The Best
by Tina Turner
How to study this song
The card for “The Best” is built from 57 study entries at A1+: 21 English words, 10 adjectives and 26 verb forms. Start with the glossary: heart, fire and lifetime come up again and again, so they are the ones to know first. This one leans on its verbs: 26 distinct forms against 10 adjectives, so conjugation is where the effort goes. At this level the goal is recognition: hear a word, place it, keep going.
The words of this song, in several languages
Every word below is taken from this song and translated by us. Nothing here is the lyric itself — these are the individual words you need in order to follow it.
Vocabulary
| EN | ES | IT | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| heart | corazón | cuore | cœur | coração | hart |
What this song teaches you
Level · A1+
- Vocabulary words
- 21
- Adjectives
- 10
- Word combos
- 16
- Expressions
- 12
- Verb forms
- 26
- Quiz questions
- 35
Background
About the song
«The Best» is the song that most people think of first when they hear the name Tina Turner. Capitol Records released it as a single at the end of the summer of 1989, a few weeks before «Foreign Affair», her seventh solo studio album, which reached the shops in September. It is a mid-tempo pop rock song with a huge chorus, an electric guitar and a saxophone solo. The album version lasts five and a half minutes and the single edit a little more than four. Turner produced the recording together with the American musician Dan Hartman.
Turner was not the first singer to record it. The song was written by Holly Knight and Mike Chapman, two professional songwriters who had already given her the 1984 hit «Better Be Good to Me». They first offered the new song to the English singer Paul Young, who decided not to record it. The Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler then recorded it for her 1988 album «Hide Your Heart», with Desmond Child as producer. Her single had little success in Britain, where it stopped at number 95.
When Turner heard the song she wanted it, but she also wanted changes. Holly Knight has explained in interviews that Turner asked for two things: a bridge, because she felt that a section was missing, and a rise in key near the end, so that the last choruses would sound like a celebration. Knight and Chapman wrote the new section, and it became one of the most intense moments of the recording. The saxophone solo was played by Edgar Winter, the American musician known for the 1973 instrumental hit «Frankenstein».
The words are a declaration of love, spoken directly to the loved person. The singer explains that this person appears whenever she calls, full of energy, and brings her all that she needs. She asks for promises that will last and for loving words that are sincere. In the chorus she says that nobody she has ever known can compare with this person, that she listens closely to everything her lover tells her, and that she would prefer to stop living than to be separated. In the bridge the mood changes for a moment: every departure makes her feel that she is falling to pieces. Then the key rises and the chorus returns with even more force.
For learners of English the song is very useful. Its vocabulary is common (the body, feelings, time), its sentences are short, and the chorus is built on the comparative and the superlative of «good», two irregular forms that every student has to learn by heart. It also contains several contractions and the structure that English uses to express a preference.