Released as a tie-in to
Tina Turner's fall 2008 tour of North America,
Tina! follows her last greatest-hits album
All the Best: The Hits by a mere three years and it has the same number of tracks as its predecessor, six of which are songs shared between the two compilations. This makes
Tina! feel similar to
All the Best but it's a different compilation in many ways, with a broader scope, reaching back for "River Deep Mountain High" and "The Acid Queen," neither of which were on the 2005 comp, and containing two previously unreleased bonus tracks. It also contains a hefty dose of live tracks -- "Let's Stay Together," "I Can't Stand the Rain," and "The Best," are all present in live versions -- her James Bond theme "Goldeneye" and a 1993 re-recording of "Proud Mary." So,
Tina! covers a lot of ground and gives a pretty good indication of
Turner's far-reaching talents and long-ranging career, but it's also a bit of a mess, jumping between eras, overlooking some big hits, and substituting live versions when the studio is superior. So don't think of
Tina! as a definitive comp, something that has yet to be assembled on
Tina, but rather as a sampler that contains some, but not nearly all, of her best. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine