experience rather than his own—and he was unequivocally right.

That said, lines like “and any old music will do” and “Yeah, I guess I want a family” (with each syllable of “fam-il-lee” deliberately enunciated) are pure MK penmanship—but the unrepentantly exasperated “ahhhh” immediately following “Do you want to see me do the shimmy again?” is all her. The detached demeanor the earth-tone-clad Turner embodies in the dime-a-dancehall period portion of the clip deftly counters the more hopeful glammed-up and pastel-toned dream sequence she imagines for herself before snapping back into her character’s gloomy in-the-moment reality.

Taken as a whole, the 5CD/1BD 40th Anniversary Edition of Tina Turner’s career-uplifting Private Dancer is an expertly expanded chronicle of a comeback queen at the height of her reascending powers—and it’s also the perfect entry point into her upgraded catalog, so you better be good to show some respect and add it to your must-have list.

Come back in a few days for my next combo LP/CD/BD box set review installment—see y’all then!