Songfacts®:

• On this song, Clapton duets with Tina Turner, who had staged a triumphant comeback with her album Private Dancer two years earlier. It's a very upbeat, energetic track, but the lyric is full of frustrated anguish as their friends are coming between them, tearing them apart.
• Clapton often performed this song in concert, including with Turner in 1986 at The Prince's Trust Rock Gala in London's Wembley Stadium.
• Clapton wrote this with Greg Phillinganes, a keyboard player he started working with on his previous album, Behind The Sun (1985). Phillinganes shows up on the credits to many tracks by Michael Jackson. He was part of Clapton's touring band from 1986 to 1990, then again in 2001.
• Tina Turner showed up on duets with a lot of British rock stars in the '80s. In addition to Clapton, she sang with David Bowie ("Tonight," 1985), Mick Jagger ("State Of Shock," 1985 at Live Aid), and Rod Stewart ("Hot Legs," 1981 on Saturday Night Live).
• Phil Collins produced this track and played drums on it. The pair had worked together before: Clapton played on Collins' first solo album in 1981, and Collins helped out Clapton on his previous album, Behind The Sun.
• "Tearing Us Apart" was released as a single from Clapton's August album, which also includes his song "It's In The Way That You Use It" from the movie The Color Of Money. The album is named after the month his first child, a son named Conor, was born. Sadly, Conor died when he fell out of a window in 1991.
• In 1993, Turner and Clapton met up again when she presented him with the Record of the Year Grammy for "Tears In Heaven."