Hear Tina Turner’s Previously Unreleased “Hot For You Baby” From Private Dancer 40th-Anniversary Reissue

Tina Turner, a towering figure in the history of American music, passed away in 2023 at the age of 83. Today, we get to hear some previously unreleased music from Turner’s greatest moment of pop success. In the early ’80s, Turner was free of her abusive ex-husband Ike and trying to mount a comeback, something that simply did not seem possible for a middle-aged Black woman whose biggest hits were more than a decade old. But Turner went to the UK and worked with some sharp young rock and new wave writers and producers, and she released Private Dancer, the grand and historic return that went quintuple platinum and spawned the #1 hit “What’s Love Got To Do With It.” Now, there’s a 40th-anniversary Private Dancer box set on the way, and a previously unreleased song arrives today.

The upcoming Private Dancer reissue is actually set to arrive closer to the album’s 41st anniversary, but it doesn’t skimp on extras. The full box set will include standalone singles from that era, B-sides, alternate mixes, and a couple of full live recordings from the stretch where Tina Turner suddenly became a stadium act. There will also be a live-concert DVD filmed in Birmingham in 1985, featuring guest appearances from David Bowie and Bryan Adams. In with all that, we’re getting a couple of previously unreleased album outtakes, including “Hot For You Baby,” the song that just came out today.

“Hot For You Baby” was written by John Paul Young, the Australian singer behind the 1978 disco hit “Love Is In The Air,” and Turner recorded it with the late producer John Carter, who worked with guys like Sammy Hagar. The song is a fully charged-up ’80s studio-rocker with the ultra-clean production of that era and a beautifully-unhinged raspy-howl performance from Turner. She really threw herself into this one. The song itself is cheesy, but it’s cheesy in a very catchy and endearing way. It’s the type of song that might get you to sign up for aerobics classes. We don’t really have songs like this anymore. Listen below.

The 40th-anniversary version of Private Dancer is out 3/21 on Capitol.