I Need Your Body — The hit song that made Tina Arena cringe — is back
AN awkward teen tries to bust out — almost too literally — from “Tiny Tina of YTT” fame in the video Tina Arena was desperate to forget. But now I Need Your Body is back.
Music
Don't miss out on the headlines from Music. Followed categories will be added to My News.
TWENTY four years ago, Tina Arena sang I Need Your Body at the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
It has been warehoused ever since.
Despite continual requests from fans to resurrect the 1988 hit and pop culture moment, Arena spent decades escaping the song.
She was still haunted by the video, where she wore her breasts as earmuffs to stop being freeze-framed as Tiny Tina, the child star from Young Talent Time.
This year Arena’s Reset tour has seen I Need Your Body plucked out of mothballs and given a prime position. She’s even selling T-shirts with the song’s title on them.
“I spent a lot of years cringing at that I Need Your Body,” Arena admits. “Actually, it was the video that made me cringe, not the song.
“I was an awkward teenager but I wasn’t the first and I won’t be the last. The great thing about time is it enables you to heal from all that. Why was I so stupidly hard on myself? I was just young.”
I Need Your Body remains one of Arena’s biggest hits in Australia, peaking at No. 3 (her biggest hit was Burn, which made No. 2) and sold almost as many copies as Chains (which only made No. 4).
While her manager Grant Gillies says he’s successfully “worn her down” to include Body in the new tour, Arena has her own theory.
“I’ve always said the song will see the light of day when it’s meant to. And it’s time.
“I remembered the words immediately, which floored me.”
Last year’s autobiography Now I Can Dance helped Arena relive and embrace her past, while album Reset saw her signify she still has a future.
While Top 40 radio ignored it, TV synchs and a slot on Dancing With the Stars have helped Reset (her first album of new material in more than a decade) sell more than 100,000 copies and head towards double platinum status.
Only Lonely, never planned to be a single, went Top 40 on the back of soundtracking a Home and Away ad.
“Tina was already a household name, Dancing With the Stars just exposed the new music via TV,” Gillies says.
Team Tina are already preparing for a busy 2015. Reset will be released in the UK and Europe through iconic label Decca later this year; with influential website Popjustice already hailing the record.
She’s working on a new French album and has a pile of “really beautiful” new songs she wants to record. “It won’t be 12 years between (original) albums again,” she says.
2015 also marks the 20th anniversary of Don’t Ask and the 25th anniversary of her solo debut Strong as Steel — home to I Need Your Body.
Most importantly, 2015 marks the 40th anniversary of entering the music industry as a seven-year-old.
“I think it’ll be a year of celebration, as it should be,” Arena says. “Forty years is a pretty remarkable milestone.”
■ Tina Arena is on tour until October 9. Full details at her website.
Originally published as I Need Your Body — The hit song that made Tina Arena cringe — is back
Star’s voice heard for first time in years
John Farnham is ready to let the world hear his voice, more than two years after undergoing gruelling surgery to remove a tumour in his mouth.
US country music star’s nod to Australia
The country musician is on tour in Australia and cemented his love for the country with a permanent “souvenir”.