Tina Arena Is Everything!

[Mel O'Drama]

This is lovely.

Apparently this Spanish version of Burn is only available on the Latin American version of In Deep, which I can't see online anywhere.

I've got a number of French TA songs and an Italian one or two, but no Spanish songs. She sounds great in any language.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Tina has another Greatest Hits album coming out next month to commemorate her 40th year in the business. It's probably about time as her last proper GH album was 2004 and she's released quite a bit of new material since then.

The name Greatest Hits & Interpretations built up my hopes a little too much. I immediately found myself hoping it would include some new cover songs à la her Songs Of Love & Loss albums. Instead, the Interpretations disc features a few of Tina's previous cover songs but is mostly other artists covering Tina songs. It certainly gives the album a USP. I can't think of another artist who has done anything quite like this. But as I have almost all of the Tina material on it, I'm not sure if the USP is enough for me to justify buying it.

I haven't ruled out the possibility though. It's nice to see some of her earlier work here, and I've never got round to buying the French edition of Love & Loss so I don't have the INXS cover either. Plus it has that great version of Chains that she did live with Jessica Mauboy.

The Dannii Minogue appearance is appropriate too, as they both started out together on YTT:

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Tina Arena was in my dream last night. I can't remember it in detail, other than I was staying with some friends at their home and she was also staying there. I think there were lots of different people crashing there. Anyway, we got talking as we were packing to leave and I commented that I'd been to her concert in London a couple of years ago but had missed the most recent. I think she offered me tickets to see her next show and I was really looking forward to it because she was going to acknowledge me and everyone there was going to know I was like that with Miss Arena. It was all very ordinary and unglamorous. I think she was wearing a sweater and jeans. And as I recall, she packed really light. I could tell she was used to being on the road.

 

[Alexis]

Poor Tina has been side lined by me now that Steps have sneaked up on us with a new album and single. Her fellow Aussie Darren Hayes' albums all plopped through my letterbox this week too and I have yet to listen to them. I think Scared Of The Dark has been played 147980 times...

 

[Jason73]

Tina Arena was in my dream last night. I can't remember it in detail, other than I was staying with some friends at their home and she was also staying there. I think there were lots of different people crashing there. Anyway, we got talking as we were packing to leave and I commented that I'd been to her concert in London a couple of years ago but had missed the most recent. I think she offered me tickets to see her next show and I was really looking forward to it because she was going to acknowledge me and everyone there was going to know I was like that with Miss Arena. It was all very ordinary and unglamorous. I think she was wearing a sweater and jeans. And as I recall, she packed really light. I could tell she was used to being on the road.

Again, I envy your dreams. They're so star studded. My dream last night revolved around damage to a new apartment I was moving into and at one point me being chased by two playful pigs. Nary a celebrity in sight.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Poor Tina has been side lined by me

Someone needs to change the thread title.

I've made up for your neglect by adding several Tina songs into my Favourites playlist in the past week or so, in addition to the ones that were already there. Tina now has a healthy 34 tracks in that playlist.

The recently added ones include:

Never (Past Tense)


Si Je Ne T'aimais Pas

If I Didn't Love You [Australian Album Edit]

Bring Me Love

Ti Voglio Qui
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_htYaulMKCA
The Italian version of Burn. I want to learn the lyrics to this one, too. The chorus is easy, but I think the rest will be hard work so I may come back to it another time

Incidentally, I suspect Google Translate is as unreliable as ever with this one. I used it to see what the literal English translation would be, but I think there may be a little misinterpretation going on. The translation of this line in particular had me raising my eyebrows:

Vuoi scopare davvero ma con chi

Again, I envy your dreams. They're so star studded. My dream last night revolved around damage to a new apartment I was moving into and at one point me being chased by two playful pigs. Nary a celebrity in sight.

They may be nice to participate in but there's not much depth to these celeb dreams. I think yours would be far more fun to analyse in depth.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Tina's live version of Many Rivers To Cross (from one of the Chains CD singles) has become something of a goto track for me in recent weeks. While looking on YouTube to see if I could find a video of it I came across this great set from the Hard Rock Cafe:

Great to see Tina playing piano. God - singing, songwriting, playing instruments and speaking in several languages. What I wouldn't give to have a fraction of her talent.

She looks like Debra Messing in the Many Rivers part, I think. Once I'd seen it I couldn't not see it.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

A nice interview with Tina where she talks about everything from her Eleven album to the Paris attacks.

I love how frank she is.


"I implore commercial radio to continue to support Australian music, and base your playlists on the quality of the song - and not the age of the artist. I want to also acknowledge that ladies over forty are still in the game in a big way. My darling friend behind me, Miss Kylie Minogue. The wonderful Madonna. J-Lo. Annie Lennox. My Lord, the list does go on. Keep doing what you're doing. And keep doing what you do best ladies. Because we will decide when it's time for us to stop."

"I have enough experience under my belt that if I can't be honest well, what the bloody hell am I doing there? Seriously."

"Do not take away my voice. That is what I have. That is how I communicate with people."

 

[Mel O'Drama]

I've given If I Didn't Love You a chance this week and it could be a future favourite. Then I discovered this passionate live version...

Which led me into a YouTube wormhole of live Tina tracks.


She's incredibly good unplugged. This acoustic version of Sixteen Years is stunning. And free of "mmmm banana"s:

 

[Jason73]

"I implore commercial radio to continue to support Australian music, and base your playlists on the quality of the song - and not the age of the artist. I want to also acknowledge that ladies over forty are still in the game in a big way. My darling friend behind me, Miss Kylie Minogue. The wonderful Madonna. J-Lo. Annie Lennox. My Lord, the list does go on. Keep doing what you're doing. And keep doing what you do best ladies. Because we will decide when it's time for us to stop."

Oh wow, I couldn't love her more.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

This is really nice. Like catching up with a friend who is excited about their new home.

It's so good to see that she lives her truth. The warmth of her new place really shines through. It's a proper home and I really got a feeling of it being an authentic part of Tina.

Her philosophy is so admirable:

"It's the old shower. It's the old kitchen. Everything functions and that's the most important thing for me."

"This is just very makeshift for the time being."

"It's a very humble kitchen."

"It's not always easy being Tina Arena every day so I kinda like my break."


Such a refreshing change from shallow OK magazine photoshoots where people have more money than taste and it feels like they've never used the rooms being shot.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

I'm curious what @Alexis will think of this one:

I think it's rather lovely, and enjoyed the lyric change in the second verse.



Oh - and on a related note:

 

[Mel O'Drama]

I'm just binge-posting now, but I'm in a very Tina place today.

My bank balance was looking healthy today, so I've treated myself to a couple of Tina albums:

Just Me

This is well overdue and so very necessary. Symphony Of Life is amazing, of course. I'm looking forward to discovering this album properly.


7 Vies

She sounds so heavenly in French.

Ti Voglio Qui
The Italian version of Burn. I want to learn the lyrics to this one, too. The chorus is easy, but I think the rest will be hard work so I may come back to it another time

I've been listening to this one a fair bit this week.

God, I'm so uncultured when it comes to speaking languages other than English. But I am enjoying having a go at these. It's coming on very slowly, but I've got the first verse down as well as the chorus and the bridge. So that just leaves the second verse.




It'll probably take me another couple of weeks of intermittent learning before I'm happy with this one. After that, the next foreign language Tina song on my radar will be this one from 7 Vies (once again, it's reworked from one of her English songs):

 

[Alexis]

I'm curious what @Alexis will think of this one:

I think it's rather lovely, and enjoyed the lyric change in the second verse.



Oh - and on a related note:

Oh wow! That was just gorgeous. I loved Tina's version. She just nails it no matter what she does doesn't she? I have heard that song about 7 million times. And I have to admit it has really become one of my least favourite or more exhausted Celine songs, along with Because You Loved Me. I wasn't sure what I was going to think but Tina is such a great singer and she has an ability to really own a song and personalise it. I too enjoyed the lyric changes. I thought she did a great job of the last verse and chorus too.

And funny to see Celine loving Tina do her thing.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

I have heard that song about 7 million times. And I have to admit it has really become one of my least favourite or more exhausted Celine songs, along with Because You Loved Me.

Same here. It's a great song but was so over-exposed in the late Nineties I haven't been able to listen to it since around 2001. So I wasn't sure what I was going to make of this. Hearing Tina's has brought the newness back.

Tina is such a great singer and she has an ability to really own a song and personalise it.

There are some songs that she's covered that just seem to belong to someone else... Until I hear her sing it. And then her interpretation makes perfect sense.

Her two Love & Loss albums are perfect examples of that. Well over half the tracks on them used to have an immediate association with a specific artist, but Tina's changed that for most of them.

And funny to see Celine loving Tina do her thing.

They have much in common really. Their French albums not least.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Ta Vie has just made it onto my regular listening schedule:

I've made a couple of tweaks to it though. Firstly, the volume on her French albums seems uncomfortably loud - something that really jumped out with Ta Vie's uptempo opening. They seem very bass-heavy too.

So I've created a version that's a few DBs lower in volume. AND I've created an alternative version that has the more sedate intro from the English language version, Until:

It's really surprising how different that teeny change makes the whole song feel. The uptempo intro makes the whole song feel more poppy, while with the short and slow intro it feels more like a classic ballad that builds and builds. I'm in quite a ballad-heavy place at the moment, so the tweaked version of Ta Vie has clicked with me in a big way.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

I've been exploring some Tina covers recently. LeAnn Rimes's version of You Made Me Find Myself led me on to another version which has blown me away:

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Wow.

I started to watch this expecting to skim through, but found I had to watch it all the way through.

To hold the attention while giving a keynote speech almost an hour in length is quite a feat - and this is how it's done:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=299&v=KK-zFPLk45E

So fascinating to hear Tina speak out on this level. She covers the lot from everything wrong TV reality shows to the news. And she has a lot to say about all aspects of the music industry, from royalties and taxes to gender/age inequalities and also throws in her views on streaming and the internet. And, of course, a potted history of her life and career to date.

I love how she becomes more animated and relaxed as the minutes tick by, becoming more liberal with the f-word and funnies.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

It occurred to me today that outside of Symphony, You Made Me Find Myself and the French tracks I haven't listened to Just Me a great deal. I've had a bit of a listen today and dragged a few tracks into my daily-used Favourites playlist. I'm Gone, Something's Gotta Change and God Only Knows are three of them, but the one that I loved immediately is Tangled.

The strings and the exotic background harmonies really grab me in the intro (the Indian sound of said harmonies reminds me of the original Central Park West theme, Madonna's Erotica and The English Patient). The lyrics of the verses have a depth to them and the chorus is very catchy indeed.



Other Tina tracks that continue to be heavily-played are Je m'appelle Bagdad (both the original and the remix), Ti Voglio Qui, I Only Want To Be With You, Every Breath You Take, Downtown and Symphony Of Life/Symphonie de l'âme.

Father Christmas was thoughtful enough to get me Tina's latest album which I can't wait to hear (except I'll have to wait. But I'll be back to gush over it when I sort myself out a disc drive).

 

[Mel O'Drama]

For no particular reason I sought out a male cover of Je M'appelle Bagdad yesterday and came across this gorgeous version by occasional Tina collaborator Patrick Fiori.

It's made more magical by him performing it for Tina who is visibly very moved by it.


The setup got me looking into the show itself, which was new to me. Stars Au Grand Air was a short-lived series in which singers spend a few days living together, bonding over meals and activities. Over the course of the weekend, they take turns to interpret songs associated with (and presumably mostly written by) the others.

While I don't understand all that's being said, it's still fascinating to watch the chemistry between them and to see Tina conversing almost completely in French (she comes out with English sentences every once in a while).

Here's a scene where they meet up and go food shopping. Oh - and Tina appears to be MeToo'd by an old French singer at 2:55:

What the heck... here's the entire first episode. It's all worth watching, but from about 46 mins there are covers galore of Tina's songs, plus Tina performing her very own Still Running:

Oh - that car Patrick is driving at 6:45. I crave it.