American singer Tina Turner, known for classics and pop songs such as The Best and What Love Got to Do With It, has died at the age of 83. She had suffered from a number of health problems in recent years including cancer, stroke and kidney failure.
Dubbed the Queen of Rock and Roll, Turner was known for her energetic stage performances and powerful vocals. She has won eight Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021 as a solo artist, after being inducted for the first time alongside ex-husband Ike Turner in 1991.
With her solo vocals, the Hall of Fame has noted how she expanded the previously limited idea of how black women can conquer the stage and be a force and a multi-dimensional being.
Born in Tennessee into a farming family, Turner first found prominence as one of the backing artists for her husband’s band, The Kings of Rhythm.
She soon went to the front of the band, and the pair tasted commercial success with Fool in Love and It’s Gonna Work Out Fine, which brought them to the top of the US charts in the early 1960s.
Turner rose to fame alongside her husband, Ike, in the 1960s with hits including “Proud Mary” and “River Deep, Mountain High.” Another of their hits was 1973’s Nutbush City Limits, about the small town where Tina was born. But the physical and emotional abuse she suffered from Ike took its toll. It was he who changed her name from her birth name; Anna Mae Bullock, to Tina Turner, a decision he made without her knowledge, which is an example of his controlling behaviour. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1978, while she went on to achieve greater success as a solo artist in the 1980s.
She recalled her trauma throughout their relationship in her 2018 memoir, My Love Story, and his violence against her, writing: “He used my nose like a punching bag so many times I could taste the blood running down my throat when I sang.”
After the divorce, she went on to rebuild her career and become one of the biggest pop and rock stars of the 1980s and 1990s, with many hits including Let’s Stay Together, Steamy Windows, Private Dancer, James Bond theme GoldenEye, I Don’t Wanna Fight and the famous duet With Rod Stewart, It Takes Two. She also starred in the 1985 movie Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
And Tina Turner found happiness with her second husband, German music director Erwin Buck. They began dating in the mid-1980s, and married in 2013. The couple lived in Switzerland, with Turner holding Swiss citizenship. He donated one of his kidneys to her in 2017 after it was revealed that she was in kidney failure.
But Turner suffered tragedy with the suicide loss of her eldest son, Craig, in 2018. Another son, Ronnie, fathered by Ike Turner, died in 2022.
Tina’s life was produced in the 1993 biopic What’s Love Got To Do With It, which earned Angela Bassett an Academy Award nomination for her acting role. and a successful musical, Tina: The Musical. She was also the subject of the HBO documentary Tina in 2021.
Younger stars who have felt her influence include Beyoncé, Janet Jackson, Janelle Monae and Rihanna.
