Better Be Good To Me

by

Tina Turner

Album: Private Dancer      Released: 1985

US Chart: 5     UK Chart: 45

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This was written by Holly Knight and Mike Chapman. Knight tells the story: "I was seeing a guy at the time who kind of had this adorable little crush on me, this German guy. He came to my house and left me some flowers and a note, and it said something like, 'If you're good to me.' And I'm thinking, you know, if I can twist that around I can make it into a song."

Chapman and Knight wrote this for Knight's band Spider, who released the original version in 1981. Chapman and Knight wrote several hits together, including "Love Is A Battlefield" and "The Best, but this was the first song they ever wrote together. Chapman was an established songwriter, but this was new to Knight, who quickly learned she had a talent for composing songs. Says Knight: "I didn't know I was a songwriter 'til Mike Chapman told me I was. I was playing keyboard since I was 4, but I only wrote because everybody else in my band Spider was doing it, and they kind of sucked."

On Holly Knight's MySpace page, she has a video of her performing the song with Spider along with Tina Turner's version. Says Knight: "You can see how much she respects the way the song sounded, because she's not a writer. Although in my opinion the only song she wrote was one of her best ("Nutbush City Limits"). She's very good at hearing something and appreciating how it was done, and leaving it that way. So you can really hear the original singer doing it, who's a white girl, that had a very soulful voice. And you know, our record didn't do anything. The production is similar, but ours is more like Lou Reed's "Walk On The Wild Side," hers is a little bit more upbeat and stuff. But nonetheless, it's very similar."

Holly Knight also wrote the Animotion hit "Obsession." She explains: "That song is very similar to 'Obsession' in as much as it's two chords. It shows you the ability to write a hit song with very little, sometimes the fewer chord changes you have the better, because then you can really write anything you want on top of it. And when you start writing a lot of chords, you have to follow the chords with the melody and you're limited. So it's a very simple tune where the chorus and the verse are the same, but the melody is different, and the instrumentation's different, and the chord inversions are different. So it doesn't necessarily occur to you that it's the same chords." (Thanks to Holly Knight for speaking with us about this song. Her full interview is available in the Songfacts Songwriter Interviews.)

Nicky Chinn also received a songwriting credit for this, although he didn't work on the song. He had a deal with Mike Chapman where they shared credits.

This won for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female at the 1985 Grammy Awards. Turner also won that year in the category of Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female for "What's Love Got To Do With It." (thanks, Bertrand - Paris, France)

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