Simply The Best: 4 Essential Tina Turner Albums

Workin’ Together (1970)

By 1970, Ike and Tina Turner had begun to experience mainstream success. After a performance on The Ed Sullivan Show, a summer of festival gigs, and a string of shows throughout Asia, the duo released their thirteenth studio album, Workin’ Together. The record, which features a mix of original tracks and classic rock covers, was the couple’s most commercially successful.

Turner’s vocal skill shines on the biting “Funkier Than A Mosquita’s Tweeter” (written by her sister Alline Bullock), as well as the duo’s funk rock rendition of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary.” The latter earned Turner the Grammy Award for Best R&B Vocal Performance by a Group.

Released the summer before she left the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, Turner took cues from British rock and roll to create her second solo album Acid Queen. Inspired by her role as The Acid Queen in director Ken Russell’s film adaptation of The Who’s rock opera Tommy, Turner covered songs by The Rolling Stones, The Who, and Led Zeppelin, as well as sang original material that blended rock, funk, and soul styles. Critics praised her vocals, finding her gruff and gritty delivery perfectly suited to the rock classics.

After the disappointing commercial performance of her third and fourth albums led to a six-year recording hiatus, Turner staged a comeback with Capitol Records. The label gave her just two weeks to record her fifth studio album, Private Dancer. The album features slick pop rock production from English musicians Rupert Hine, Martyn Ware, and Terry Britten, and strong vocal performances — like the Grammy-winning “What’s Love Got to Do with It” — that cemented her reputation as a sonic force.

Private Dancer became Turner’s most acclaimed and most commercially successful record. The album peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, sold more than 12 million copies worldwide, and was selected by the U.S. Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for its significance.

As the follow-up to Turner’s wildly successful fifth album, Break Every Rule saw the singer collaborate with the team that helped create Private Dancer for a second time. She had another platinum-selling hit on her hands that was propelled by several chart-toppers — eight of the record’s 11 songs charted as singles in the U.S. or Europe. Break Every Rule proved that Private Dancer wasn’t a fluke and quickly became another legendary entry in the Tina Turner catalog.