Have you ever heard Tina Turner sing a bad version of a good song? Her complete emotional commitment to every note — have you ever heard her half-step? — requires that her material match her intensity. That, unfortunately, is far from the case on Twenty Four Seven. At sixty, Turner still sounds incredible; she's lost remarkably little of her range and none of her power. She sweeps through the eleven generic tracks on this album with the force of a tornado whipping through a trailer park. The cornball synthetic arrangements — some misguided attempt to be contemporary? — only make matters worse. Some of the problems with Twenty Four Seven, however, are Turner's own. Since her dramatic and much-deserved comeback with Private Dancer in 1984, she has increasingly leaned toward gleamingly clean productions and middling pop fare. She seems embarrassed by the gritty R&B that made her reputation — perhaps because much of it was recorded with her famously estranged ex-husband, the legendary Ike Turner. That aesthetic choice hasn't hurt her career, but it has damaged her art. Twenty Four Seven is the theme-park version of this masterful performer — evocative of the real thing but ultimately harmless, which is about the last thing Tina Turner should be.

“1999”

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.