#Sandy Barker

[ritusmiles]

I knew You Were Trouble by Sandy Barker #BlogTour #RachelsRandomResources @rararesources @BoldwoodBooks

I am thrilled to be on the blog tour for my dear friend Sandy Barker and her latest (and last) installment in the Ever After Agency series, I Knew You Were Trouble. The BRAND NEW instalment in Sandy Barker’s gorgeously romantic Ever After Agency series. Don’t get mad. Get even. Kate Whitaker has always believed in love, but when a stranger named Willem shows up on her doorstep, the news he has…

[potledom]

[duel-of-the-dolls]

Monster High Monster Mash: Siblings (Round 1)

[mermaidinthecity]

I Love You’s

I love you, family. Dad, because you are my biggest fan, and I’ll never get tired of the way you smile when I pick up a guitar and play. Mom, for being my best friend and most trusted companion, even in times when you were my only friend. That was just fine. Austin, my little brother, for being so much more brave than I ever hope to be. My aunt, Alison, for being such a beautiful person. My aunts, uncles, cousins, and relatives (even the ones I didn’t know I had) for making Thanksgiving something someone should write a book about. I love my mom and dads’ friends who have been so unbelievably supportive (and so unbelievably loud at my shows).

I love my friends. Abigail, I love you because you are my best friend in the entire world. Can’t wait to room together when we’re 65 and wrinkly and living in Minnesota. I love Ally, Kelsey, Kathryn, Jeff, Clay and all my awesome friends in Hendersonville. Britany Maack for being my first friend, I miss you!

I love everyone who helped put this album together. Scott Borchetta for believing in me and actually DOING something about it. Shake and bake, Radioman. This is how we roll. Nathan Chapman because he is the most amazing red-headed freckle-faced little producer in the world and I love your beautiful wife Stephanie. Thanks Nathan for gracing me with your first album. Liz Rose, you are my songwriting soulmate, and one of my dearest friends. Robert Ellis Orrall, you Rock! Nick for breaking your drumsticks on my songs, Tim for playing on my session ON YOUR BIRTHDAY, and everyone else who played on the album because you are THAT GOOD. Chad, for your amazing mullet (and engineering skills).

I love my record label. Jack Purcell, for your Minnesota accent. Mandy McCormack, for humoring me in my mailbox obsession. Rick Barker, because I learned everything I Know about radio in… nevermind. HAHA. Bobby Young, thanks for taking us shopping. Whitney Sutton, you are so organized and I love you for it. JZ, because of that adorable laugh/nose thing you do. Erik Powell, for being cool and pretty much a genius. Larry Hughes, you rock! Jamice Jennings, for being the sweetest ever. Kelly Rich, you are the wizard of Marketing! Jayme Austin for adding so much spirit to the label. Sandi Spika Borchetta, for being creative/brilliant/beautiful and buying me pretty things to wear. Penny Lazo, you are a crazy rock star. Andrew Kautz, if I ever walk into the label and you’re not there, I will not know what to do with myself. Natalie Kilgore, for your amazing sense of humor. Ray Pronto, for putting this Big Machine in motionnn.

I love the people who helped me get here. Arthur Buenahora, thank you for signing a FOURTEEN year old to a full writers publishing deal. I will never forget that. In fact, I love everyone at Sony Publishing. Pat Garet and Suzy Dalton for letting my little ten-year-old self open up for you. Harry Warner, for being such a gentleman and having my back at BMI. Frank Bell for being so brutally honest about my music from the time I was like 12, and so supportive of my career NOW. Andrew Orth for 14 years of great photos!! Paula Erickson for being the most stylish publicist in the world. Jody Williams, for listening to my rants about high school, and being such a dear friend and musicologist. HHS for supporting me 100%. Bob Taylor and Bob Borbonus at Taylor Guitars for believing in me and making perfection in the form of guitars. Mike Milom for being a genius and the best lawyer ever. Sarah, Ed, and Jim at GAC for taking such a vested interest in me, and PUTTING ME ON TV! CMT you’re awesome! Trey Fanjoy, because you are such a visionary and for directing an amazing video. Pete Fisher you are amazing. Rod Essig, for believing in me from the beginning and being so passionate about what you do. I Love Tim McGraw for making such inspiring music. I love Faith Hill for being the most graceful woman in the world. I love you, Jack Ingram. If at any point in my life, ever ever amount to being HALF as cool as you, I will throw myself a party. I LOVE RADIO because I haven’t met one person I don’t consider a friend. I love all of my myspace friends for taking such an active roll in what I do, I will never forget how you all rallied for me from the beginning.

I love everyone who’s inspired me to write a song, whether you know if or not. I love anyone who has ever turned the volume up when my song comes on the radio, anyone who has bought this album. Anyone who can sing along to my songs when I play them live. Anyone who’s ever requested my song on the radio, or even remembered my name. If you ever see me in public, I want to meet you. I will thank you myself. You have let me into your life, and I will never be able to thank you enough for that. I love YOU, and I love God for putting you in my life.

Love love love

-T-

PS: To all the boys who thought they would be cool and break my heart, guess what? Here are 14 songs written about you. HA.

— Taylor Swift (2006)

[the-book-queen]

Tuesday (03/25) = new releases! I have a thread of romance novels below that caught my eye this week. Happy shopping!

~ * ~ * ~

New Release

I Knew You Were Trouble by Sandy Barker

Contemporary Romance (MF) | https://amzn.to/4bTDt1v 

New Release

The Two of Us by Lori Foster; Maisey Yates

Contemporary Romance (MF) | https://amzn.to/41Ufx9J 

New Release

The Plot Twist by Eleanor Goymer

Contemporary Romance (MF) | https://amzn.to/4iURyhy 

New Release

Playing for Keeps in Starr's Fall by Kate Hewitt

Contemporary Romance (MF) | https://amzn.to/4l9y0rJ 

New Release

Cover Story by Celia Laskey

Contemporary Romance (MF) | https://amzn.to/4iUZcbz 

New Release

Building Home by J. Mackenzie

Contemporary Romance (MM) | https://amzn.to/41TnAUg 

New Release

Fight or Flight by Fern Michaels

Contemporary Romance (MF) | https://amzn.to/4ccU00N 

New Release

The Prince and the Player by Nora Phoenix

Contemporary Romance (MM) | https://amzn.to/41Ybnxx 

New Release

The Game by Leonor Soliz

Contemporary Romance (MF) | https://amzn.to/4kNdKvP 

New Release

Just Our Luck by Denise Williams

Contemporary Romance (MF) | https://amzn.to/4iOinV3 

New Release

Loving an Earl by Christine Donovan

Historical Romance (MF) | https://amzn.to/41XyA2Z 

New Release

The Lady Sparks a Flame by Elizabeth Everett

Historical Romance (MF) | https://amzn.to/4iBYDns 

New Release

Our Dear Miss H. Is on the Case by Violet Marsh

Historical Romance (MF) | https://amzn.to/4hGFRtH 

New Release

A Gentleman's Offer by Emma Orchard

Historical Romance (MF) | https://amzn.to/4kRa0cD 

New Release

A Wager at Midnight by Vanessa Riley

Historical Romance (MF) | https://amzn.to/4iypFMq 

New Release

Marked by the Grouchy Grizzly by Olivia T. Turner

Paranormal Romance (MF) | https://amzn.to/4iOjG6p 

New Release

When He Hunts by Cynthia Eden

Romantic Suspense (MF) | https://amzn.to/41MHTCE 

~ * ~ * ~

Or you can find all the new releases, including NOOK/Kobo*/Bookshop*/GR links, up on the blog:

New Romance Releases (O3/25): Denise Williams, Vanessa Riley, Cynthia Eden & more! 📚

*affiliate

Have I missed any? What book are you most excited to read this week?

Putting these lists together takes time. If you appreciate this content, please consider buying me a Ko-Fi. http://ko-fi.com/danielletbq 

[jadeseadragon]

Scorching Heat Wave Turns Lincoln Wax Statue Into a Hot Mess

The sculpture "40 ACRES: Camp Barker” (2024) was installed on February 15 and originally set to be on display until September 1. (all photos courtesy Sandy Williams IV unless noted otherwise)

[dertaglichedan]

Abe Lincoln wax sculpture melts in brutal DC heat

He kept a cool head during the American Civil War, but a heatwave proved too much for his statue. A wax effigy of President Abraham Lincoln has melted as temperatures soared over the weekend in the nation's capital.

The head went first, then one of his legs dripped off its torso and a foot turned into a blob. The chair sank into the ground.

The head from the 6ft wax sculpture of the Lincoln Memorial is now under repair, leaving behind a wire sticking out of the 16th president's neck.

The memorial rests on the site of Camp Barker in Washington DC - a Civil War-era refugee camp that housed formerly enslaved and freed African Americans - now home to an elementary school.

It was placed outside of Garrison Elementary School as part of The Wax Monument Series by Virginia-based artist Sandy Williams IV.

The replica is more than just a wax statue - it is also a candle. And this is not the first time it had issues with melting.

[likeafolkssong]

Books Read in 2024

1. I Had to Survive: How a Plane Crash in the Andes Inspired my Calling to Save Lives by Roberto Canessa & Pablo Vierci

2. Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan

3. Miracle in the Andes by Nando Parrado

4. The Little Liar by Mitch Albom

5. The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente

6. The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis (re-read)

7. The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis (re-read)

8. The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

9. Planet Narnia by Michael Ward

10. The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

11. The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan

12. The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman

13. The Titan’s Curse by Rick Riordan

14. The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan

15. The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan

16. Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale

17. Good Bad Girl by Alice Feeney

18. The Whole-Brain Child by Daniel J. Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson

19. Touching the Void by Joe Simpson

20. The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston

21. The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley

22. Surprised by Jesus by Dane Ortlund

23. Before We Were Innocent by Ella Berman

24. The Next Person You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

25. For One More Day by Mitch Albom (reread)

26. Barbie and Ruth by Robin Gerber

27. Forever, Interrupted by Taylor Jenkins Reid

28. Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon (read half, then quit)

29. Kill For Me, Kill For You by Steve Cavanagh

30. The Music of Bees by Eileen Garvin

31. The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer

32. After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid

33. All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers

34. Defy the Night by Brigid Kemmerer

35. Defend the Dawn by Brigid Kemmerer

36. Destroy the Day by Brigid Kemmerer

37. The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena

38. The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer

39. We Solve Murders by Richard Osman

40. The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown

41. The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn

42. The Christmas Swap by Sandy Barker

43. Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares by David Leviathan & Rachel Cohn

44. Baby, It’s Cold Outside by Emily Bell

45. O Little Town by Don Reid

46. Night Road by Kristin Hannah

[hope-for-olicity]

Most Anticipated Books September 2023

So obviously September is a HUGE month for AWESOME BOOKS!! Not hurt by the releases of books about witches and Christmas romances!! I'm so excited!!

September 5th: Harvest Moon Kisses by Sara Ohlin, Witches Get Stuff Done by Molly Harper, Enchanted to Meet You by Meg Cabot and The Long Game by Elena Armas

September 12th: You, Again by Kate Goldbeck, Witch of Wild Things by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland, The Royal Windsor Secret by Christine Wells, Nineteen Steps by Millie Bobby Brown, Sister of the Bride by Lauren Morrill and The Gingerbread House in Mistletoe Gardens by Jaimie Admans

September 14th: Matchmaking & Mixtapes by Marie Landry

September 15th: The Wedding Menu by Letizia Lorini

September 19th: Every Duke Has His Day by Suzanne Enoch and The Unfortunate Side Effects of Heartbreak and Magic by Breanne Randall

September 26th: The Christmas Wager by Holly Cassidy, The Ex-Mas Holiday by Zoe Allison, Lies and Other Love Languages by Sonali Dev, Wrapped With a Beau by Lillie Vale, The Wake-Up Call by Beth O’Leary, Faking Christmas by Kerry Winfrey, Unleashed Holiday by Victoria Schade and Unrealistic Expectations by Andie J. Christopher

September 28th: Reunions & Ruses by Marie Landry and Match Me If You Can by Sandy Barker

Time to grab your blanket, light your candles, get a cup of tea and cuddle in to read a book!

[somediyprojects]

Twas the Night Before Christmas stitched by Georgi Wilson Barker. Pattern ($16.95) designed by Sandy Orton.

“My latest finish, made for a granddaughter. It is The Night Before Christmas, a Kooler Classic Chart, # 2177, designed by Sandy Orton.”

[whileiamdying]

Discovering Tina’s music is a rite of passage

“Comeback.” It’s a word often associated with Private Dancer. Rolling Stone were quick to apply it following the album’s release, in the spring of 1984. Almost 40 years later they upped the ante, calling it “one of the great comebacks in rock history”. Billboard would go several steps further, placing the album among “the greatest comebacks of the 20th century”. For music-industry trade publication Pollstar, Private Dancer’s success led to the Comeback Tour of the Year — more than 180 dates across Europe, the UK, the US, Australia and Japan, grossing $40 million, or a little over $120 million in today’s money.

But the word never settled with its creator. “I don’t consider it a comeback album,” Tina Turner would say. “Tina had never arrived.”

She had, however, long been on her way. Private Dancer may have brought Turner into the public eye, but the eight years leading up to its release had been a time of relentless graft for the singer. After leaving her abusive husband, Ike, in 1976, and heading out on her own, she committed herself to a demanding schedule that reflected her tireless work ethic. Hotel residencies, McDonald’s conventions, Vegas cabaret The Brady Bunch Hour shows; Hollywood Squares, — no booking was too small, nor too unlikely, for an artist determined to surpass even her previous achievements. “My dream is to be the first Black rock’n’roll singer to pack places like the Stones,” she said.

As she came to realise that dream, Turner would find herself holding her own with Mick Jagger on one of the biggest stages of them all: Live Aid Putting The Rolling Stones’ frontman through his paces on a version of the Jagger/Jacksons duet, ‘State of Shock’, and manufacturing the original “wardrobe malfunction” during a take on the Stones’ 1974 hit It’s Only Rock’n’roll (But I Like It)’, the woman born Anna Mae Bullock in Brownsville, Tennessee, had become a global icon, worthy of US magazine’s title of “grittiest rock’n’roll singer in the world”.

“People were standing on tables, and Tina was just working the audience”

Few would have considered Olivia Newton-John to be “gritty”. Having won cinemagoers’ hearts with her portrayal of the clean-cut Sandy Olsson in the 1978 film adaptation of Grease, the British Australian singer and actress had become a true mainstream star, with drawing power to match. When she asked Turner to guest on her 1980 variety show, Hollywood Nights, alongside other leading female singers of the era, among them Karen Carpenter, Toni Tennille and Francine “Peaches” Hurd Barker, of R&B duo Peaches & Herb, everyone’s favourite girl next door played a crucial part in ushering Turner into the upper echelons of fame.

During a meeting with Newton-John’s manager, an Australian music lover named Roger Davies, Turner, who had so far been handling her own affairs, laid her cards on the table: “I simply want a manager. I don’t know what to do. I need to work. I want to work.” After making clear her ambition — the rock market, arena venues — she invited Davies to see for himself that she had what it took: she’d be at the Fairmont Hotel, in San Francsico, for a two-week residency in the Venetian Ballroom.

By the time Davies made it to the lavishly decorated Venetian, Turner was on the final night of her run. Known for hosting gatherings of San Francisco’s members-only Supper Club, the venue attracted a high-end clientele who liked to be seen in their finery. But if the dinnertime set present for Turner’s first show of the evening paid as much attention to their food as to what was being served up on stage, the looser late-night crowd went off like the smoke bombs that punctuated Turner’s second performance. Mixing old favourites — ‘Proud Mary’, Nutbush City Limits’ — with covers of the latest hits, and featuring choreographed routines in which backup dancers would strip her costume down to its bodice, the 40-year-old Turner let loose with a confidence that outmatched that of her younger peers. “People had some drinks, they were standing on tables, and Tina was just working the audience,” Davies recalled in the HBO documentary Tina. “And I went, Wow. What a great live performance.”

Davies understood how far Turner could go, and, from that night onwards, he was right beside her. “There weren’t any female artists in the world selling out football stadiums,” he acknowledged. “I said, ‘Yep, that’s what we’re gonna do.”

“She did the right things at the right time”

With a view to moving away from the cabaret circuit, Turner adopted a whole new look. Swapping her long, straight hair for a spikier mane set off with a shock of red lipstick, and retrieving her shorter rock’n’roll dresses from the back of her wardrobe, she began to reflect the audience she was courting — an image transformation that she would continue to refine into the 1980s, when accessorised denim jackets and leather minidresses became her unofficial uniform. “She got quite influenced by designers and fashion photographers,” Paul Cox says today. “She became really good friends with Peter Lindbergh and Herb Ritts.” An acclaimed photographer who worked with Turner for more than 20 years, Cox noted the tight bond that Turner and Davies shared with each other. “They had a very trusting relationship, in a good, positive way,” he says. “Roger steered her, but she’d still have her say. She wouldn’t do things unless she really wanted to, but she did the right things at the right time.”

Certain that the time was right, Turner also overhauled her band, retiring their tuxedos and paring the unit down to a core four-piece featuring pianist Kenny Moore, guitarist James Ralston, bassist Bob Feit and drummer Jack Bruno. The group may have hated the black karate suits they were now required to wear on stage, but, with Turner up front, flanked by her two dancers and backing singers, Anne Behringer and Lejeune Richardson, the message was clear: Turner was coming out fighting.

Knock-out shows through the UK and Europe followed, along with her first appearances at New York City’s famed rock club The Ritz — a short sell-out run in the summer of 1981 that drew everyone from Mick Jagger to Diana Ross, Andy Warhol and Robert De Niro. Whereas, during the 1960s and 1970s, she’d had to convince Ike to find space for some rock’n’roll tunes among their revue’s soul, funk and R&B material, under Turner’s direction her versatile new band leaned into the hard-edged rock songs she was increasingly claiming as her own. When Rod Stewart saw Turner strut her way through his solo hit ‘Hot Legs” during her second Ritz engagement, in October 1981, he invited her to reprise the performance with him on Saturday Night Live that weekend, in front of a TV audience numbering in the millions. The following month found Turner opening for The Rolling Stones for three nights at East Rutherford’s Brendan Byrne Arena (now the Meadowlands) and coming out to guest with the headliners on ‘Honky Tonk Women’. Yet while she was at home performing the rock classics with the old guard, Turner was about to embrace an entirely new sound that would propel her into the future.

“It was a brave thing to put out”

Having helped lay the blueprint for synth-pop with Penthouse and Pavement. their 1981 debut album as Heaven 17, producers Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh had plans to further showcase their cutting edge sound, working as a duo under the name British Electronic Foundation. For their latest project, a covers compilation titled Music of Quality and Distinction: Volume One, the pair had a mix of singers contribute vocals to their radical synthesiser-led overhauls of pop and soul standards such as Glen Campbell’s ‘Wichita Lineman’ and The Supremes’ ‘You Keep Me Hangin’ On. But when James Brown pulled out of the project, Ware and Marsh needed to a find a quick replacement for their bold reworking of The Temptations’ psychedelic soul classic Ball of Confusion’. After flying out to Los Angeles to meet Turner at her home, where Turner herself — a “perfectly demure, beautiful, warm and accepting” host, as Ware describes her today — served cups of tea, Ware convinced her to put aside any misgivings she had about returning to soul music.

“It was a bit presumptuous of me,” he says, “but I told her, ‘Before spreading your wings, you would do well to nail your legacy as one of the greatest soul singers that’s ever lived. And she could see the irony in doing ‘Ball of Confusion’, because it was a very contemporary arrangement, and the lyrics had a protest element that lent weight to her credibility. And that convinced her this wasn’t a dangerous path to go down.” However, upon arriving at the studio in London, Turner was taken aback by the electronic equipment that surrounded Ware and Marsh. “Where’s the band?” she asked.

“It was very early days for computer music, and not many people had seen a Fairlight synthesiser at the time,” Ware says. “It was this huge, mysterious machine that looked like a sci-fi fridge with a screen. I don’t think she ever understood what the hell was going on.” To Turner it looked like an x-ray machine — which, in a way, it was, ready to help her reveal previously unseen facets of her artistry. “It was a brave thing to put out,” Ware says of ‘Ball of Confusion. “It was raw and raucous.” If Turner’s new rock band and the Stones support slots had gone much of the way towards redefining her image, here was further affirmation of how far she’d come in a mere handful of years.

With Turner’s take on ‘Ball of Confusion’ charting in Europe, record-label interest heightened in the UK, if not in Turner’s homeland. While signed to Capitol Records for a development deal in the US, she had recorded a version of The Beatles’ ‘Help!’ with jazz-funk outit The Crusaders, upping the drama in a pleading take whose spacious ballad arrangement, featuring a reggae-tinged breakdown, repositioned Turner for the lucrative adult contemporary market. Despite unqualified support from A&R executive John Carter, the song sat in the can while the label prevaricated over Turner’s potential. And then the endorsement of another British trailblazer changed everything.

While in New York in early 1983, to host a listening session for his soon-to-be juggernaut success Let’s Dance, David Bowie, recently signed to the Capitol subsidiary EMI America, passed up a dinner date with label execs who’d travelled from Europe and across North America for the event, telling them he already had plans to catch his “favourite singer” during her third residency at The Ritz. With 63 label reps suddenly filling out that evening’s guest list, along with Bowie, Keith Richards, tennis star John McEnroe and actress Susan Sarandon, Turner stepped on to the stage to find the room “packed and vibrating”. “It was my favourite kind of show,” she wrote in her second memoir, My Love Story. “Great energy and an audience that was with me every high-kicking step of the way.” As the afterparty stretched into the early hours of the morning, Capitol began to envision a new dawn for Turner.

“She was as much an actor in the studio as she was a singer”

While the buzz from the Ritz show crossed the Atlantic, Turner flew to Stockholm, where, in yet another display of her stylistic range, she staged a one-off performance with a 20-piece orchestra at Tivoli Gardens. From there she travelled to London for a second recording session with Martyn Ware, who arrived armed with a shortlist of potential cover songs. With its titular year on the horizon — and Bowie’s support still in her mind — Turner recorded ‘1984’, a song by her most famous fan. Originally a funk-laced slice of dystopian paranoia, in the hands of Ware and co-producer Greg Walsh the song became a robotic fever dream, humanised by Turner’s commanding vocals. But it was a take on a southern sour bass det would pertect this mix of machine-tooled music and passion-fuelled singing, while also giving Turner the breakthrough she’d been working towards.

“Top of my list for Tina was Let’s Stay Together, by Al Green,” Ware says. “I thought we could contemporise it, and, fortunately, she was an enormous fan of Al.” Building from ethereal synth lines into a percussion-assisted slow-dance number, the song exemplified Ware’s vision of “worn futurism”, its mechanical framework adorned with organic instruments such as baritone saxophone and guitar lines that played call-and-response with Turner’s vocals. “It’s like an endless succession of beautiful hooks, with all that mysterious weirdness going on in the background,” he says.

Swapping the opening two verses of Green’s original lyrics as she thought of an unrequited love back home, Turner explored new depths of her artistry, channelling them into a perfect, one-take vocal. “She was as much an actor in the studio as she was a singer,” Ware notes. “She barely sings that first line. It’s like she’s talking to you and you’re in her confidence. She sells it on a one-to-one basis to everybody who’s listening.”

Released as a single in November 1983, ‘Let’s Stay Together’ raced to No.6 in the UK. “I knew it was worthy of being successful,” Ware says. “It sounded like a million dollars on the radio. It was elegant, classy — and it still reaches out now.” Grabbing the attention of stateside DJs who spun import copies ahead of its official US release, the song would go on to top the Billboard dance chart, becoming the biggest-selling 12” single in North America to date. Boosted by a seductive promo video directed by David Mallet — Turner, her dancers, plenty of soft lighting — it also went into heavy rotation on MTV and brought Turner into homes around the world. Eager for more, Capitol finally gave a full-length project the green light. All she had to do was deliver it within two weeks.

“When she first heard the song she jumped up and started singing along”

Turner had scored big on the UK charts once before, with ‘River Deep, Mountain High’. Despite being co-credited to Ike, the 1966 single was a Turner solo outing in all but name, on which she soared unfettered above a crew of session musicians hand-picked by producer Phil Spector for a walloping “Wall of Sound” construction that sounded unlike anything else she had recorded. With England now embracing her latest stylistic reinvention in ‘Let’s Stay Together’, it was the obvious place for Turner to call home as she worked on what would become Private Dancer.

If Turner felt any pressure, she didn’t show it. During a landmark appearance on the cult UK TV show The Tube, partially aired live in October before being screened in its entirety in December, she had taken control of the stage, delivering a full-throttle performance that forced Channel 4 to delay the evening’s news broadcast while they waited for her to finish. Alongside John Lydon’s post-Sex Pistols band, Public Image Ltd, and the chart-conquering synth-pop duo Eurythmics, Turner was “full-on energy”, Paul Cox says today. Hired to photograph Turner during the show, Cox recalls the studio audience’s reaction to a set that included everything from Beatles covers (‘Get Back’, ‘Help!’) to vintage calling cards (Nutbush City Limits’, ‘River Deep, Mountain High’) and a cathartic ‘Let’s Stay Together’. “She was sort of the outsider that night,” he says. “No one knew what to expect. And she just rattled off all these numbers and blew the place apart.”

Turner was no less explosive in the studio, making light work of laying down the songs that would feature on her long-awaited new album. Her manager, Roger Davies, had been careening around London, meeting with songwriters and producers, filling a leather bag with cassettes featuring potential songs for Turner to record. The first batch that he played to her included. ‘Better Be Good to Me’, a little-known single issued a couple of years earlier by a New York rock band called Spider, and which immediately grabbed Turner’s attention. Co-written by Holly Knight, who would go on to work with Turner on ‘One of the Living, from the Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome soundtrack, and craft Turner’s signature hit, ‘The Best’, ‘Better Be Good to Me’ was a rousing pop-rock number that chimed with a female artist demanding respect in a male-dominated industry.

“She had been going through a lot at that time,” Knight, whom Turner would soon dub her “rock chick”, says today. “And she was in a patriarchal world. The story goes that, when she first heard the song she jumped up and started singing along with it, and said, ‘This is the perfect song that I want to do.’ She felt it was positive and that it resonated with what she was feeling. And she maintained the integrity of the song and the attitude of the vocals.”

If the upbeat Terry Britten- and Sue Shifrin-penned synth-rocker ‘Show Some Respect’ underscored the point — with Turner throwing in a nod to ‘Respect’, the classic Otis Redding song that Aretha Franklin turned into an anthem in1967 — more elements of Turner’s personal life filtered into I Might Have Been Queen. With lyrics by Jeannette Obstoj, the then partner of Rupert Hine, who would produce two of Private Dancer’s songs, ‘I Might Have Been Queen’ used Turner’s Buddhist faith as the jumping-off point for a time-bending trawl through Turner’s story, from childhood to career reinvention. Placed at the start of the album, the song sent a clear message to those who’d yet to encounter this new incarnation of Turner: “I’m a new pair of eyes/Every time I am born,” she sings over an urgent bass line. “And I’m scanning the horizon for someone recognising/ That I might have been queen.” As she holds a defiant note on the line “I’m a Soul Survivor,” her determination to succeed is made plain.

“I think love has everything to do with everything”

From the electro-soul cover of Ann Peebles pained ‘I Can’t Stand the Rain’ to the sociopolitical narrative of rough’n’tumble rocker ‘Steel Claw’, Turner found something in each of Private Dancer’s songs that she could relate to, enabling her to inhabit them as her own. Yet when Roger Davies played her the demo of another Terry Britten song, What’s Love Got to Do With It, she initially heard little that she connected with. “It was awful,” she recalled in the documentary Tina. “I was rock’n’roll. That was a pop song.” While discussing the track with Britten, she told him straight: “I don’t like that song.”

Having already been recorded and left unreleased by one-time Eurovision Song Contest winners Bucks Fizz, ‘What’s Love Got to Do With It was looking for the right artist to claim it, and Davies was convinced that Turner fit the bill. After some tweaks from Britten, including a change of key, Turner began to feel her way into the song, refining her approach as she went.

“She began trying to take the song at full tilt right from the start,” Britten told International Musician and Recording World in 1986. “But I said, ‘No.  We’ve got to start it quietly and build it all the way through. You can wail at the end.’” Setting up two microphones in the studio, one directly in front of Turner, to capture her voice up close, another four inches away, where it would better handle her open-throated cries, Britten guided Turner through the song, instructing her to ignore the recording equipment and simply sing into his ear as if she were performing only for him. Following Britten’s advice, Turner imbued the moody late-night ballad with all the intimacy it needed, shifting into high gear at the decisive moment and leaving Britten and studio engineer John Hudson speechless. “I was blown away,” Hudson told Sound on Sound of the recording session. “She was so loud it was unreal — we had the doors closed and they could hear her in the reception area!”

Released as a single in May 1984, just as Turner took to the road for a high-profile support slot on Lionel Richie’s Can’t Slow Down Tour, ‘What’s Love Got to Do With It became the hit that Davies had predicted it would be, peaking at No.3 in the UK and riding Turner’ towering performance all the way to the top spot in the US. Yet while some heard in its lyrics a cynical dismissal of romance from an iron-willed artist defining the terms of her own career, Turner demurred. Allowing that the song “really fit a lot of liberated girls” who were learning how to find themselves amid the fast-changing mores of the 1980s, she was nevertheless keen to put listeners straight on the matter: “In my case, love has a lot to do with it,” she told CBS News shortly after Private Dancer’s release “I think love has everything to do with it”.

“She is so attuned to music and so filled with her own internal rhythm”

Travelling in the slipstream of ‘What’s Love Got Do With It’, Private Dancer was released to acclaim on 29 May. Rounded out with the title track, plus Turner’s recordings of ‘Let’s Stay Together’, ‘1984’ and, on international editions, ‘Help!’, the album received a four-star review in Rolling Ston Hearing not “a single dud” song, the magazine praised Turner’s “rasping but strong, physical ay impossible sensual” voice — an instrument in its own right which, the Los Angeles Times declared “melts vinyl”. And if Cash Boxhailed the album “a spectacular return”, The New York Times went bigger still, calling Private Dancer “a landmark not only in the career of the 45-year-old singer ... but in the evolution of pop-soul music itself”.

Charting new territory for music, Turner also led the way for the era’s most effective marketing tool. Following its launch in the summer of 198 the dedicated music channel MTV had broken countless artists, and, Paul Cox says, promo videos had become “more and more complicated” by, time Turner released Private Dancer. With both her hair and her persona seemingly getting bigger with each new single, Turner was the perfect star for this visual medium. “She fitted in there nicely,” Cox says. “Music videos were getting over the top, like mini fims, and she was a larger-than-life person capable of reaching a massive audience. It worked in her favour, big time.”

Many new fans would have caught their first glimpse of Turner on her ubiquitous vídeo for “What’s Love Got to Do With It, A step up from the performance pieces she had filmed for ‘Let’s Stay Together’ and ‘Help!’, the clip featured Turner singing the song while making her way through the New York City streets, rebuffing unsuitable suitors and even intervening in a fight between one young couple. But she truly pulled out all the stops for the ‘Private Dancer’ video, highlighting the song’s importance not just to the album but also to her sense of herself as an artist.

Originally written by Dire Straits’ frontman, Mark Knopfler, but failing to find a home on his group’s 1982 album, Love Over Gold, ‘Private Dancer’ had come Turner’s way after Knopfler’s then manager, Ed Bicknell, passed a demo recording on to Roger Davies. With members of Dire Straits joining her in the studio and British guitar hero Jeff Beck adding a solo in Knopfler’s absence — asking in return only that Turner carve her name into the body of his pink Jackson Soloist — Turner interpreted Knopfler’s desolate ballad in a way that built upon the original meaning of its lyrics. “I think most of us have been in situations where we had to sell ourselves,” she wrote in My Love Story. “I was thinking about that when I sang the song, the sadness of doing something that you don’t want to do, day in, day out. It’s very emotional.”

Filmed in London’s Rivoli Ballroom, the Private Dancer promo video gave Turner the chance to express that emotion in a theatrical setting. With the building in disrepair and about to be condemned, Turner, director Brian Grant and a troupe of dancers under the guidance of choreographer Arlene Phillips endured a 19 hour shoot that lasted until 4am, with little but wooden boxes to sit on between takes and strung-up curtains cordoning off a makeshift changing room. “There were no good facilities,” Phillips says today. “Toilets were rough. But it bonded everyone, and Tina was extraordinary. She truly put everything into it — her heart and soul. It was a role she was taking on, and she wasn’t afraid to cry.”

With Turner playing an escort dancer, Phillips choreographed routines for jaded characters that appeared as if in a dream — or nightmare — version of her life: a sailor, a magician, a geisha, a doll-like ballerina. “I was trying to find a way of making it evocative of someone’s life, “but not clearly defining it. Was this a dream or was it real?” Phillips says. “And I felt that Tina was living her own memories through the way she told this story — there was something deep in the way she approached it. She used gestures, rather than full-on dance.”

Opening up about her life and sharing her love of dance with the cast and crew, Turner acknowledged the differences between her usual performance style with her own internal rhythm, and she was able to adapt that beautifully to a soft and expressive movement.”

Live on stage, however, Turner was as freewheeling as ever. And the success of Private Dancer meant that she would be letting rip nightly throughout most of 1985.

“She has a legacy that will continue”

Shortly before picking up three wins at that year’s Grammy Awards — Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female (Better Be Good to Me’), Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female and Record of the Year (both for What’s Love Got to Do With It’) — and a further two nominations (Best R&B Vocal Performance, Female and Album of the Year; the ‘Private Dancer’ promo would receive its own nod in 1986), Turner launched the Private Dancer Tour. Opening in Helsinki, Finland, on 19 February and stretching on for 182 shows over five legs and almost as many continents, the tour presented Turner in her prime.

“She was a powerhouse,” Paul Cox says. “She fed off the audience and put so much into each show.” Although it was difficult for Cox to catch Turner mid-flight, his photos from that time, whether of pre-tour rehearsals or taken during the shows themselves, capture the energy and enthusiasm that radiated from her whenever she was on stage. “I never knew what I was going to get until I processed it,” Cox says. “She wasn’t just dancing in one spot — she flew across the stage: backwards, forwards, all over the place.”

Shot over two nights at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre, the concert film Tina Live: Private Dancer Tour marked yet another victory for Turner, who was now easily packing out the arena-sized venues she’d set her sights on half a decade earlier. On hand to help her celebrate were two generations of rock star: Bryan Adams, previewing It’s Only Love’, the single he and Turner would soon release together, and David Bowie, the man who had led the stampede to see Turner at the Ritz two years earlier. After duetting on ‘Tonight’, a reggaefied remake of the Bowie/Iggy Pop song that Bowie had re-recorded with Turner for his latest album, they brought the evening to a close with Bowie’s smash 1983 hit ‘Let’s Dance, a palpable joy emanating from the two confirmed admirers. “They got on really well; they were very comfortable with each other,” Cox, who photographed the pair together both backstage and during the concert, says.

Live Aid would follow, and Turner could also be heard singing on ‘We Are the World’ as part of the star-studded USA for Africa supergroup, featuring many of the biggest names on the planet, among them Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. “Her energy was such that all those people looked at her and went, I want to be a part of that,” Cox says. “She always pulled people along.”

And she continues to do so today. Calling Turner “an icon I grew up with”, Norwegian DJ Kygo took a remix of ‘What’s Love Got to Do With It’ back into the charts in the summer of 2020. Reaching an even younger generation, ‘Better Be Good to Me’ featured in Paramount Pictures’ 2024 fantasy drama IF, soundtracking a key scene that included a playful homage to Turner’s promo video for the song. A perennial entry in “greatest albums” lists, Private Dancer has transcended its era, with the US Library of Congress deeming it “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” enough to be preserved in their National Recording Registry.

“It’s timeless,” Holly Knight says today. “And even that cover photo of her is timeless — the way her legs are just out there. It was a very empowering image. There was nobody doing anything like that before. There weren’t many women who wanted to rock out in that way, and you don’t often see a singer break through in their 40s.

“How many artists can you say put out a record 40 years ago and, 40 years later, we’re talking about that artist more than ever?” she adds. “It’s very rare to be that lasting. And that will continue.

Discovering Tina’s music is a rite of passage.”

Jason Draper

[ritusmiles]

Book and a Brew with Ritu - A Holiday Romance In Ferry Lane Market by @nicolamay1 #NewRelease #BookReview

An extra special guest! How exciting! Today, I am hosting the wonderfully talented Nicola May, an author who has shown how youcan make it successfully as a self-published one! Hello, and welcome to But I Smile Anyway, Nicola! Now, the first thing we do is get thedrinks sorted. How lovely to be invited, thank you. Before I get all flustered and fangirly, let me get you a drink. What I your…

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[honolulubelle]

Book Review: The One That I Want (Ever After Agency #3) by Sandy Barker  @sandybarkerauthor @TheBoldBookclub

The One That I Want (Ever After Agency #3) by Sandy Barker Amazon  / B&N / Apple / GP / BB Greta Davies, the features editor at a women’s magazine, is accomplished and successful. That is, in all areas except her love life. Determined to help, Greta’s boss – and friend – secretly enlists the help of the Ever After Agency, and sets out to make her dreams come true. Work-obsessed Greta is nothing…

[furcafe]

Saturday = @thomasedisonff winning short films at @ngadc , followed by: (1) drinks (“Sailor Moon Prism Power Punch” & “Kaiju #2”) w/ @flore2pre9 at @thepassengerdc ; (2) random encounters w/ @yoner & @mattdunndc on 7th St.; (3) a beer w/Dunn in his den; & (4) a nighttime sighting of melted Lincoln at Sandy Williams IV’s “40 ACRES: Camp Barker” at Garrison ES, S St. Lens c.2010, camera c.2019. #dcondigital

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A post shared by Christopher Chen (@furcafe)

[the-book-queen]

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