Plays the Hits Made Famous by Tina Turner

The Starsound Orchestra | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 12, 2002)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Delta
• ASIN: B000063148
• Also Available in: Audio CD
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #774,044 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Goldeneye

2. We Don't Need Another Hero

3. What's Love Got to Do With It

4. Proud Mary

5. Better Be Good to Me

6. Let's Stay Together

7. Private Dancer

8. One of the Living

9. Typical Male

10. River Deep, Mountain High

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars From Relaxing To Rowdy, August 31, 2011

By 

"Colorado" Vail (Georgia, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Plays the Hits Made Famous by Tina Turner (Audio CD)

Instrumental versions of songs - as the name says - made famous by Tina Turner (and, in two cases, from her Ike & Tina days).

The "Starsound Orchestra" is, on my copy, a completely faceless aggregation, sans individual credits, but the musicians are competent, and sometimes inspired, which pretty much describes the arrangements. A bit better than Gary Tesca or "Spectrum," perhaps, but similar in approach. You may see "Starsound Orchestra" on a cable TV easy listening channel or your internet radio station playlist at some point, but you can't call all of these songs easy by any stretch of the imagination.

Goldeneye is from the James (Pierce Brosnan) Bond movie, and should be of interest to Bond fans for that reason. (Other movie tie-ins include the Mad Max From Thunderdome "We Don't Need Another Hero," "One For The Living," and the song later used in Tina's bio, "What's Love Got To Do With It").

"Proud Mary" and "River Deep" are the Ike & Tina songs, with the former featuring some gritty (as these things go) guitar. It does NOT follow the hit version slow/fast arrangement, so it's not immediately recognizable for that reason. The latter is a very brisk take with a sax line replacing Tina's vocal. (Phil Spector probably had a lot of worries in his last few years, I suspect, but I'm sure this cover version wasn't one of them . . . )

"One For The Living," "Typical Male," and "Better Be Good To Me," while synth and keyboard-driven, are more uptempo, with rhythmic changes matching the original versions. "Typical" has a nice sax-break, too, so give it points for rowdiness, again in context.

By contrast, "Hero," "What's Love . . . ," "Let's Stay Together," and "Private Dancer," are more relaxing, with some nice guitar on the first three, and tasteful synth lines on the latter. I may be wrong, but I THINK "Hero" has been licensed and released under a different group name (The Westwind Players, from their 1996 CD, "Love Is In The Aire"), so listen to it carefully before paying to download it, to make sure it's not duplicating anything you have. (Not a bad idea for all of these, really).

"Let's Stay Together" is my favorite, with some beautiful tone and guitar.

This CD is a bit short - only ten songs - but still nice to play in the background, particularly if you want to mix these cuts with some vocal (and original) songs by Tina or sympathetic artists. Since Tina, with and without Ike, has done cover versions over the years, it's probably possible to supplement these cuts with instrumental versions of other songs, by other groups, if you want to. To do this, you would probably have to look for tributes to Motown (e.g., Money, It Takes Two), the Beatles (Come Together, Help), and similar sources, but there's no telling how far one could go if they did that.