Tina Turner — “Show Some Respect”

Entered Top 40:   May 18, 1985
3 weeks 
Peaked at: 37

We’ve talked about how many Bottom Five entries are Third Singles, when a label’s album promotion machine hits a saturation point and single releases start to perform accordingly. I had forgotten that Tina Turner’s 1984 quasi-comeback LP Private Dancer essentially got the Thriller treatment from Capitol. Of the nine songs on Private Dancer, five were released as US singles, with two more released internationally.

The first was her cover of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together,” a reintroduction of sorts which reached #26. This seems like a complicated choice given Green’s abusive personal history and the relationship Tina Turner had gotten away from with Ike, but I don’t recall much being made of this at the time (maybe because Al Green and Ike were both still alive). The second was of course “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” which went to #1 in the US and two other countries, and won three Grammy Awards.

After two other Top-Ten singles (“Private Dancer” and “Better Be Good to Me,” a cover originally by Holly Knight and our old friends Spider) was “Show Some Respect,” at which point the Private Dancer train was running out of steam. It was co-written by Turner’s guitarist Terry Britten, who’d also written “What’s Love Got to Do with It” with Graham Lyle. More from that pairing soon.

In just a couple of months Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, costarring Turner, would arrive in theaters; and with it its big single, “We Don’t Need Another Hero.” Also a Britten & Lyle composition, it’d hit #2 in the US, behind a lesser song from a lesser film (John Parr’s “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion).” “One of the Living,” Thunderdome’s opening-credit song and another Turner/Holly Knight collaboration, would also chart (#15). That one features Tim Cappello (the oiled-up saxophone guy also seen in The Lost Boys), which raises the question: how are they getting good reeds in the wastelands surrounding Bartertown? I mean, that’s probably where my suspension of disbelief w/r/t the Mad Max saga really fails.

“Show Some Respect’s” B-side was a cover of Prince’s “Let’s Pretend We’re Married.” Turner does away with Prince’s dirty-talk vamping, but still, holy hell.