Songoftheday 1/19/14 - Well the men come in these places and the men are all the same, you don't look at their faces and you don't ask their names...

Tina Turner - "Private Dancer"
from the album Private Dancer (1984)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #7 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 12

Today's Song of the Day was the fourth single and title track from Tina Turner's "comeback" album Private Dancer. After hitting with her remake of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together", the Fixx-assisted "Better Be Good To Me", and the #1 career-high of "What's Love Got To Do With It". "Private Dancer" was written by Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler, and features a guitar solo from Jeff Beck, and was produced by Capitol Records A&R man John Carter. Originally meant for a Dire Straits album, this song clearly was meant for a woman with life experience to sing this lament of a downtrodden ballroom dancer, and Tina carried it off in Oscar-winning form....

"Private Dancer" became the third top-10 pop hit from the album in March of 1985, while high-stepping to #3 on the R&B chart and #30 on the adult-contemporary (or "easy listening") format. Internationally, while the single went top-10 in France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland (her future home), it stalled down at #20 in Germany and #26 in the UK (where her "comeback" first caught hold).

The same year, the album and video were nominated for Grammys, while she won favorite R&B female at the American Music Awards.

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

...and here's Tina live in concert with the song...