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The singer's third solo album is an act of divine ruthlessness, full of dance-y, mid-tempo clarity
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![<p>“This Musical is my life,” Tina Turner says. She’s speaking literally. Turner is onstage at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on Broadway, where <em>Tina</em>, the previously mentioned biographical stage production, has just officially opened. “It’s like poison that turned to medicine,” Turner says of the rough journey that inspired the show. Then she turns to the cast and smiles. “How long will you do this? Not as long as I did it, I hope.” </p>
<p>It’s early November, a few weeks before Turner will turn 80 years old. Adrienne Warren portrays the Queen of Rock & Roll through earlier, rockier years — from a timid childhood as Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush, Tennessee, to being a new arrival in St. Louis, to her transcendent work and abusive relationship with Ike Turner. And, finally, to Turner’s thunderous comeback in middle age, complete with iconic porcupine-spike wigs.</p>
<p>Warren is ecstatic and electrifying through early hits like “Proud Mary” and Turner’s later-career “Private Dancer” pop reboot. The performer not only shows how Turner develops and changes as a singer — you can hear her mature vocally as the show -progresses — she also radiates Turner’s ferocious energy as she moves into stardom. “[Adrienne] transformed herself into the person she needed to be,” Turner explains of the process of becoming, well, her. “With every note and every move of her hips, Adrienne is pure Tina. She has my admiration and my blessing. In fact, I like to say that I want to thank her parents, because now that she’s onstage, I can truly retire.” <em>— Jerry Portwood</em></p>](https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/tina-opening-act.jpg?crop=3:2,smart&w=90)
![<p>On a Chilly October night, in the middle of David Byrne’s stunning Broadway debut, <em>American Utopia,</em> the former Talking Head tells the audience to get up and dance. He’s already played exuberant versions of “Once in a Lifetime” and “Born Under Punches,” but the crowd is seated. People seem to be under the misimpression that this is like any other production.</p>
<p>“People don’t know if they’re allowed to dance or if the ushers are going to come down on them with flashlights,” Byrne says a few days later. “When I tell them they can, it’s like I popped the top off the bottle.”</p>
<p>He’s more or less the same old Byrne but in a regular-size suit, delivering brilliant soliloquies about voting, while 11 backing musicians play a floor-shaking mix of Talking Heads hits and solo tracks. It shows (Byrne hopes) how people can work toward his egalitarian vision of utopia. “Everybody gets a showcase,” he says. “An audience can experience a different kind of social order. That has a huge impact.”</p>
<p>The only noninstrumental prop in the show is the model of a human brain that Byrne brings out in the opening number, “Here.” It sets up the whole show. “Here’s [my character] who’s inside his head at the beginning,” he says. “By the end, he’s a different person.” <em>— Kory Grow</em></p>](https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/1334__DB_4954.jpg?crop=3:2,smart&w=90)
