Tina Turner dead at 83
Tina Turner, the legendary singer best known for songs like ‘Proud Mary’, ‘Private Dancer’, and ‘What’s Love Got to Do With It’, has passed away. She was 83 years old.
“Tina Turner, the ‘Queen of Rock’n Roll’ has died peacefully today at the age of 83 after a long illness in her home in Kusnacht near Zurich, Switzerland,” Turner’s representative said in a statement. “With her, the world loses a music legend and a role model.”
Born Anna Mae Bullock, Turner first came to prominence as a singer for Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm in 1957. The band eventually morphed into the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, which she fronted with her then-husband. Turner’s first solo single, ‘A Fool In Love’, was released in 1960. Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, the Turners released a string of hit singles, including ‘River Deep – Mountain High’ and a cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s ‘Proud Mary’.
Turner began writing her own songs beginning in the 1960s. By the early 1970s, Turner was responsible for the majority of the duo’s original material, including writing the majority of the 1972 album Feel Good. However, the duo’s hit singles largely came from their interpretations of other songs. Some popular covers played by the group include The Beatles’ ‘Come Together’, Sly and the Family Stone’s ‘I Want To Take You Higher’, and The Rolling Stones’ ‘Honky Tonk Women’.
Turner became known for her energetic live performances, which included feverish dance moves performed by her and her backing singers/dancers, The Ikettes. In 1966, the Ike & Tina Turner Revue toured with The Rolling Stones, where Mick Jagger credited Turner for inspiring his developing frontman persona. Turner made her acting debut in 1975’s Tommy, based on The Who’s 1969 rock opera.
Turner later accused Ike of physical abuse and started a full-time solo career in 1976. For nearly a decade, Turner worked to pay off debts incurred from leaving the Ike & Tina Turner Revue by appearing on television shows and touring around the world. A cover of Al Green’s ‘Let’s Stay Together’ was a top ten hit in the UK, reviving Turner’s career.
Turner’s first major solo success came in 1984 with the album Private Dancer. Her single ‘What’s Love Got to Do With It’ went to number one, giving her the one and only chart-topping song of her career. The song would go on to win three Grammy Awards, including ‘Best Female Pop Vocal Performance’, ‘Record of the Year’, and ‘Song of the Year’. Additional hit singles from the album included ‘Better Be Good To Me’ and the album’s title track. Private Dancer would later be certified platinum in both the US and the UK, with more than 12 million copies of the album sold worldwide.
In 1985, Turner co-starred in the film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, for which she provided the theme song, ‘We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)’. An additional song from the film’s soundtrack, ‘One of the Living’, won Turner a Grammy for ‘Best Female Rock Vocal Performance’. Other notable singles from Turner’s solo career included ‘Typical Male’, ‘The Best’, and ‘Back Where You Started’, the latter of which earned Turner her third consecutive Grammy.
In 1995, Turner recorded ‘GoldenEye’, the theme for the James Bond film of the same name. Throughout the 1990s, Turner released an additional two studio albums, Wildest Dreams and Twenty Four Seven. The latter of the two would be Turner’s final studio album of her career, and the Twenty Four Seven tour would go on to become the highest-grossing concert tour of 2000, grossing over $120million.
Turner’s life story was later adapted into the 1993 Oscar-nominated film What’s Love Got to Do with It. For her role in portraying Turner, Angela Bassett was nominated for a ‘Best Actress’ Academy Award. As a result of her impact, Turner was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Ike Turner in 1991 and as a solo artist in 2021. In 2005, Turner was recognised by the Kennedy Center Honours.
Across more than six decades in the music industry, Turner has sold over 100 million records worldwide. She has won a total of 12 Grammys and is currently the only woman to have won separate awards in the pop, rock, and R&B categories.
Turner continued to tour until 2009, when she retired from live performances. A jukebox musical based on her life entitled Tina: The Tina Turner Musical premiered on the West End in London in 2018 and later moved to Broadway in 2019. Turner had been living in Switzerland since 1994 and became an official citizen in 2013, relinquishing her American citizenship in the process. Turner married German music executive Erwin Bach in 2013 after a nearly three-decade-long romantic relationship.
Turner had previously been diagnosed with intestinal cancer in 2016. Three weeks after her marriage to Bach, Turner suffered a stroke. After suffering from kidney failure in 2017, Turner recovered thanks to a transplant. Her official cause of death has not yet been revealed.
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