Taking Sides: Pat Benatar's "We Belong" vs. Tina Turner's "We Don't Need Another Hero"

But the quasimilitary drum part to "We Belong" kicks major ass.

Plus, by the time of "We Don't Need Another Hero" I think Tina had become a sort of caricature of herself. Of course she still sings her heart out, but her passion is kinda wasted when it's brought to such mediocre material.

Have you been in the Thunderdome? It seems pretty traumatic to me.

Oh, I wouldn't go that far. Even Tina's stuff with Ike was histrionic crap more than half the time.

OTMFMFMFMFMFM. "Invincible" gives me chills. I wonder if there's a CD-R's worth of Benatar material worthy of that and "Love is a Battlefield".

That said, Benatar never made an album as consistent as Private Dancer.

But "We Belong" was Pat's biggest hit for a reason. More than just a nice piece of work by Lowen and Navarro, it's a 3-minute, tour de force of desire, obsession, fear and trembling, hopelessness, true faith, and the futility of resistance when passion storms the ego's fragile barricades. It's there in way the tremulous keyboard hook gives way to the irrefutable drums, the way those full stops in the verses' sung melody are swept away by the absolute certainty of the chorus...

Nothing wrong with "Invincible," or "Shadows of the Night," but this "We Belong" is a fuckin' madman, and I'll take the Pepsi Challenge with Thunderdome shit any ol' day of the fuckin' week.

Was it?

but yeah Love is a Battlefied is better.

Growing up far after the peaks of both songs, I'd say I probably heard "Love is a Battlefield" about 40 times before I heard "We Belong" once, for whatever that's worth.

Suppose we could start looking at total sales, weeks on chart, etc etc. fwiw, "Battlefield" (which doesn't do much for me) did seem to pwn MTV for months.

Sadly, she never released her cover of "Wuthering Heights" as a single...

Alfred, don't worry, "Shadows Of The Night" will live on for as long as there is breath in my lungs on karaoke night. It's epic, though the chorus repeats get a little tired.

This kid at day camp had a couple of visors of various colors, emblazoned with the word(?) "BOOZ".

About four of us sang to him, to the tune of the Tina Turner song: "We don't need another BOOOOOOOZ hat!"

In my head I misheard "We don't need another hero" as "We don't need two 'nother wang ho's"

Another misheard line is "We are the ones to Philbin the air"

You gotta love Tina in general, but "Hero" is supposed to be set in this savage, post-apocalyptic, post-technological future, and the song drips with air-conditioned-LA-studio, sushi-eating, yoga-doing vibe. It's doesn't fit.

Even after factoring in the chorus, "Invincible" seems no better or worse than much of the Benatar/Geraldo catalog, from "Hard To Believe" to "Le Bel Age." What am I missing?

THAT, folks, is what we call a bold statement. Respec'.

Wye Oak's cover of "We Belong" made me fall back in love with this song.

https://youtu.be/sWlP5rCXWmA

ALL THE CHILDREN SAY

otm

yes

has to be the 6-minute version from the soundtrack/12", though

I fucking love that synth loop in We Belong so much, Giraldo is such a lowkey mad genius - he has such a skill for setting the table for Benatar to belt it out of the park

the 12" instrumental cut here is one of my secretest secret weapons

https://www.discogs.com/Tina-Turner-The-Balearic-Sound-Of-Tina-Turner/release/6235018

thunderdome is sick. and private dancer. both are sick.

"One of the Living" >>>> "We Don't Need Another Hero"