Songoftheday 10/31/16 - I call you when I need you my heart's on fire, you come to me come to me wild and wired...
from the album Foreign Affair (1989)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #15 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 8
Today's song of the day comes from Tina Turner, who was enjoying a major comeback in the 80's, overshadowing her earlier work with her blockbuster Private Dancer album, her acting/singing turn in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and her 1987 album Break Every Rule, which not only spun off three top-40 pop hits in America with "What You Get Is What You See", "Two People", and the #2 "Typical Male", but was also followed by a massively successful tour (as documented in her Live In Europe set). In 1989, Tina released her seventh solo studio record Foreign Affair, preceded by the single "The Best". It was a cover of a minor hit for Welsh vocal powerhouse Bonnie Tyler (of the "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" fame), but Tina made it so much her own that the song, written and produced by song doctor Holly Knight and producer Mike Chapman (who also did the same for Bonnie's version), became one of her "trademark" songs...
"The Best" climbed into the top-20 on the American pop chart in November of 1989. The song also crossed over to #43 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart. Internationally, the record was even more successful, reaching the top-5 in Austria (#2), Belgium (#2), Canada (#3), Italy (#3), Switzerland (#3), Finland (#3), Australia (#4), Germany (#4), Ireland (#4), Norway (#5), the Netherlands (#5), and the UK (#5). In that latter country, the song re-entered the charts in 2010 as a "spirit song" for the Rangers football club of Scotland and went to #9. Also, a re-recorded duet with Australian rock star Jimmy Barnes, also a sports tie-in this time for rugby "Down Under", and went to #14 in Australia and #11 in New Zealand.
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Here's the original version from Bonnie Tyler in 1988 which went to #95 on the British chart, but did spend a week at #10 in Norway...
...and Tina's duet version with Jimmy Barnes which reached the top-20 in Australia in 1992...
...Tina entered the house at VH1 Divas Live in 1999 with the song...
...and finally, Tina live in Spain in 1990...
Up tomorrow: Cuban-American girl's love is like an earthquake.
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