"Tonight" is a song written by
David Bowie and
Iggy Pop for the latter's second solo studio album, Lust for Life (1977). The song was later made into the title-track for Bowie's own album Tonight (1984).
Bowie covered the song with guest singer
Tina Turner in 1984 for his sixteenth studio album
of the same name. One of three Iggy Pop covers on the album, it was recorded as a duet with Turner, but the single release was only credited to Bowie. The original spoken-word introduction to the 1977 version, establishing that the lyric is addressed to a lover dying of a
heroin overdose, was excised from Bowie's version because Bowie regarded it as an "idiosyncrasy" of
Iggy Pop that did not match his own personal vocabulary.[1] Bowie also stated that he didn't want to "inflict" that part of the song on Tina Turner, either.[1] The
reggae-style song, which features a repeated sample from
Aretha Franklin's version of
"Spanish Harlem",[2][3] reached No. 53 on both the
UK Singles Chart and the
Billboard Hot 100.
David Bowie would perform the song live with
Tina Turner at the latter's 23 March 1985 concert at the
National Exhibition Centre in
Birmingham. This version was included on Turner's live album Tina Live in Europe three years later, and also released as a single in late 1988, then becoming a number-one hit in the Netherlands.