A song recorded for Tina Turner’s blockbuster album Private Dancer, that was presumed lost, has been rediscovered and received its first play on BBC Radio 2. Hot For You, Baby, was cut at Capitol Studios in Hollywood and originally intended to be an album track.But it was ultimately jettisoned in favour of era-defining pop hits such What’s Love Got To Do With It, Better Be Good To Me and the album’s title track.Presumed missing, the master tape was recently rediscovered as her record label compiled a 40th anniversary re-release of Private Dancer. An up-tempo rocker, full of showboating guitar chords and an extremely 1980s cowbell, Hot For You, Baby is a prime example of Turner’s raspy, physical style of soul.The track was played on the Radio 2 Breakfast Show on Thursday, at 08:50 GMT.Produced by John Grant, the record executive who masterminded her mid-career comeback, it was written by Australian musicians George Young and Harry Vanda.It had already been recorded once by Scottish-Australian singer John Paul Young, the voice behind disco classic Love Is In The Air. However, his version largely flew under the radar when it was released in 1979.

Private Dancer, released in May 1984, launched an unprecedented second act in Tina Turner’s career. She had escaped an abusive marriage to musician Ike Turner at the end of the 1970s, but the divorce left her penniless, living off food stamps and playing ill-conceived cabaret shows to pay her debts. The music industry had largely written her off – but in England, where pop was in thrall to American R&B, she still had some heavyweight fans. In 1981, Rod Stewart invited Turner to play with him on Saturday Night Live; and the Rolling Stones asked her to be part of their US tour. More importantly, perhaps, David Bowie told Capitol Records that Turner was his favourite singer. But the turning point came when she hooked up with British producers Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, of the band Heaven 17, to record a synth-pop version of the Temptations’ 1970 hit Ball of Confusion.

A huge hit in Europe, its success persuaded Capitol to let her record an album, but they hardly threw their weight behind it. The budget only paid for two weeks in the studio, and many of the songs Turner recorded were other artists’ cast-offs (both Cliff Richard and Bucks Fizz had turned down What’s Love Got To Do With It). But she used her time wisely – recording all but one of Private Dancer’s songs in the UK with five different British production teams. With the country in the grips of new wave and the new romantics, Turner was steered away from raw, fiery soul that first made her famous. But somehow, her electrifying vocals were a perfect fit for the chilly, programmed grooves she was given. “Turner seems to completely understand the touch that each of these songs needed,” wrote Debby Miller, in a contemporaneous review of Private Dancer for Rolling Stone magazine. In the New York Times, Stephen Holden described the record as “a landmark, not only in the career of the 45-year-old singer, who has been recording since the late 1950s, but in the evolution of pop-soul music itself”. (BBC/Getty Images