tina turner biography in english

Tina Turner

Grammy-winner Tina Turner rose to fame in the 1960s by performing with then-husband Ike Turner. The singer later enjoyed an international solo career with hits like “What’s Love Got to Do With It.”

We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back.

Quick Facts

Making the charts: "a fool in love", marriage to ike turner, famed interpretation of "proud mary", divorcing ike, solo comeback: "private dancer" and "what’s love got to do with it", late ’80s: "mad max" movie, autobiography, and more albums, "wildest dreams" and final tour, second marriage to erwin bach, later years, who was tina turner.

Tina Turner began performing with musician Ike Turner in the 1950s. They became known as the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, achieving popular acclaim for their live performances and recordings like the top 5 hit “Proud Mary,” until Tina left in the 1970s after years of domestic abuse. Following a slow start to her solo career, Turner achieved massive success with her 1984 album Private Dancer . She went on to deliver more chart-topping albums and hit singles and was twice elected into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The revered singer with eight Grammys to her name later became involved in the spiritual Beyond project. Turner died May 24, 2023, at age 83.

FULL NAME: Tina Turner (nee Anna Mae Bullock) BORN: November 26, 1939 DIED: May 24, 2023 BIRTHPLACE: Nutbush, Tennessee SPOUSES: Ike Turner (1962-1978) and Erwin Bach (2013-2023) CHILDREN: Craig, Ronnie, Ike Jr., and Michael ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Sagittarius

Tina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939, in Nutbush, Tennessee. Her parents, Floyd and Zelma Bullock, were poor sharecroppers, who split up and left Anna Mae and her sister to be raised by their grandmother. When her grandmother died in the early 1950s, Anna Mae moved to St. Louis, to be with her mother.

Barely in her teens, Anna Mae, who sang in her church’s choir, quickly immersed herself in St. Louis’s R&B scene, spending much of her time at Club Manhattan. It was there, in 1956, that she met rock ’n’ roll pioneer Ike Turner , who often played at the club with the Kings of Rhythm. Soon, she was performing with the group as “Little Ann,” and she quickly became the highlight of their show.

In 1960, when another singer failed to show up for a Kings of Rhythm recording session, Anna Mae sang the lead on a track titled “A Fool in Love.” The record was then sent to a radio station in New York and was released under the moniker Ike and Tina Turner. ( In a 2013 interview with Oprah Winfrey , Tina said Ike patented her name as a form of control.)

The song became a huge R&B success and soon crossed over to the pop charts. Before long, the group was touring as the Ike and Tina Turner Revue and earning renown for their electrifying stage performances. The group also capitalized on the success of “A Fool in Love” by releasing a string of successful follow-up singles, including “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine,” “Poor Fool,” and “Tra La La La La.”

With their popularity growing, Ike and Tina were married in Tijuana, Mexico, in 1962. They had a son, Ronnie, prior to their wedding in 1960. They shared four sons in all: Craig; Ike Jr.; Michael; and Ronnie, who was their only biological child together.

Tina had Craig with Kings of Rhythm saxophonist Raymond Hill when she was 18. Ike adopted Craig, and Tina adopted two of Ike’s sons, Ike Jr. and Michael, from his previous marriage.

In 1966, Tina and Ike’s success reached new heights when they recorded the album River Deep, Mountain High with superstar record producer Phil Spector . The title track was unsuccessful in the United States but became a massive, top 5 hit in England and brought the duo new fame. Still, they became more known for their electrifying live performances without accumulating a ton of corresponding hits.

In 1969, they toured as the opening act for the Rolling Stones , winning themselves still more fans. Their popularity was rekindled in 1971 with the release of the album Workin’ Together , which featured a renowned slow-to-fast remake of the Creedence Clearwater Revival track “Proud Mary” that reached the top 5 of the U.S. charts and won the two their first Grammy.

“Proud Mary” became a cornerstone of the couple’s shows, renowned for Tina’s vocal delivery along with the swirling, hand-rolling dance moves from accompanying vocalists, the Ikettes.

The duo later had a top 5 U.K. hit with 1973’s “Nutbush City Limits,” a rock-country-soul jam penned by Tina that included autobiographical elements. Then in 1975, Tina also appeared in her first film, playing the Acid Queen in The Who’s Tommy.

Despite their success as a musical duo, Tina and Ike’s marriage was in shambles. Tina would later reveal that Ike was often physically abusive, and she even attempted suicide because of his abuse.

In 1976, the couple separated both personally and professionally after an altercation in Dallas in which Tina fought back, according to her later book. In 1978, they were officially divorced, with Tina citing Ike’s frequent infidelities and increasing drug and alcohol use in addition to the abuse.

In the years following her divorce, Tina’s solo career got off to a slow start. According to Tina, when she left Ike, she had “36 cents and a gas station credit card.” To make ends meet and to care for her children, she used food stamps and even cleaned houses. But she also continued to perform in lower-profile venues and made guest appearances on other artists’ records, though not achieving any notable success initially.

In 1983, however, Turner’s solo career finally gained steam when she recorded a remake of Al Green ’s “Let’s Stay Together.” Noted for a related video in which she appeared in a rag dress between two dancers, Turner took her remake to the top 5 on the domestic R&B charts and the top 10 among U.K. pop songs.

The following year, she exploded back into the record industry when her much-anticipated solo album Private Dancer was released to overwhelming critical and popular success. It went on to win four Grammy Awards and eventually sold more than 20 million copies worldwide.

Private Dancer was a formidable entity in terms of its individual singles, with the empowerment anthem “What’s Love Got to Do With It” reaching No. 1 on the U.S. pop charts and earning the Grammy for Record of the Year. The smooth-jazz title track “Private Dancer” and “Better Be Good to Me” both reached the top 10 as well.

By this time, Turner was a woman in her mid-40s who was becoming even more renowned for her uniquely energetic performances and raspy singing technique along with her signature look—typically performing in short skirts that exposed her famous legs, with voluminous, punk-styled hair.

In 1985, Turner returned to the screen, starring opposite Mel Gibson in the film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, to which she contributed the No. 2 pop song “We Don’t Need Another Hero.”

I, Tina: My Life Story

One year later, she published her autobiography, I, Tina , which would later be adapted as the 1993 film What’s Love Got to Do with It , starring Angela Bassett as Tina and Laurence Fishburne as Ike. ( Turner’s soundtrack for the film, in which she redid classic tracks and offered up the new top 10 hit “I Don’t Wanna Fight” would go double-platinum, and both Bassett and Fishburne earned Oscar nominations for their performances.)

The year 1986 also saw the release of Turner’s second solo album, Break Every Rule , featuring the fun “Typical Male.” Chronicling unfulfilled desire with a too-brainy romantic interest, the track was yet another hit for Turner, reaching No. 2 on the pop charts.

Tina Live in Europe followed in 1988 and won the Grammy for Female Rock Vocal Performance. Foreign Affair (1989), which included the top 20 hit single “The Best,” outdid Private Dancer in worldwide sales.

The following decade, Turner released Wildest Dreams (1996), featuring her cover of John Waite’s “Missing You,” and Twenty Four Seven (1999). She also made several recordings for film soundtracks, including the James Bond title song “Goldeneye,” a U.K. top 10 hit, and “He Lives in You” for The Lion King 2 .

In 1991, Ike and Tina Turner were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Ike was unable to attend the ceremony, however, as he was serving time for drug possession. (He eventually died of an overdose in 2007.)

In 2008, the iconic entertainer embarked on her Tina! 50th Anniversary Tour, which became one of the highest-selling ticketed shows of 2008 and 2009. She announced that it would be her final tour and essentially retired from the music business save for occasional appearances and recordings.

Turner nonetheless continued to be a luminary of the musical world, appearing on the cover of a 2013 Dutch Vogue that was widely shared.

Turner collaborated with spiritual musicians Regula Curti and Dechen Shak-Dagsay for the release of Beyond: Buddhist and Christian Prayers in 2010, as well as for the follow-up albums Children Beyond (2011) and Love Within (2014). “The experience of singing prayers together allows us to deeply connect on an emotional level,” Turner explained to Billboard in 2010, “a place of love and respect where worldly differences fade.”

Previously, in the 1970s, a friend had introduced Turner to Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism, from which she found peace in the rituals of chanting. She adhered to the teachings of The Soka Gakkai International, the largest Buddhist organization consisting of about 12 million Nichiren Buddhist practitioners.

In 2013, news broke that 73-year-old Turner was engaged to her longtime partner, German record executive Erwin Bach. That July, they were married in Zurich, Switzerland, only months after Turner had gained her Swiss citizenship. She lived with Bach in Küsnacht near Zurich.

In her 70s, Turner experienced several major health issues. Three months after her marriage to Bach in 2013, Turner suffered a stroke. In 2016, she was diagnosed with intestinal cancer. The next year, she had a kidney transplant, and Bach was the donor.

Returning to the spotlight in 2018, Turner was honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (alongside other industry legends like Neil Diamond and Emmylou Harris ) to open the year—an eventful one for the 78-year-old.

That March, Turner revealed that she had forgiven her ex-husband for his abusive behavior years ago. “As an old person, I have forgiven him, but it would not work with him,” she said in an interview with The Times of London . “He asked for one more tour with me, and I said, ‘No, absolutely not.’ Ike wasn’t someone you could forgive and allow him back in.”

Then in April, fans were treated to a showcase of her greatest hits with the opening of TINA: The Tina Turner Musical at the Aldwych Theatre in London. It opened on Broadway in New York City the next fall.

Over the summer of 2018, Turner learned that her oldest son, Craig, had been found dead at his home in Studio City, California, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The real estate agent was 59. She wrote about his death, among other things, in her second memoir My Love Story that published in October.

Three years later, in October 2021, Turner was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame again and this time as an individual. Early in the year, HBO released a biographical documentary called Tina that featured archival footage and interviews with Turner, Angela Bassett , Oprah Winfrey , and others. Another honor that year came in the form of the Tina Turner Barbie doll.

In 2022, Turner’s son Ronnie died from colon cancer and cardiovascular disease at age 62. In an Instagram post , Turner wrote: “Ronnie, you left the world far too early. In sorrow I close my eyes and think of you, my beloved son.”

At age 83, Turner died on May 24, 2023, in her home Küsnacht, Switzerland, near Zurich. A representative said she died peacefully after a long illness. In the 2010s, she had a stroke, was diagnosed with cancer, and had a kidney transplant.

• I always had long legs. When I was young, I used to think, “Why do I look like a little pony?”
• Why did I fall so deeply in love? I think when you haven’t had that much love at home, and then you find someone you love, everything comes out.
• I came into this lifetime with a job to finish. I finished it well. I’ve been told many reasons for why I lived through what I did. But I have never felt that I deserved it.
• For anyone who’s in an abusive relationship, I say this: Go. Nothing can be worse than where you are now. You have to take care of yourself first—and then you take care of your children. They will understand later.
• I believe all religion is about touching something inside of yourself. It’s all one thing. If we would realize this, we could make a change in this millennium.
• Material things make me happy, but I am already happy before I acquire these things.
• I’m very happy in Switzerland, and I feel at home here. I cannot imagine a better place to live.
• I will never give in to old age until I become old. And I’m not old yet!
• There comes a point where it is just undignified to be a rock ’n’ roll star.
• I believe that if you’ll just stand up and go, life will open up for you.
• There is no strict regimen that says when you are in your late 40s you cannot wear a minidress.
• I don’t like to dwell on the past.
• I need that on stage. I need a burst of life. That’s entertainment for me.
• Rock songs inspire you to release whatever the frustrations and help you to go on in life. Spiritual songs do it on another level... A lot of people left my last show with the same sense of spirituality. My show gave people the drive to go and to do in their lives what they want to do and make their lives the best, do the best they can in this world... That is the mail I receive. My rock shows did the same as what my spiritual music does now.

Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn’t look right, contact us !

The Biography.com staff is a team of people-obsessed and news-hungry editors with decades of collective experience. We have worked as daily newspaper reporters, major national magazine editors, and as editors-in-chief of regional media publications. Among our ranks are book authors and award-winning journalists. Our staff also works with freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to produce the smart, compelling profiles and articles you see on our site. To meet the team, visit our About Us page: https://www.biography.com/about/a43602329/about-us

Rock Musicians

Elvis and Priscilla’s Turbulent Relationship

2024 Grammys: The Major Winners and Takeaways

Tracy Chapman

Sinéad O’Connor

How Austin Butler Landed the Part of Elvis

11 Rare Vintage Photos of Lou Reed

Elvis Presley’s Family Tree

Elvis Presley

How The Rolling Stones Were First Formed

Bruce Springsteen

Women Who Shaped History

A Smithsonian magazine special report

Tina Turner, Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Left an Indelible Mark on Music History

The barrier-breaking singer, who died this week at 83, influenced countless musicians who followed in her footsteps

Christopher Parker

Daily Correspondent

Tina Turner, the beloved singer and performer whose trailblazing career influenced musicians from Beyoncé to Janis Joplin to David Bowie , died on May 23 at age 83.  

Following the news of her death, tributes poured in from all corners of the entertainment industry.

“How do we say farewell to a woman who owned her pain and trauma and used it as a means to help change the world?” writes Angela Bassett, who played Turner in the 1993 film What's Love Got to Do With It , on Instagram . “Tina Turner showed others who lived in fear what a beautiful future filled with love, compassion and freedom should look like.”

“I’m so grateful for your inspiration, and all the ways you have paved the way,” writes Beyoncé on her website . “You are strength and resilience. You are the epitome of power and passion. We are all so fortunate to have witnessed your kindness and beautiful spirit that will forever remain.” 

Turner was the first woman, as well as the first Black artist, to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone . Known as the “queen of rock ’n’ roll,” she is among the roughly two dozen artists to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame twice—once as a duo with her ex-husband, Ike Turner, in 1991 , and then again as a solo act in 2021 . (“If they’re still giving me awards at 81, I must have done something right,” said Turner in a  speech following the 2021 induction.)

Anna Mae Bullock was born in Brownsville, Tennessee, in 1939. She got her musical start—and her stage name —in St. Louis, Missouri, from Ike Turner, who led a rhythm-and-blues band that she joined. The pair rebranded as Ike & Tina Turner and married in 1962.

Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, they released a number of hits and endured a grueling tour schedule. Per the Associated Press ’ Hillel Italie, Turner was forced to perform while ill or injured on many occasions.

During those years, Ike subjected his wife to violent abuse. Tina escaped in 1976, “fleeing a Texas hotel room with nothing more that 36 cents and a Mobil credit card in her pocket,” writes the Washington Post ’s Chris Richards. Following that fateful day, she began to speak publicly about her husband’s actions, and her openness served as an inspiration to many.

“People still underestimate the cultural importance of Turner telling that story,” writes Rob Sheffield in  Rolling Stone . “Strange as it might seem today, she was the first star to talk aloud about domestic violence, to insist on it as part of the story, not to gloss over it or act coy. Until she came along, the idiom ‘domestic violence’ wasn’t even part of the language.”

Turner’s comeback in the 1980s is the stuff of legends; Sheffield contends that she “invented the whole concept of the comeback as we know it.” 

An integral part of that comeback was how she took charge of her identity and marketed her sound, as Maureen Mahon , author of Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll , detailed in a 2021 discussion hosted by NPR’s Ann Powers and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture .

Mahon explained that Turner made a conscious choice to stop marketing herself as R&B, instead presenting herself as a rocker. Her clothing and hairstyles reflected this shift and became part of her iconic look.

Compared to her musical contemporaries, Turner was an older artist with an older sound—a combination that worked in her favor. 

“Rock culture was still so stuck on the mythos of youth and newness that her ’70s-retro concept was kinda ahead of her time,” writes Sheffield. “In a way, it’s an underrated Tina innovation: the Black grandma who invented dad rock.”

The second phase of Turner’s career allowed her to present herself to the world on her own terms. The hits from this era—including “ What’s Love Got to Do With It ,” which became the title of the 1993 film—cemented her superstardom.

Turner retired from performing in 2009, citing her age. But she remained a giant of the music world, and her influence shined through in artists such as Janet Jackson and  Janelle Monáe . Her story of astonishing resilience and her ability to forge her own path continue to resonate.

Turner herself struggled with that story late into her life. She never watched What’s Love Got to Do With It , she revealed in a 2019 essay for Rolling Stone. “I was too close to those painful memories at the time, and I was afraid it would be upsetting, like watching a documentary,” she wrote.

But when a musical about her life debuted in London in 2018, she found that she was ready to face those memories. 

“What happens on that stage has lost the power to hurt me,” she wrote. “I can sit back and enjoy the show.”

Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Christopher Parker | READ MORE

Christopher Parker is a journalist covering history, conservation, education and other topics. His work has been featured in America magazine, Notre Dame  magazine, the Los Angeles Times and the Berkshire Eagle . 

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Tina Turner obituary

When Tina Turner, who has died aged 83, walked out on her abusive husband Ike in Dallas, Texas, she feared it would spell the end of her showbusiness career. It was 1976, and she had been performing with Ike for two decades, since she had first jumped onstage and sang with his band at the Manhattan club in East St Louis, Missouri. Yet, although she was desperate and had only 36 cents in her pocket, she was on her way to a renaissance as one of the most successful performers in popular music during the 1980s and 90s.

She had to endure several lean years, but a turning point came in 1983, when David Bowie told Capitol Records that she was his favourite singer. A version of Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together followed. Produced by the electropoppers Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh from Heaven 17, the track went to No 6 in the UK, then cracked the US Top 30 the following year.

Turner cemented the upturn in her fortunes with the album Private Dancer (1984). Driven by the huge hit What’s Love Got to Do With It? (her first American No 1), the album became a phenomenon, lodging itself in the American Top 10 for nine months and going on to sell more than 10m copies. Suddenly Turner was one of the biggest acts in an era of stadium superstars such as Michael Jackson , Dire Straits and Phil Collins .

In 1985 she was recruited to play Aunt Entity in the film Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, for which she recorded another international chartbuster, We Don’t Need Another Hero . A second Thunderdome single, One of the Living , won her a Grammy award, and she was an automatic choice to join the Live Aid benefit concert in that year, as well as to participate in its American theme song, We Are the World.

Her follow-up album, Break Every Rule (1986), launched Turner on a global touring campaign, during which a crowd of 184,000 watched her in Rio de Janeiro. The tour spun off a double album, Tina Live in Europe (1988).

The album Foreign Affair (1989) sold 6m copies and generated another trademark anthem, The Best , which was subsequently used to add oomph to numerous TV commercials and adopted both by the tennis ace Martina Navratilova and the racing driver Ayrton Senna . The subsequent Foreign Affair tour ended in Rotterdam in 1990, after which she duetted with Rod Stewart on the old Tammi Terrell/Marvin Gaye hit It Takes Two . Designed as the theme for a Pepsi advert, the track was a chart hit across Europe.

Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush, Tennessee, to Zelma Currie, a factory worker, and her husband, Floyd Bullock, a Baptist deacon. Abandoned by their father and temporarily by their mother, in 1956 Annie and her elder sister, Alline, moved to St Louis, Missouri, where they encountered Ike Turner and his band the Rhythm Kings. After Annie had talked the initially reluctant Ike into letting her sing with the band, he recruited her as one of his backing singers.

It was in 1960 that Tina – who had by then changed her name because it reminded Ike of the cartoon character Sheena, Queen of the Jungle – first sang a lead vocal with Ike’s band. A session singer failed to turn up, and Tina’s stand-in performance of A Fool in Love was a hit on both the pop and R&B charts. Ike immediately rebuilt his act around Tina, and christened it the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. They married in 1962.

Featuring nine musicians and a trio of skimpily dressed backing singers, the Ikettes, the Revue took the R&B circuit by storm. Tina rapidly developed into a mesmerising performer, radiating raw sexuality and bludgeoning audiences with the unvarnished force of her voice. They began to pepper the charts with hits, including I Idolise You , Poor Fool and Tra La La La La , and even if they only intermittently crossed over from the R&B charts to the pop mainstream, the band’s performing reputation was second to none. Evidence of their stage prowess was preserved on the 1965 album Live! The Ike and Tina Turner Show, recorded on tour in Texas.

However, the seeds of the couple’s destruction were being sown in their successful but intense lifestyle. Ike was a habitual womaniser, and also developed a destructive cocaine habit. This provoked violent outbursts against Tina, who, as she later revealed in her 1986 autobiography, I, Tina, was beaten, burned with cigarettes and scalded with hot coffee. She gained a glimpse of what life beyond Ike’s intimidating orbit might be like when she worked with the “Wall of Sound” producer Phil Spector in 1966. To Ike’s frustration, Spector refused to allow him in the studio while he worked on the single River Deep, Mountain High , which subsequently became regarded as a high point of both Spector’s and Turner’s careers.

The Turners’ work won them the admiration of many of their peers, not least the Rolling Stones, who invited them to open a UK tour for them in 1966, then to join them on their American tour in 1969. Mick Jagger was regularly spotted at the side of the stage during Tina’s performances, fascinated by her stage presence and dance routines. One of the high points of Live Aid in 1985 was Tina and Jagger performing together at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia.

Working with the Stones prompted the Turners to import a rock-orientated edge into their work, a ploy that worked most successfully when they recorded John Fogerty’s Proud Mary in 1971. It was their first million-selling single and a Top five hit on the American pop charts. In 1973 they notched up another landmark with Tina’s feisty composition Nutbush City Limits , inspired by her Tennessee origins. She took the role of the Acid Queen in Ken Russell ’s film of The Who’s rock opera, Tommy (1975): her performance was one ofits few critically acclaimed moments, though her spin-off solo album, The Acid Queen, made little impression on the charts.

After her split from Ike, Tina stayed with friends and was forced to survive on food stamps. When their divorce was finalised in 1978, she preferred to take no money or property from the settlement, to establish a complete break from her husband. She earned cash from TV guest appearances on the Donny & Marie and the Sonny & Cher shows, but her late-70s albums Rough and Love Explosion sold poorly.

In 1980 she signed a management deal with Roger Davies, an Australian promoter working in the US, who secured some lucrative engagements in Las Vegas. The following year the Rolling Stones galloped to the rescue once again by booking her as the opening act on their Tattoo You tour of the US, and she also appeared with Stewart in a California concert broadcast internationally by satellite.

By the time she was inducted (with Ike, though he was then in jail) into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991, Turner had little left to prove. She was able to spend more time at the homes in Switzerland and the Cote d’Azur that she now shared with the German record executive Erwin Bach. A singles collection, Simply the Best (1991), reeled in more platinum discs as Turner entered the senior stateswoman phase of her career.

In 1993, as she launched her first US tour in six years, her film biography, What’s Love Got to Do With It, based on I, Tina, was released, starring Angela Bassett as Turner. The film brought forth a bestselling soundtrack album and another hit single with its opening track, I Don’t Wanna Fight .

A three-disc anthology, The Collected Recordings – Sixties to Nineties, appeared in 1994, and the following year came Turner’s recording of GoldenEye , the theme tune of the eponymous James Bond movie. The tour that accompanied her eighth studio album, Wildest Dreams (1996), became another record-breaker, grossing more than $100m in Europe alone. Twenty Four Seven (1999) teed up what Turner announced would be her last major arena and stadium tour. She had intended to tour with Elton John, but the idea was scrapped after she argued with him about the piano arrangement for Proud Mary during rehearsals for a TV special, Divas Live ’99. Her subsequent solo dates became the top-grossing tour of 2000.

A quiet period ensued, during which Turner confined herself to hand-picked events, such as a 2005 performance on the Oprah Winfrey Show. She contributed a version of Edith and the Kingpin to River: The Joni Letters (2007), a tribute album produced by Herbie Hancock. She performed alongside Beyoncé at the Grammy awards in 2008.

That October she went back on the road with the Tina! 50th Anniversary Tour, synchronised with the compilation album Tina: The Platinum Collection. In 2010 she became the first female artist to score top 40 hits in the UK in six consecutive decades (1960s-2010s) when The Best bounced back into the UK Top 10. Her Love Songs compilation appeared in 2014, and her remix of What’s Love Got to Do With It with the Norwegian DJ Kygo in 2020 made for a seventh decade containing UK hits.

Between 2009 and 2014 Turner appeared on four albums by Beyond , an all-woman group formed with her neighbours in Küsnacht, near Zürich. The music reflected the spiritual and religious beliefs of the participants, with Turner considering herself a Baptist-Buddhist (she was raised as a Baptist, but began practising Nichiren Buddhism in 1973).

In 2013 she married Bach and gave up her American citizenship to become a Swiss citizen. Three weeks after the marriage she suffered a stroke, and in 2016 she was diagnosed with intestinal cancer, then suffered kidney failure when “the toxins in my body had started taking over”, as she put it in her second autobiography, Tina Turner: My Love Story (2018). Her husband volunteered to give her one of his kidneys and a transplant operation was carried out successfully in 2017.

The following year, the biographical stage musical Tina opened at Aldwych theatre in London, directed by Phyllida Lloyd and starring Adrienne Warren in the title role. Turner received a Grammy lifetime achievement award, to go with her existing tally of eight Grammy awards and three Grammy Hall of Fame awards. Among her vast collection of honours, Turner also had five American Music awards, two World Music awards and three MTV Video Music awards.

In 2021 she joined the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an outright solo performer and sold the rights to her music catalogue to the publishing company BMG for an estimated $50m. Ready to retire fully, she bade farewell to her fans with the two-part HBO documentary Tina .

Alline died in 2010. Tina’s eldest son, Craig, from a relationship with the saxophonist Raymond Hill, took his own life in 2018. Ronnie, her son with Ike, died in 2022.

She is survived by Erwin and two sons, Ike Jr and Michael, from Ike’s first marriage.

• Pop and rock
• Tina Turner
• David Bowie
• Mick Jagger
• Rod Stewart
• Phil Spector

More on this story

‘Inspirational’: fans pay tribute to Tina Turner outside London musical

‘An inspiration to women around the world’: readers remember Tina Turner

Singer, diva, fashion icon, trailblazer, dancer: the five sides of Tina Turner

‘She gave me hope’: domestic abuse survivors praise Tina Turner’s bravery

Tina Turner: legendary rock’n’roll singer dies aged 83

Through pain and joy, Tina Turner wrote herself into pop history again and again

Tina Turner: 10 of her greatest songs

Simply the best: Tina Turner – a life in pictures

Comments (…), most viewed.

Find anything you save across the site in your account

The Legend of Tina Turner

By Vinson Cunningham

Toward the start of a 1993 recording of “Proud Mary,” Tina Turner—who, by then, had been performing the number for decades, across the globe—gives a charismatic, gently teasing forecast of the song to come.

“We’re gonna take the beginning of this song and do it easy. But then we’re gonna do the finish rough,” she says. “That’s the way we do ‘Proud Mary.’ ” Her voice, sharp and feline and cunning, rushes forward, tossing each syllable into a fast-moving current, until she stops to hold a choice word— easy; rough —up to the warm light of her attention. Her diction, in its variance, mirrors what she’s disclosing about the song. Somehow the road map does nothing to dissipate the impact of the moment when the rolling thrum of guitars that dominates the first half of “Proud Mary” gives way to horns blasting out that melodic line, and the mental image of Turner spinning in tight circles, wig ablur, arms tutted out like twin cranes, tassels floating away from her body, arrives. What we lose in tonal and rhythmic suspense we gain in a more primal kind of anticipation. Yes, it will get rough, eventually—but when, and just how rough?

A similar thing happens when we hear Turner’s life story. Most of us know it in its broadest contours. Born Anna Mae Bullock, as a child she picked cotton on her family’s sharecropping farm, in Nutbush, Tennessee, and pined for her mother, who fled Turner’s abusive father. In the first two decades of her career, her success was linked inextricably with her musical partner and husband, who physically abused her. The question, when the story is being told onscreen or onstage, is never whether these vicissitudes will be included but how brutally, and to what representational end.

Even when Turner’s music is part, or most, of the promised package—as it is in “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical,” up now at the Lunt-Fontanne, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, with a book by Katori Hall, Frank Ketelaar, and Kees Prins, and with seriously impressive choreography by Anthony Van Laast—it’s her life that delivers the dramatic shape expected from art: tension and release, fall and climb, pain and possibility. This makes Turner perhaps singular among pop artists. Usually we have to employ a kind of textualism—combing lyrics and gestures for a corollary in reality—to assign to our stars moral, cultural, and political values. Or an artist makes bold-sounding declarations, or endorses electoral candidates, or embraces high-profile causes. With Turner, even given all the innovation found in her records, the triumph is located in the life; her status as a feminist hero is stubbornly extramusical—it lives somewhere much past art, and beyond statements.

It’s a paradox, then, that it was a pop-cultural representation—the 1993 movie “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” starring Angela Bassett as Turner—that made Turner’s political importance clear to generations too young to have tracked her entire career, and made her iconography complete. For more than two decades, Bassett, whose performance as Turner is perhaps the most brilliant and haunting of her career, has dominated the collective imagination with respect to Turner, and, in many ways, has made Tina Turner’s art a mere corollary to Anna Mae Bullock’s life. Turner’s most famous songs—“Proud Mary,” “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” “Simply the Best”—now sound to my ears like autobiographical anthems, meant as a score instead of a corpus of their own.

The great benefit of this situation is clear: we learn from lives, and every saint needs a story. But, because Turner’s canonization has proceeded within the limits of commercial entertainment, her life often seems at risk of being objectified in the way that can happen with a song, or a scene from a blockbuster. Whenever I hear the rapper Jay-Z, in a guest verse on a song by his wife, Beyoncé, flippantly drone, “Eat the cake, Anna Mae”—a line from “What’s Love Got to Do with It” that comes during one of the movie’s most humiliatingly violent moments—I recoil. I wonder if the magic of the movies—the semi-permanent stamp that some pictures make on the mind—might chip away at Turner’s hard-earned gravitas, just as surely as, initially, it helped build her myth.

“Tina,” a genuinely entertaining jukebox musical with some trouble at its edges, has this odd, precariously balanced mixture of life and art, politics and spectacle, as its burden. Maybe its creators were wise, then, to organize the story around Turner’s religious experience—her childhood in the rural black church, her turn to a lifelong, cherished Buddhism. The show opens with a temporal swirl: the adult Tina (Adrienne Warren) sits wearing a Corvette-red leather dress, her back to the crowd, rasping out a mantra, as her very young counterpart (a charming Skye Dakota Turner, no relation to Tina) sits through a jubilant musical number at church, unable to restrain her voice, despite the chiding of her mother. Skye Dakota Turner is a wonderfully vivid performer; there’s humor in every facial move and bodily gesture, and she sings with precocious, echoing focus, like a bird perched on a cathedral’s upper balcony.

That opening image, whose surrealism gives way to a more or less straightforward, chronological slide down the time line of Tina Turner’s life, feels like an attempt to reunify Turner and her work, and to give a hint as to their source. Some soul-deep fountain produced both. Tina grows up, and Warren, a powerful singer and song interpreter whose reputation deserves to grow after this performance, takes over. She gives little glimmers of impersonation, especially when she sings, but mostly avoids distracting mimicry.

The trouble comes when this musical’s version of Anna Mae Bullock meets this musical’s version of Ike Turner (Daniel J. Watts). The real Ike Turner’s very name—through a pop-cultural process not unlike the one that turned Tina’s into an emblem of long-suffering resilience—is now almost synonymous with cowardly violence and petty bullying; his pioneering role in the development of rock and roll has been all but eclipsed by his notoriety as a sadist. Nobody mentions Ike and means to refer to the Fender bass named for him. But here, somehow, likely because Warren is so good, and because the songs—mostly note-for-note renderings of the well-known recordings—keep on coming, Ike comes off more as a comic buffoon than as a real menace. I don’t think this is due to any odd intent on behalf of the show’s producers but, rather, to the distorting imperatives of mass entertainment—tell the story, but keep it light.

Everybody knows, even before he shows up, that Ike is the villain in the Tina Turner story. On Broadway, under what looks like a thousand lights, in front of a crowd impatient to cheer, this makes him a chintzy Big Bad Wolf. Then, too, Watts, the poor actor tasked with this role, has an irremediably friendly face and funny aspect. From afar, he looks and moves a bit like Eddie Murphy, and, when I saw the show, he sometimes, at the most despicable moments, garnered what seemed to be accidental laughs.

For the most part, the show is fun. The songs sound good, and nobody’s high opinion of Tina Turner will be negatively affected. Very much to the contrary, Warren’s performance, which sometimes veers happily into an outright concert, is a two-and-a-half-hour-long hosanna. But I couldn’t help hoping that, in the long run, Turner will be given her true due, her personal history plumbed for its deepest applications. This great theatrical rendering of her life might come only when living memory of Turner as an entertainer has faded, and her bright intensity as an archetype can shine through, unhindered by obligatory applause. The mood will be classical. Nobody will think to hope for a good time. ♦

By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

By Doreen St. Félix

By Justin Chang

By Michael Schulman

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Tina Turner, Magnetic Singer of Explosive Power, Is Dead at 83

Hailed in the 1960s for her dynamic performances with her first husband, Ike, she became a sensation as a recording artist, often echoing her personal struggles in her songs.

By William Grimes

Tina Turner, the earthshaking singer whose rasping vocals, sexual magnetism and explosive energy made her an unforgettable live performer and one of the most successful recording artists of all time, died on Wednesday at her home in Küsnacht, Switzerland, near Zurich. She was 83.

Her publicist Bernard Doherty announced the death in a statement but did not provide the cause. She had a stroke in recent years and was known to be struggling with a kidney disease and other illnesses.

Ms. Turner embarked on her half-century career in the late 1950s, while still attending high school, when she began singing with Ike Turner and his band, the Kings of Rhythm. At first she was only an occasional performer, but she soon became the group’s star attraction — and Mr. Turner’s wife. With her potent, bluesy voice and her frenetic dancing style, she made an instant impression.

Their ensemble, soon renamed the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, became one of the premier touring soul acts in Black venues on the so-called chitlin’ circuit. After the Rolling Stones invited the group to open for them, first on a British tour in 1966 and then on an American tour in 1969, white listeners in both countries began paying attention.

Ms. Turner, who insisted on adding rock songs by the Beatles and the Stones to her repertoire, reached an enormous new audience, giving the Ike and Tina Turner Revue its first Top 10 hit with her version of the Creedence Clearwater Revival song “Proud Mary” in 1971 and a Grammy Award for best R&B vocal performance by a group.

“In the context of today’s show business, Tina Turner must be the most sensational professional onstage,” Ralph J. Gleason, the influential jazz and pop critic for The San Francisco Chronicle, wrote in a review of a Rolling Stones concert in Oakland in November 1969. “She comes on like a hurricane. She dances and twists and shakes and sings and the impact is instant and total.”

But if the Ike and Tina Turner Revue was a success, the Ike and Tina Turner marriage was not. Mr. Turner was abusive. After she escaped the marriage in her 30s, her career faltered. But her solo album “Private Dancer,” released in 1984, returned her to the spotlight — and lifted her into the pop stratosphere.

Working with younger songwriters, and backed by a smooth, synthesized sound that provided a lustrous wrapping for her raw, urgent vocals, she delivered three mammoth hits: the title song , written by Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits; “Better Be Good to Me” ; and “What’s Love Got to Do With It.”

How Tina Turner reclaimed her voice, her image and her spirituality.

Hey, all you Still Processing listeners out there. Do you want to help me and Wesley settle a little summertime bet? Do you know the song “Before I Let Go” by Frankie Beverly and Maze?

OK, when is the first time you heard it? Do you just stop what you’re — do you drop your tray of food when it’s on in a restaurant, and you just got to go dance somewhere? What does the song mean to you?

And even if you’ve never heard of it, we want to know. Please record a short voice memo with your relationship to the song “Before I Let Go” and send it to us. Our email is [email protected].

And stay tuned.

Yes, we’ll explain later. But now on to the show.

So Jenna, it’s 1988. We’re in Rio de Janeiro with the one and the only ever, Tina Turner.

Oh my god, I’m already so happy. [LAUGHS]

[SINGING “BETTER BE GOOD TO ME”]

She is rocking this crowd. This concert set a record, right? It’s 182,000 people, which is the most any 182,000 people have ever paid together to see one solo performance.

This tour had 230 dates in 25 countries.

I cannot believe Ms. Tina was working that hard.

OK, the hair is enormous, right?

It is blowing.

And she’s got this fringed —

Leather fringe, of course.

And it’s a mini dress, of course. I just got to say that she is already sweating. This concert is 11 minutes old.

Well, what we’re also seeing, though, is someone who is just in their element.

And she looks as fit and as healthy and as vibrant as I’ve ever seen her. How old is she here?

48 years old.

She just kicked the mic. This is the breakdown. This is Jenna’s favorite part of the song, even though —

Is it a bridge?

It’s a breakdown. It’s a breakdown.

Wait, is it a bridge, though? Honey —

No, this is the breakdown.

OK, OK. Tina Turner is someone I regret never seeing live.

Yeah, I mean, just to be one of those people screaming Tina Turner’s name?

Tina! Tina! Tina! Tina!

Well, we do have an occasion to be screaming her name again, though. There is this HBO documentary about her life called “Tina.” It’s on HBO, HBO Max. It’s directed by Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin. And it’s basically the story of her life from childhood to her glorious 80, 81-year-old self. And today, you and I are going to use the occasion of this documentary to talk about Tina Turner, not just as a story, but as a musician, a performer, an experience.

I’m Jenna Wortham.

I’m Wesley Morris. We’re two culture writers at The New York Times, and we love Tina Turner.

[LAUGHS] And this is Still Processing.

I’m someone who, my biggest reference point for Tina Turner, for better or for worse, is the 1993 movie “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” starring Angela Bassett.

Sure, that’s lots of people’s.

And of course, “What’s Love Got to Do With It” is a biopic of the life of Tina Turner and her relationship with Ike, and then moving out into her own journey. And I mean, it’s great. I re-watched it after I watching the documentary. And it made me realize, though, how, as incredible as that movie is, it’s not sufficient for her life story. It is so painful to watch. It doesn’t lean enough into how much she shaped and changed music.

Right, and people who know Tina Turner through “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” the movie, they know this story of a woman who overcame an abusive marriage to an abusive spouse. But this was not a story that women were telling about their lives. It was a thing they kept hidden. It was a thing they were meant to feel ashamed for having survived. But in the culture, there were lots of stories about domestic abuse. Those narratives were in the culture. They were TV movies of the week. But so few of those stories involved a woman triumphing over that dynamic of abuse.

And this documentary is somewhat — it’s claiming, in some ways, to be liberating her from that narrative. But in order for the documentary to do that, it has to take you back through all of this pain and trauma. I mean, until this HBO Max movie, the major Tina Turner document is the book “I, Tina” from 1986. And I mean, I would describe that as basically an oral history of Tina Turner’s life as interpreted by Kurt Loder, who, Jenna, I know you remember from MTV News.

This is the story of how she got rid of Ike. And what you learned from this documentary is that she thought that by writing this book, she could put it to rest. I do think that there is something about this particular relationship and its dynamic that is very hard to liberate Tina Turner from.

I also wonder, too, if the cultural narratives around domestic violence were salacious, right? Like a very reductive approach towards it. And I’m surmising that based on the way interviewers are approaching Tina. They keep asking her over and over again, like why didn’t you leave him?

Yeah, that’s a great point.

Ike was controlling the money. He was controlling her whereabouts. He had surveillance on her. The media is hounding Tina about her, quote, “complicity.” One of the weirdest things about the documentary is that it is almost entirely an indictment of the media and critical of the ways in which people won’t let Tina move past Ike.

And it’s also really incredible. I found that commentary to be incredible of how harmful it was for Tina to relive this relationship. But the documentary also is that it’s reliving the relationship. He keeps showing up.

And he was controlling the music, too. And to be fair to him, he is an architect of American rock and roll. He was heavily invested in the R&B and blues wing of things. But when it came to working with Tina, she had to work in that style, too. And what Tina could do as a singer was ultimately limited by what Ike as a musician could imagine her singing. That was the music he wanted to be making, not the music she wanted to be making necessarily.

(SINGING) The way you love me sometimes like I’m going to lose my mind. Although I —

But you watch these old Ike and Tina performances, and you don’t even notice him. She’s the person magnetizing you to the front of the stage.

I was thinking about that, the stage representing this bubble of liberation for her. The only time — Ike’s not going to hit her on stage. He’s not messing with the money like that. But you can see that once she gets on stage — and she’s written about this. I mean, she would sometimes go on stage sick, weak, ill, still bloodied, still black-eyed.

She had tuberculosis for eight years!

And talk about someone going from one field to another, right? Working in a cotton field to then working on this damn stage, you know.

Yeah, Tina’s from Nutbush, Tennessee. Her family was in the sharecropping business, more or less.

But she still had to pick cotton.

Yeah, she herself picked cotton many a time.

But my point really is that’s the one time she has freedom because he can’t say shit. There’s nothing he can do while she’s out there. And there’s a part in the documentary where she’s talking to the crowd. And she’s like —

Tonight, I want to speak to us women, you see, because —

— it’s time for the men to stop running things. Men are going to do what they want to do.

— always manage to get what they want. That’s right.

And you know what, ladies?

Whatever’s out there in the streets must be good ‘cause your man’s been out there a long time.

In the background, Ike is just playing, right? He now has to be submissive. He has to keep playing. She’s going to talk as long as she wants. And it’s a small thing, but it’s actually a major thing in some way. You know what I mean? That was where she just got to be free, as free as she could be during that time.

Right, well, you talking about her talking to the ladies in the audience like that reminds me of this moment from their 1971 live album. They do a cover of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You.” And in the middle of the fog, she starts talking about some other things that ladies need to keep in mind.

I want you to —

I want you to give it to me.

You know, things that he might not be able to do, or he needs to do better.

Wow. Ms. Turner, if you’re nasty.

[GUTTURAL GASPING]

Sock it. Sock it.

I want you to come on, sock it to me, babe! Oh!

I love this moment because it ultimately is about her giving herself the orgasm. He’s on some other part of the stage, just playing his guitar.

But he’s somewhere else. This is her moment. Every time she does it, she is giving herself this extreme pleasure.

And it was a pleasure that was sort of alien to her in her house. And as long as she was with Ike, he was going to push her to sing his music even when she didn’t like it. And her voice, that voice could do so much more than Ike’s brand of R&B and blues.

That’s right.

But she did have these moments of revelation in terms of what else she could be doing with her singing. And the first one of those happens in 1966 when they make this deal to do a song with Phil Spector who had seen her and Ike perform. And he’s just like, I got to make a record with her. And he does. Ike permits her to make the record. But Phil Spector, mad man that he is and psychopath that he turns out to be, did not want Ike in the studio at all —

— to make this record. And it’s “River Deep, Mountain High,” one of Phil Spector’s masterpieces, one of Tina Turner’s great singing performances. And in the documentary, she talks about it just being this revelation for her.

It was so big, and my voice sounded so different, standing on top of all that music. (SINGING) I love you, baby, like a flower loves the spring.

Because she just didn’t know she could sing any other way, but to scream the way Ike wanted her to.

(SINGING) And I love you, baby, like a schoolboy loves his pad. And I love you, baby, river deep, mountain high.

And here she’s got a melody. She’s so good with it. There’s so much music in the song. I think there were three guitarists and three drummers and three bass players and all these strings and all these other singers. And she has got to climb all the way on top of those people —

— in order to be heard. And she does it and she doesn’t have to scream the whole song to do it. And she can’t believe she climbed all the way up there.

(SINGING) — mountain high. If I lost you, would I cry? Oh, I love you, baby. Baby, baby, baby.

I love this song so much. I still think —

Perfect song!

— she sounds like she really believes what she’s singing in a different way. There’s something else she’s accessing in that song, and I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what she’s thinking about. I don’t know who she’s imagining that she loves like that rag doll.

Well, she found Phil Spector quite strange, but she also loved his belief in what else she could do as a singer. And you can hear it in the song.

The music itself is really reverential. It’s very holy. It’s like a different kind of choir. Do you know what I mean? It has this —

It’s celestial.

Yeah, it is celestial. That’s a really beautiful way to say it. It is celestial. And it’s lifting her up, and it does feel like this moment where she’s tethered to her true talent without him around. And maybe that’s the first time that’s happened in her career.

But in 1964, in that moment that the song doesn’t do well in the U.S., Ike basically wins. It hands Ike a victory. It was proof to him that the way his approach to R&B and the blues was the way that they should be going, instead of trying to keep working with that Phil Spector sound. And she just came to resent singing that that style of R&B, that style of blues. But it’s what she continued to do for another 10 years.

So he had control over the music, even when she was writing songs. She wrote “Nutbush City Limits,” which is one of my favorite Ike and Tina songs. But she still continued to do things his way.

I mean, talk about an extension of sharecropping. I mean, I think so much of Tina’s story is —

Oh, great point, yeah.

— she grew up in an abusive home, watching her father abuse her mother. And then her mother leaves. And she grows up with her grandmother. And she grows up feeling very unwanted, unloved. And that makes it really hard to ever believe or have confidence in yourself, until she does. But so much about that story is just about that — about these cycles that we inherit and what it takes to, I guess, get off the merry-go-round.

It’s interesting, though, that you put it that way, though, because she does not present any — everything that she’s feeling inside isn’t really obvious in the presentation. And I think the question was Ike’s style was getting old. They have a huge hit with their cover of “Proud Mary,” the Creedence Clearwater Revival song.

We’re going to take the beginning of this song and do it easy. But then we’re going to do the finish rough. That’s the way we do “Proud Mary.” (SINGING) Rolling —

With all due respect to John Fogerty, who wrote “Proud Mary,” their version of that song is basically the version. And what you hear is the power of her as a vocalist. And the way that she sang, the hugeness, the feeling, the strength, that was hugely important to creating this whole universe of how rock and roll is sung by white people.

(SINGING) Big wheel keep on turning, turning. Proud Mary keep on burning, burning. Rolling, rolling, yeah, rolling on the river. Say we’re rolling, rolling —

And it’s like we’re talking about Mick Jagger, Janis Joplin, Rod Stewart, all these people who wanted to emulate that force and that feeling. So, on the one hand, she’s incredibly influential to American music, but personally, she is in this little box that this man is keeping her in. I would say part of what this relationship with Ike was costing her artistically was the freedom to do what she wanted to do, and to miss out on all this cultural stuff that was happening, right?

Disco was happening at the later stages of their working together, right? Disco was beginning to happen. And I’m not saying she wanted to make disco. I can definitely tell you that she wanted to make rock and roll, which was, at that point, what American music basically was, more or less. And that was the music that was speaking to her. That’s the music she wanted to make. And she couldn’t really do it with Ike, who was still wedded to this 1950s way of thinking about rock and roll. And she leaves him. And part of leaving him, obviously, she’s leaving the marriage.

She’s leaving the domestic marriage, what was even left of it at that point. But she’s also leaving this creative marriage and going out to figure out who she wants to be as an artist, and not who this guy wants her to be.

I’ve been thinking a lot about why rock? And I mean, I’ve been thinking about it more from a philosophical perspective. Like, what does rock represent that what she was doing before didn’t represent? And I think there must have been some fatigue and just resistance to the performance of that intimacy, right? If you think about what R&B is all about, it’s about seduction. It’s these romantic ballads. It’s love songs. And rock songs are love songs, too, but they’re also about being independent or not being independent. And I think maybe that’s what she was drawn to. Maybe Tina was drawn to this idea of, both in a literal sense, her musical independence, but then also this thematic independence, too. And what would it feel like to be singing these types of songs now?

And she leaves the marriage. It’s a very dramatic thing in, I believe, 1976. She physically gets out. And then over the years, she manages to get a divorce. But during this period, she’s performing in Vegas. The arrangements aren’t great. But she is working her tail feather off, to quote her own song. And the shows are doing well. People are coming to see her. But eventually, this Australian manager named Roger Davies sees her. And he’s captivated, as one would be. And they start cooking stuff up. And she records “Private Dancer.” And that album “Private Dancer” comes out in ‘84, and it is an enormous hit.

(SINGING) What’s love got to do, got to do with it?

“What’s Love Got to Do With It” is the first official U.S. single and is huge. And the singing that she’s doing on this album is just different than the singing that she was doing with Ike, where when she was part of Ike and Tina, she was expected to do a lot of wailing and a lot of screaming. And “Private Dancer,” the genius of that album, in some ways, is that it’s softer, so that when she lets loose, it doesn’t hit you more than the ‘70s and ‘60s stuff, but it just hits you differently. That album sells 10 million copies around the world.

And it’s the beginning of this incredible 1980s for Tina Turner. And this is the decade where she actually reclaims that voice and is figuring out what else it can do. So let’s just blow through the things that she accomplished in this three to four-year period. She wins four Grammys in ‘85.

And the record of the year is “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” Tina Turner.

Technically, one of them was for song of the year. She didn’t write that song, but it was about Tina Turner. It wasn’t about the guy that wrote the song. She plays Auntie Entity in “Mad Max, Beyond Thunderdome.”

And the law says, bust a deal, face the wheel.

It has two hits off that soundtrack, including “We Don’t Need Another Hero.”

She performs at Live Aid in my city, Philadelphia, the dearly departed J.F.K. stadium, with Mick Jagger.

(SINGING) I know you like to tease.

(SINGING) Please, baby, please.

She turned down the role of Celie in “The Color Purple.”

[GASPS] What?

Yes, she did. I lived that story, she said.

And she’s selling out every stadium she’s performing in.

And this is my favorite little tidbit from this little stretch of Tina Turner. She’s on “We Are the World.”

(SINGING) We are the world. We are the children.

So I mean, just to harp on this a little bit more, this is all happening to this woman who was in her mid 40s.

But you said something to me earlier that really struck me. And it was this idea that even when she is singing at the peak of her powers at the height of her voice, there’s something — she’s holding something back.

That was my intuitive feel watching her, and I’m still sitting with it, because there was something tactile in that “River Deep” record that I never sensed again. And in my mind’s eye, I feel like we’re watching a woman who has learned what it means to save parts of herself for herself. And I find so much pleasure in that because it’s not unconscious restraint, right? It’s earned. Tina is just done with her personal life being a headline. And there seems to be this knowledge of, I’m giving you everything I have. But I’m still keeping the most precious parts of Tina for Tina. And it’s just — it’s so admirable to watch.

Do you remember “Divas Live“?

Kind of. It has this shadowy place in my memory, kind of like Oprah’s “Legends Ball.” I always know it’s happening, and I catch it kind of late, so, vaguely.

Well, VH1 used to gather America’s greatest living singers to come together for one night that they called “VH1 Divas Live.” And in the second installment, the first performer was none other than Tina Turner.

Ugh, so cool.

And the opening shot of the whole night is this limo pulling up. The first thing you see is Tina Turner’s legs. She’s just a pair of legs getting out of that limo, walking up the red carpet.

But walking in the way Tina walks with a little jauntiness.

Yes, this is 1999. Tina Turner is somewhere in her 60s, or almost 60. And the hair is shorter. It’s blonder.

More bangs, which is great. It’s really iconic Tina. This is one of my favorite of her hairstyles.

You can hear the revving engine of her song “The Best.” The room is going crazy because they know what’s about to happen.

(SINGING) I call you when I need you. My heart’s on fire.

Come to me, come to me —

(SINGING) Wild and wild.

Yeah. [LAUGHS]

Oh, I love this move! This move where she just starts marching across the stage, but then she’ll stop every time she puts her foot down and just, like —

It’s a little stretch.

(SINGING) Simply the best! Better than all the rest.

Yeah, there’s something about that kinetic energy that she’s always had in her dance movements that are so unique to her. There’s so much energy that just wants to come out of her.

So much energy always coming out of her! She’s a tornado! She is a gale force wind in body and voice.

She ends the song and she gets down on one knee.

And just soaks in the adulation.

Because she’s just so grateful. She’s just soaking it in. It’s not that she’s full of ego. It’s more like self-respect and respect of the space. And it’s just not — she’s so honored to be there. And the gratitude that her life is as rich as it is, it’s a lesson of — I mean, again, it’s just a lesson in self-preservation and a lesson in what it means when you know your worth.

She’s so happy to be wherever she is when she’s performing. That is the thing that I love most about watching Tina Turner. And at this point, you and I have talked about her as a musician, as a singer with a voice, and how she took the voice back, right? She reclaimed it when she got out of that marriage. But she also had to take back her image — the hair and the clothes. And the number one thing that she took back in order to get to a moment like 1999, “VH1 Divas Live,” is her name. Ike Turner made Anna Mae Bullock, Tina Turner. He didn’t ask her. He just did it. And he modeled her on — was it Sheena, Queen of the Jungle? And he trademarked her name, which I didn’t even know that she knew.

The greatest scene — I mean, I don’t know. I think most people will say that the big limo fight is the greatest scene in “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” the movie. But I would say the big scene for me is the courtroom scene.

It means you’re going to walk out of here with absolutely nothing.

Except my name. I’ll give up all that other stuff, but only if I get to keep my name. I worked too hard for it, Your Honor.

Just give me my name. I mean, but it’s more than taking her name if you think about the fact that it wasn’t even her name. Do you know what I mean?

It’s like —

But she understands the sweat equity and the worldwide recognition of that name. She wants it.

What is she going to do, go to Vegas and be Anna Mae Bullock? No, M.F. Because whatever this —

The artist formerly known as —

Right. I mean, whatever value this name has is because I gave it value. You don’t deserve this name. And so it’s not just her name that she takes back. It’s her look.

I think that the hair and the clothes are a huge part of her reimagining herself. And so by 1984, if for the first time you’re seeing Tina Turner in that “What’s Love Got to Do With It” video and she’s got that new hair —

— that fireworks explosion geyser of hair?

That simultaneously, to me, is both a lion’s mane and a headdress.

Right? It feels very much like a chief’s headdress. But she also mentions in “I, Tina” that that long, dark hair is connecting her to her Cherokee and Navajo roots. Her mother’s side of the family, they’re Native American. And that connection, she really feels it. She says she’s always felt it. That hair is just so important, you know? And it just doesn’t look ridiculous on her because think about all the Tina Turner Halloween costumes you’ve seen.

I was thinking about that, too, about how her look became a little bit of a caricature. But it was still never making fun of her.

Yes, you can’t fill these shoes. People look ridiculous —

— playing Tina Turner. But you can’t fill that out.

Right, right, right.

The barrier is not just that you can’t fill the wig and you can’t fill the denim jacket, you can’t fill the leather mini skirt. It’s that there is an energy that she is giving off in these clothes, in this hair, that is so much about self-confidence and belief in herself as a sexual being.

It also seems, too, that part of that embracing her sexuality is embracing her sensuality, you know? There is something about the way, as the love inside of her grows for herself, you can feel it more. And I think she, in the excerpts — because you’ve been texting me excerpts of the book “I, Tina” all week, which has been a highlight of my week, just a pure delight — she talks a bit about that. And then she also talks about how she used to hate what she saw in the mirror. And she kind of assumed that the lack of love in her relationship with Ike was due to some defect in her, rather than being a function, right, of their own illnesses. And it’s really incredible to see her when she’s undergoing this transformation you’re talking about — seeing her embrace the parts of herself that she loves the most, seeing her love her legs, love her heritage, love her hair and love her face. And she didn’t have the same kind of Madonna or Cher-esque approaches to adornment that obscured her face. A lot of musicians and celebrities at that level play with their image so much. And they love to play with different looks and different personas. And Tina’s not — that’s not what Tina’s about. Tina’s all about enhancing what’s there, which I really see is an act of self-love.

Yeah, also self-belief, right?

And self-belief, yes.

I don’t need to be 20 different people. I just need to be this.

It took me this long to be me, and I am going to be me as much as I can. It also seems, too, that for Tina, the big transformations that we see in her music — her looks, her hair, her persona, her life — they actually all start inside of her in this moment in the late ‘70s, when she encounters Buddhism. And then, of course, in the research for the show I’ve been reading parts of her book “Happiness Becomes You,” where she talks about how she’s applied the principles of Buddhism to her life, which essentially makes her a dharma teacher, to someone who relays the principles to modern life to help make it accessible to other people. So I mean, to me, that’s pretty amazing. But one thing she writes about in the book is that a sound engineer actually mentioned it to her. You know, Tina, have you ever thought about chanting? This is the height of the abuse, the height of her, just the — I guess, the peak of her depression, where she’s really feeling trapped and unsure about how to move forward in her life. And she’s able to regain possession of her mind. Because when you’re in an abusive dynamic, you can’t trust yourself.

Yeah, I think I was really struck in “What’s Love Got to Do With It” when she finds the Buddhism. And I remember seeing that at the Cheltenham Mall in Philadelphia with a bunch of presumably non-Buddhist Christians.

What? I don’t know what — I don’t know what I’m saying sounds.

I know, I know, I know it. It feels strange, but it’s chanting. I’m a Buddhist now. And when you chant, Anna, you can see things clearly. It’s like life’s mirror.

And there was something about her repetition of that mantra over and over again. And it takes on a kind of speaking in tongues quality for anybody familiar with Pentecostalism.

There is a way in which her chanting is — it is empowering her, and it is making her stronger. And it felt in the audience at the time foreign to a lot of people watching that. But I also think once it became clear what it was bringing up in her, and what it was allowing her to do, it was pretty clear that we’re just talking about God. And that was powerful, watching her embrace spirituality to get her out of this marriage.

I think people don’t know what to do with spirituality that they don’t understand. And I really love how Tina is, across all medias and mediums, is talking about how she was transformed from the inside and how that allowed her to start making these bigger changes in her life. The first tier of emancipation for her is leaving Ike. And then the second tier of this emancipation is learning that she’s enough. I mean, it’s a really deep moment, actually, where she’s like, I’m looking in the mirror. How come no one loves the woman that I am? And it’s really emotional.

And I think a lot of women, and especially Black women, relate to that feeling of growing up in a culture that tells you, you’re not pretty enough and that your natural hair texture is not enough and that your skin color is not enough. And it’s like when Beyonce says, I can never be too perfect to feel this worthless. You understand that women struggle with these demons, despite the outward trappings of success. They still struggle with feeling valued and loved. And it makes me feel more sane, knowing I’m not the only one that has those thoughts — that these incredibly famous, gorgeous, brilliant women also have these thoughts, you know? But one of the things for Tina is the chanting helps her achieve this calm inside that allows her to be open, to love.

Well, it’s interesting that you’re looking at it as this Black woman sort of trying to love herself, too. Because part of the disconnect, I think, in 1993 in the movie theater, was that you were watching this Black woman who grew up in the church suddenly discover her true power through some non-Christian religion. And I think that, to me, is also indicative of somehow Tina Turner’s relationship with Black culture. And how when I was a kid, when the Tina explosion happened, when “Private Dancer” came out, it was really interesting that in Philadelphia, the big Black pop music station where all the jams were, they didn’t play “What’s Love Got to Do With It.”

That’s interesting.

You did not hear “Better Be Good to Me” on Power 99, WUSO. There’s always been this tension about who we embrace in the moment. And I feel like Black America’s embrace of Tina feels, to me, retroactive in some way. But I think there’s something about Buddhism that just — it made her seem even more foreign, in some ways, than relatable.

Yeah, there is this undercurrent of tension about Tina Turner’s relationship to her Blackness and whether or not she’s accepted by Black people, whether or not she’s rejected Black culture. And I think the judgment and criticism about how Black women, especially when they’re famous, live their lives and whether or not they’re Black enough. You saw it with — we talk about it with Whitney Houston. There is this inherent cruelty when you don’t conform, right? Or when you do things, you march to the beat of your own drummer, it’s like there is this really interesting fear-based reaction to criticize and shame as not enough.

I mean, you get put through this ringer of authenticity. I also think this is somebody who has always understood who she was. There’s this passage in “I, Tina,” where she talks about going to Europe when “River Deep, Mountain High” is a hit over there — a bigger hit over there than it was over here. And she is talking about how comfortable she is in France. And she’s like, don’t get me wrong, I’m Black. Nobody’s hair is nappier than mine is. But I also feel like I have been here and that I am somehow — maybe it’s my mixed blood. Maybe it’s working for all those white people in Tennessee all those years. Maybe it’s going to the Black church all that time. But I’m a person who, in some ways, exists beyond Black and white. I’m somebody who exists as myself. And it’s beyond culture. She literally says, I believe that I was universal. And I got to say, I think so, too. You watch her in those stadiums, Jenna?

No, she is absolutely at home. And I think we forget, too, that what we all imagine are the most transformative, exhilarating, formative years of your life — your teens, your 20s, and your 30s — being bound up in this abusive workhorse relationship. And so to hear about the freedom and the liberation she experiences in her 40s and her 50s is just so incredible.

But there are still mountain peaks. There are still achievements left for this woman. And one of them is being re-inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Brm, brm, brm! Yes, this has to happen!

Yes, indeed.

This has to happen. This has to happen this year.

She is in with Ike Turner. They’re in there as Ike and Tina. Now she’s on the ballot for induction as a solo artist. And I’m going to tell you, the competition is fierce. It’s like Tina Turner, Jay-Z, Mary J. Blige, Todd Rundgren — hello, Philadelphia — Kate Bush —

— one of my heroes. I mean, L.L. Cool J, Chaka Khan, Dionne Warwick.

And Jenna, even if she doesn’t get it, I was just on the induction fan vote Rock and Roll Hall of Fame page. And I’m looking at this leaderboard. And in fifth place of the five slots that the fans most want, fifth place, Foo Fighters. Fourth place, Iron Maiden. Third place, The Go-Go’s. Number two, Fela F-ing Kuti. Fela Kuti!

But number one, by a not insignificant margin over Fela Kuti —

— the one and only Tina Turner.

So even if the people who vote for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame don’t want Tina Turner in it this year —

The people do!

— the people do. The people do. So Rock Hall voters —

Do the right thing.

— y’all know what to do. You better be good to her. Be good to her.

And that’s our show! Still Processing is produced at The New York Times by Elyssa Dudley and Mahima Chablani.

This week, we have an extra special gluten-free vegan nut-free treat. We made you a playlist of Wesley’s favorite Tina Turner songs. It lives at nytimes.com/stillprocessing. Our editors are Sara Sarasohn and Sasha Weiss.

Marion Lozano mixes the show.

Digital production by Mahima Chablani, Des Ibekwe and Julia Simon.

Special thanks to Lisa Tobin and Wendy Dorr.

Our theme music is by Kindness. It is called “World Restart” from the album “Otherness.”

Just keep your fingers crossed for dame Tina to get Rock and Roll Hall of Fame certified again.

See you next week.

Referring to its “innovative fusion of old-fashioned soul singing and new wave synth-pop,” Stephen Holden, in a review for The New York Times, called the album “a landmark not only in the career of the 45-year-old singer, who has been recording since the late 1950s, but in the evolution of pop-soul music itself.”

At the 1985 Grammy Awards, “What’s Love Got to Do With It” won three awards, for record of the year, song of the year and best female pop vocal performance, and “Better Be Good To Me” won for best female rock vocal performance.

The album went on to sell five million copies and ignite a touring career that established Ms. Turner as a worldwide phenomenon. In 1988 she appeared before about 180,000 people at the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, breaking a record for the largest paying audience for a solo artist. After her “Twenty Four Seven” tour in 2000 sold more than $100 million in tickets, Guinness World Records announced that she had sold more concert tickets than any other solo performer in history.

‘Well-to-Do Farmers’

Tina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock on Nov. 26, 1939, in Brownsville, Tenn., northeast of Memphis, and spent her earliest years on the Poindexter farm in Nutbush, an unincorporated area nearby, where she sang in the choir of the Spring Hill Baptist Church.

Her father, Floyd, known by his middle name, Richard, worked as the farm’s overseer — “We were well-to-do farmers,” Ms. Turner told Rolling Stone in 1986 — and had a difficult relationship with his wife, Zelma (Currie) Bullock.

For more audio journalism and storytelling, download New York Times Audio , a new iOS app available for news subscribers.

Her parents left Anna and her older sister, Alline, with relatives when they went to work at a military installation in Knoxville during World War II. The family reunited after the war, but Zelma left her husband a few years later and Anna lived with her grandmother in Brownsville.

After rejoining her mother in St. Louis, she attended Sumner High School there. She and Alline began frequenting the Manhattan Club in East St. Louis, Ill., to hear Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm.

“I wanted to get up there and sing sooooo bad,” Ms. Turner recalled in “I, Tina: My Life Story” (1986), written with Kurt Loder. “But that took an entire year.”

One night, during one of the band’s breaks, the drummer, Eugene Washington, handed her the microphone and she began singing the B.B. King song “You Know I Love You,” which Mr. Turner had produced. “When Ike heard me, he said, ‘My God!’” she told People magazine in 1981. “He couldn’t believe that voice coming out of this frail little body.”

In his book “Takin’ Back My Name: The Confessions of Ike Turner” (1999), written with Nigel Cawthorne, Mr. Turner wrote: “I’d be writing songs with Little Richard in mind, but I didn’t have no Little Richard to sing them, so Tina was my Little Richard. Listen closely to Tina and who do you hear? Little Richard singing in the female voice.”

Mr. Turner used her as a backup singer, billed as Little Ann, on his 1958 record “Boxtop.” When Art Lassiter, the group’s lead singer, failed to show up for the recording of “A Fool in Love,” she stepped in. The record was a hit, reaching No. 2 on the Billboard R&B chart and No. 27 on the pop chart.

Mr. Turner gave his protégée — who by now was also his romantic partner — a new name, Tina, inspired by the television character Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. And he renamed the group the Ike and Tina Turner Revue.

It was a dynamic, disciplined ensemble second only to the James Brown Revue, but until “Proud Mary,” it never achieved significant crossover success. Up to that point it had only one single in the pop Top 20 in the United States, “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine” in 1961. The group did generate several hits on the R&B charts, notably “I Idolize You,” “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine” and “Tra La La La La,” but most of its income came from a relentless touring schedule.

Ms. Turner’s relationship with Mr. Turner, whom she married in 1962 on a quick trip to Tijuana, Mexico, was turbulent. He was dictatorial, violent at times and, in the 1970s, hopelessly addicted to cocaine. She left him in 1976, with 36 cents and a Mobil gasoline card in her pocket, and divorced him two years later. He died of a cocaine overdose in 2007.

“When I left, I was living a life of death,” she told People in 1981. “I didn’t exist. I didn’t fear him killing me when I left, because I was already dead. When I walked out, I didn’t look back.”

Her marriage provided much of the material for the 1993 film “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” with Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne in the lead roles. Ms. Turner rerecorded some of her hits, and a new song, “I Don’t Wanna Fight,” for the film, but otherwise declined to participate. “Why would I want to see Ike Turner beat me up again?” she said at the time.

A Second Career

In 1966, the record producer Phil Spector , after hearing the Ike and Tina Turner Revue at the Galaxy Club in Los Angeles, offered $20,000 to produce their next song, on condition that Mr. Turner stay away from the studio. The result, “River Deep, Mountain High,” is often regarded as the high-water mark of Mr. Spector’s patented “wall of sound.” It failed in the United States, barely reaching the Top 100, but it was a big hit in Britain, where it marked the beginning of a second career for Ms. Turner.

“I loved that song,” she wrote in her 1986 memoir. “Because for the first time in my life, it wasn’t just R&B — it had structure, it had a melody.” She added: “I was a singer, and I knew I could do other things; I just never got the opportunity. ‘River Deep’ showed people what I had in me.”

After she walked out on her marriage, encumbered with debt, Ms. Turner struggled to build a solo career, appearing in ill-conceived cabaret acts, before signing with Roger Davies, the manager of Olivia Newton-John , in 1979. Guided by Mr. Davies, she returned to the gritty, hard-rocking style that had made her a crossover star and would propel her through the coming decades as one of the most durable performers on the concert stage.

Her fellow artists took notice. In 1982, Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, of the band and production company known as the British Electric Foundation, recruited her to record the Temptations’ 1970 hit “Ball of Confusion” for an album of soul and rock covers backed by synthesizers. Its success led to a second collaboration, a remake of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.” A surprise hit in the United States and Britain, it was the turning point that led to “Private Dancer.”

Ms. Turner followed the runaway success of “Private Dancer” with two more hit albums: “Break Every Rule” (1986) and “Foreign Affair” (1989), which contained the hit single “The Best.”

She made an impact onscreen as well. Ten years after she solidified her persona as a rock ’n’ roller with a riveting performance as the Acid Queen in Ken Russell’s film version of “Tommy,” the Who’s rock opera, she drew praise for her performance as Aunty Entity, the iron-fisted ruler of postapocalyptic Bartertown, in “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” in 1985.

That film also provided her with two more hit singles, “ We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome) ” and “One of the Living,” which was named the best female rock vocal performance at the Grammys in 1986.

In 1991 she and Mr. Turner, in prison at the time for cocaine possession, were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. (She was inducted again as a solo artist in 2021.) She received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2005 and a Grammy lifetime achievement award in 2018.

In 1985 she began a relationship with the German music executive Erwin Bach, whom she married in 2013 after moving with him to Küsnacht and becoming a Swiss citizen. He survives her. Ron, her only child with Mr. Turner, died of colon cancer complications in 2022. Another son, Craig, from her relationship with Raymond Hill, the saxophone player for the Kings of Rhythm, died by suicide in 2018. Her sister, Alline Bullock, died in 2010. Ms. Turner raised two children of Mr. Turner’s, Ike Jr. and Michael.

Complete information on her survivors was not immediately available.

After releasing the album “Twenty Four Seven” in 1999, at 60 and touring to promote it, Ms. Turner announced her retirement. It did not last. In 2008, after performing with Beyoncé at the Grammy Awards, she embarked on an international tour marking her 50th year in the music business.

She announced her retirement again a few years later, but she remained active in other ways. In 2018, she published her second memoir, “My Love Story.”

She and Mr. Bach were executive producers of “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical,” a stage show based on her life and incorporating many of her hits, which opened in London in 2018 and in Hamburg and on Broadway in 2019; Ms. Turner worked with the show’s choreographer and shared memories with its writers.

While reviews were mixed, the musical earned 12 Tony Award nominations; Adrienne Warren, who starred as Ms. Turner, won the award for best actress in a leading role. “In a performance that is part possession, part workout and part wig,” Jesse Green wrote in a review for The Times, “Adrienne Warren rocks the rafters and dissolves your doubts about anyone daring to step into the diva’s high heels.”

The show closed after four months because of the pandemic lockdown, reopening in October 2021 before closing again a year later and going on the road. There is currently a production touring the U.S., as well as productions in Stuttgart, Germany; Sydney, Australia; and London.

Through it all, Ms. Turner’s music endured.

“My music doesn’t sound dated; it’s still standing strong,” she told The Daily Mail in 2008. “Like me.”

An earlier version of this obituary misstated at one point where Ms. Turner attended high school. As correctly noted elsewhere, it was St. Louis — not East St. Louis, Ill.

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this obituary misstated the current number of productions of “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical.” In addition to the one touring the United States and the one in London, there are productions in Stuttgart, Germany, and Sydney, Australia.

How we handle corrections

Tina Turner’s Cosmic Life

The late singer stretched human expression to its fraying limits—and then her story became a folktale.

You can pick virtually any Tina Turner hit to tidily emblematize her career—a career filled with rivers deep and mountains high , a career of rolling on churning waters , a career that was simply, well, you know . But today’s news of her death at age 83 also brings to mind a song that wasn’t itself as big of a hit: a squelchy artifact of 1980s production techniques called “ I Might Have Been Queen .”

At the time Turner released the song, in 1984, she did not feel like a queen. She had been struggling to secure success as a solo artist after the dissolution of her abusive marriage and creative partnership with Ike Turner. She did not know that the album she was working on, Private Dancer , would help launch her into eternal legend. But her Buddhist faith gave her comfort, as did the advice of a psychic who told her she’d been a pharaoh in a past life. So the songwriters Jeannette Obstoj, Rupert Hine, and Jamie West-Oram wrote her an anthem about reincarnation: “I look down and I’m there in history,” went one line that Turner delivered in her majestically strange sing-growl. “I’m a soul survivor.”

Turner’s life had a cosmic dimension to it, spanning disparate eras and places, and suggesting the primordial struggle for safety out of chaos. She was born in 1939 on a Tennessee sharecropping farm, and had early memories of picking cotton. She would endure one of the most notorious marriages and artistic arrangements in history. But she spent nearly the last three decades of her life in Switzerland, calmly ensconced away from both the turbulence and the acclaim she’d experienced in America. And of course, she was responsible for some of the biggest songs of all time—big in terms of popularity but also in emotional scale, owing to a voice that stretched human expression to its fraying limits.

Working with the pioneering bandleader Ike starting in the late ’50s, Turner used her voice as a bridge to the future. In the hit “ A Fool in Love ,” she wailed in a manner that was part gospel and partly a premonition of heavy metal, scraping rudely against a politely shuffling arrangement. Ike tried to dominate her both emotionally and musically, but her assertions of autonomy produced some of the pair’s most important work. Against Ike’s wishes, she recorded Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary,” and without Ike’s direct involvement, she collaborated with Phil Spector to create “River Deep—Mountain High.” On both of those songs, the combination of trancelike rhythms and frenzied vocals feels ritualistic and ravelike, and utterly specific to the singer herself.

Ike never denied Tina’s highly publicized claims that he’d abused her, only how much and how badly. But in the great 2021 documentary Tina , Turner made clear that the media’s interest in portraying her as a victim exasperated her. This perhaps explains why, in the ’80s and ’90s, she found solo success with songs that had a kind of hard-won chillness to them. “What’s Love Got to Do With It” and “The Best” are, of course, enormously passionate songs, but they steamroll you gently, dignifiedly, making them apt for all sorts of commercial environments. Around this time, Turner’s lion-mane hair and imperious stage presence lent her the air of a superhero, a perception she embraced with her memorable turn in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome .

Read: The final word on Tina Turner

She could have kept going, running victory-lap tours and lending her voice to big-tent projects like she did with her 1995 James Bond theme. But she announced her retirement in 2000 and mostly stuck to it—save one last tour in 2008 and 2009. Her legacy only continued to grow while she watched from her château in Switzerland, where she lived with her husband, Erwin Bach, a former music executive. In pop music, her spirit—a combination of exertion, excellence, vulnerability, and spectacle—has been carried forward by apostles such as Beyoncé. In culture more broadly, her story has become a kind of folktale, told and retold in books and TV shows and on Broadway. By the end of her life, that queen title she dreamed about may have become an understatement. If anyone is a rock god, it’s Tina Turner.

Tina Turner (1939-2023)

• Music Artist

IMDbPro Starmeter See rank

• 23 wins & 32 nominations

Remembering Tina Turner (1939-2023)

• Aunty Entity

• Our Guests at Heartland

• The Acid Queen

• Tina Turner (voice)

• Tina Turner

Personal details

• Apple Music
• The Ike & Tina Turner Revue
• 5′ 4″ (1.63 m)
• November 26 , 1939
• Brownsville, Tennessee, USA
• May 24 , 2023
• Küsnacht, Zürich, Switzerland (natural causes)
• Spouses Erwin Bach July 4, 2013 - May 24, 2023 (her death)
• Children Raymond Craig Turner
• Floyd Richard Bullock
• Relatives Jamaica Owens (Niece or Nephew)
• Other works Print advertising: Hanes Resilience Hosiery
• 1 Biographical Movie
• 3 Print Biographies
• 2 Portrayals
• 3 Interviews
• 18 Articles
• 14 Pictorials
• 15 Magazine Cover Photos

Did you know

• Trivia World's most successful female rock artist ever. Record sales: over 60 million (1983-99). Sold more concert tickets than any other female performer in history. Seven-time Grammy Award-winner.
• Quotes I'm the only person left doing the kind of work that I do.
• Trademarks Legs, lips and hair
• The Queen of Rock 'n' Roll
• Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome ( 1985 ) $120 .000
• When did Tina Turner die?
• How did Tina Turner die?
• How old was Tina Turner when she died?

Related news

Contribute to this page.

• Learn more about contributing

More to explore

Add demo reel with IMDbPro

How much have you seen?

Recently viewed

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Tina Turner, rock and roll icon, dead at 83

Annie Zaleski

Tina Turner, a soul and rock powerhouse known for her octave-defying voice and mesmerizing stage moves, has died at the age of 83.

She died Wednesday in her home in Switzerland after a long period of illness, according to a statement from her publicist. In her 2018 memoir, Tina Turner: My Love Story , Turner detailed a litany of health issues she had dealt with since 2013, including a stroke, intestinal cancer and kidney failure. Her second husband, Erwin Bach, donated a kidney to her in 2017, saving her life.

Pop Culture Happy Hour

Remembering tina turner.

• LISTEN & FOLLOW
• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts
• Amazon Music

Your support helps make our show possible and unlocks access to our sponsor-free feed.

In a recording career that spanned six decades, Turner found fame both as a solo artist and in a duo with her first husband, Ike Turner. With the latter, she was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and became a staple of the U.S. pop and R&B charts in the 1960s and '70s. The duo's high-energy soul and rock was informed by Tina's disparate vocal influences. She grew up listening to country music, but had many idols: '50s R&B singers LaVern Baker and Faye Adams; gospel great Mahalia Jackson and rock pioneer Sister Rosetta Tharpe; blues legend B.B. King; and soul greats Ray Charles and Sam Cooke. Accordingly, she had a malleable and versatile voice, and could unleash a scalding rock growl, or dip into her lower register and sing the smoky blues or velvety R&B numbers. One of Ike & Tina's most well-known songs, "River Deep, Mountain High," was even a Phil Spector-produced, orchestral-gospel triumph.

An agile vocal interpreter, Turner also made other people's iconic songs her own — adding a tone of yearning and desperation to The Beatles' already-pleading "Come Together," and layering on more of a country twang to The Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Women." Her signature tune, a fiery transformation of Creedence Clearwater Revival's laid-back "Proud Mary," became a showcase for her sultry soul drawl and raspy rock 'n' roll yelp. The latter song won Turner her first Grammy Award, for best R&B performance by a duo or group with vocal. She would win eight Grammys overall — including best female rock vocal performance for three years in a row during the '80s.

In addition to her vocal prowess, Turner had a commanding stage presence that was often characterized as "electrifying." This descriptor somehow always seemed like an understatement: At the microphone, Turner vibrated with energy, like a simmering pot about to boil over, and she possessed natural athleticism that translated to lithe but powerful onstage dancing. "Someone once called Tina 'the female Mick Jagger,'" Rolling Stone 's Ben Fong-Torres wrote in 1971. "In fact, to be more accurate, one should call Mick 'the male Tina Turner.'" (This is no mere critical hyperbole: In the same Rolling Stone feature, Turner herself insinuated that Jagger studied her moves rather closely when she and Ike toured with the Rolling Stones in 1969.) Naturally, when the pair teamed up for a barnburning cover of the Jacksons' "State of Shock" at Live Aid in 1985, the combination was incendiary.

"I'm so saddened by the passing of my wonderful friend Tina Turner," Jagger said in a statement on Instagram. "She was truly an enormously talented performer and singer. She was inspiring, warm, funny and generous. She helped me so much when I was young and I will never forget her."

Born Anna Mae Bullock on Nov. 26, 1939, Turner grew up in rural Nutbush, Tenn., but also spent time in Knoxville, as her parents moved there for work. Growing up, she had a distant relationship with both her father, who abandoned the family when she was 13, and mother. But performing came naturally, and became her solace. In Tina Turner: My Love Story , she describes music-filled shopping excursions — being 4 or 5 years old and being paid by salesgirls to sing radio hits she had memorized — and the exhilaration of leading her cousins, half-sister Evelyn, and sister Alline in pretend stage shows. Later, she honed her performing presence further by singing at picnics with a regionally famous trombonist named Mr. Bootsy Whitelaw.

Turner moved to St. Louis at age 16 to live with Alline and her mother, and began going to the famed East St. Louis venue Club Manhattan, where she first saw Ike Turner & The Kings of Rhythm. In 1957, she ended up joining the group after her impromptu performance of B.B. King's "You Know I Love You" wowed the bandleader. The troupe was eventually rechristened the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, highlighting her elevated role.

By all accounts, Ike was excessively cruel toward Tina, both personally and professionally. "Looking back, I realize that my relationship with Ike was doomed the day he figured out that I was going to be his meal ticket, his moneymaker," Turner wrote in My Love Story . She then described how she was a last-minute replacement to sing on "A Fool In Love" — which became the duo's first hit, reaching No. 2 on the R&B charts in 1960 — and was impressive enough that a label head told Ike to make Tina the group's centerpiece. "What went through Ike's head when he heard that advice?" she continued. "He had to find a way to protect his interests, and that's when the trouble began."

Over the years, Turner has been open about certain aspects of their time together, although she told the New York Times in 2019 that she's never divulged all: "I think I'm ashamed. I feel I told enough." But Ike was mentally controlling — for example, he rechristened her "Tina Turner" and then trademarked the name, both without her consent — and physically abusive. She was nearly penniless when she left him in 1976, while the pair were on tour in Dallas. "I walked out without anything and had to make it on my own for my family and everyone so I just went back to work for myself," she said during a 2017 appearance on The Jonathan Ross Show .

Turner had released two solo albums while still performing with Ike, 1974's Tina Turns the Country On! — a stripped-down LP featuring her take on songs by Bob Dylan, Dolly Parton and Kris Kristofferson — and 1975's rock-oriented covers album Acid Queen. Her first entertainment forays post-split geared toward mainstream fare — the game show Hollywood Squares and Cher's variety TV series — and cabaret-style live concerts, as well as two albums that didn't chart. She also recorded a sleek, electro-pop take on the Temptations' "Ball of Confusion" on Music Of Quality & Distinction, Volume One , an album released by Heaven 17 members Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh under the name B.E.F.

The year 1984 would be pivotal for Turner. She dueted with David Bowie on the reggae-influenced title track of his Tonight LP, and finally achieved widespread mainstream success on her own thanks to the blockbuster Private Dancer . As with "Ball of Confusion," the album embraced the decade's slicker, cutting-edge production values — in fact, two songs were co-produced by Ware — while still highlighting Turner's muscular voice and eclectic influences.

The album's tracklisting included the Mark Knopfler-penned title track, as well as covers of tunes by David Bowie ("1984"), the Beatles ("Help!"), and Ann Peebles ("I Can't Stand the Rain"). Private Dancer also featured her first and only solo No. 1 hit, the vulnerable and luxurious "What's Love Got to Do With It." The single, which also won Grammy Awards for record of the year and best female pop vocal performance, boasted a cathartic, lived-in vocal performance that ushered in her sophisticated second act and cemented her reputation as a survivor, a tag and aesthetic she embraced.

Turner's commercial renaissance continued as the decade progressed. She co-starred in the 1985 film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome , which spawned the dramatic power ballad "We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)" and the Grammy-winning "One of the Living," and racked up more hits with the Bryan Adams duet "It's Only Love," breezy seduction "Typical Male," and the empowerment anthem "The Best." With her spiky wig and power miniskirts that showed off her legendary legs, Turner also became an early MTV icon: She performed at the first-ever MTV Video Music Awards in 1984, and won best female video the following year for "What's Love Got to Do With It."

Turner continued to be a commercial force into the '90s, notably thanks to the 1993 biopic, What's Love Got to Do With It . Based on her 1986 autobiography, I, Tina , the movie starred Laurence Fishburne as Ike and Angela Bassett as Tina. Both actors were nominated for Oscars, while Bassett won a Golden Globe for best performance by an actress in a comedy or musical. Turner herself also received a career boost, as the soundtrack song "I Don't Wanna Fight" became a worldwide hit, cracking the top 10 in the U.S. In 1995, she landed another prestigious honor, singing the slinky, elegant James Bond theme song "GoldenEye" for the titular film.

Turner, who moved to Switzerland in 1995, started easing up on her workload in the late '90s and '00s, and ended up retiring after a 50th anniversary tour in 2009. However, she was still an active steward of her own legacy; in fact she also worked closely on the development of Tina: The Tina Turner Musical , which opened on Broadway in fall 2019. And at the 2008 Grammy Awards, she performed a showstopping version of "Proud Mary" with Beyoncé. With hindsight, it's easy to interpret the moment as Turner passing the torch to a younger musician. However, the performance also once again reaffirmed that she was squarely in control of her rich musical legacy.

• Tina Turner

• International

Tina Turner dies at 83

By Tori B. Powell , Maureen Chowdhury and Amir Vera , CNN

Here are times Tina Turner made history

Aside from her talent, Tina Turner also made history over the course of her decades-long career.

Here are some of the times the iconic singer made history:

Her comeback as a solo artist in her 40s:  Although she didn’t like the song at first and had to be talked into recording it, “What’s Love Got to Do With It” made her, at 44, the oldest female artist to score a No. 1 hit . 

Turner was  the first Black artist and the first female artist  to feature on the cover of Rolling Stone , according to the music publishing company BMG. Her solo works include 10 studio albums, two live albums, two soundtracks and five compilations, which in total have sold more than 100 million records. 

Turner was also among only a handful of artists to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice . Turner was first inducted into the organization, alongside her ex-husband and musical partner Ike Turner, in 1991. She was later inducted in 2021 as a solo artist.

"Our forever goddess of rock 'n' roll": Oprah shares Tina Turner tribute

Oprah Winfrey reflected on her friendship with Tina Turner in a tribute shared on her official Instagram account. Winfrey wrote in the post caption that she "started out as a fan of Tina Turner, then a full-on groupie, following her from show to show around the country" with the two of them eventually becoming friends.

"She is our forever goddess of rock ‘n’ roll who contained a magnitude of inner strength that grew throughout her life. She was a role model not only for me but for the world. She encouraged a part of me I didn’t know existed," Winfrey wrote in the post featuring pictures of the two together over the years. "Once she claimed her freedom from years of domestic abuse, her life became a clarion call for triumph. I’m grateful for her courage, for showing us what victory looks like wearing Manolo’s and a leather miniskirt. She once shared with me that when her time came to leave this earth, she would not be afraid, but excited and curious. Because she had learned how to LIVE surrounded by her beloved husband, Erwin, and friends. I am a better woman, a better human, because her life touched mine. She was indeed simply the best," Winfrey wrote.

See the full post here:

Biden calls Tina Turner "a once-in-a-generation talent”

From CNN's DJ Judd 

President Joe Biden offered condolences on the death of global music icon Tina Turner , calling the late musician “a once-in-a-generation talent that changed American music forever.” 

“Before she was the Queen of Rock and Roll, Tina Turner was a farmer’s daughter in Tennessee. As a child, she sang in the church choir before becoming one of the most successful recording artists of all time,” he wrote in a statement Wednesday. “Jill and I send our love and prayers to her husband Erwin, the rest of the Turner family, and fans around the world who are mourning today for the woman they agree was ‘simply the best.’"

In pictures: Tina Turner throughout the years

From CNN staff

A trailblazer, trendsetter and icon: Tina Turner will leave behind a rich legacy of culture for her contributions to the music industry.

The resilient singer said that professionally, some of her happiest moments were when she was performing her hit songs live.

"One of my early career goals was to become the first Black woman to fill stadiums around the world,” she told NBC’s Today Show in 2021 . “At the time, it seemed impossible. But I never gave up, and I’m so happy I made that dream come true."

Here's a look back at Turner's life and career over the years:

Flowers were placed on Turner's Hollywood Walk of Fame star

From CNN’s Krecyte Villareal

A floral wreath was placed on  Tina Turner’s star  on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Wednesday afternoon.

Fans gathered near her star following the news of her passing.

"I’m very blown away right now, all of us are. My family, we loved Tina Turner," Adrienne Rohas, a fan of Turner's since the 1970s, told CNN while visiting the late musician's star. "The greatest legs, the best voice and all the moves that you can get – she had them all, she’s the best.”

According to the California landmark's website, Turner received a star during an induction ceremony on August 28, 1986.

Actress Angela Bassett pays tribute to Tina Turner

From CNN's Alli Rosenbloom

Actress Angela Bassett, who was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of Tina Turner in the 1993 biopic — " What's Love Got to Do with It " — paid tribute to Turner in a statement shared with CNN on Wednesday.

“How do we say farewell to a woman who owned her pain and trauma and used it as a means to help change the world? Through her courage in telling her story, her commitment to stay the course in her life, no matter the sacrifice, and her determination to carve out a space in rock and roll for herself and for others who look like her," Bassett wrote. "Tina Turner showed others who lived in fear what a beautiful future filled with love, compassion, and freedom should look like. Her final words to me - for me - were 'You never mimicked me. Instead, you reached deep into your soul, found your inner Tina, and showed her to the world.' I shall hold these words close to my heart for the rest of my days. I am honored to have known Tina Turner. "I am humbled to have helped show her to the world. So on today, while we mourn the loss of this iconic voice and presence, she gave us more than we could have ever asked. She gave us her whole self. And Tina Turner is a gift that that will always be 'simply the best.' Angels, sing thee to thy rest…Queen," she concluded.

HBO Tina Turner documentary left audiences craving an encore

From CNN's Brian Lowry

In 2021, HBO released a documentary titled "Tina" that shed new light on the iconic Tina Turner.

Below is an excerpt from the CNN review of the documentary:

“Tina” is that rare documentary that leaves you craving an encore, as if two hours weren’t quite enough to do Tina Turner’s life and career justice. Weaving in a new interview with the (at the time)  81-year-old icon , the footage then and now underlines the impression of Turner as a force of nature, rocking and rolling with and without Ike.

The documentary opens with Turner’s 1981 People magazine interview, in which she opened up about the abuse she received from her husband and musical partner, Ike Turner , before leaving him five years earlier. The film devotes roughly the first hour to that part of her story, which included the domineering Ike coming up with her stage name – born Anna Mae Bullock – without her permission.

At the time, as third-party voices note, such frank discussion of domestic abuse was unusual, and Turner’s efforts to put her marital split behind her by speaking out – and later writing a book – didn’t really work. Yet it did mark a turning point for her professionally, as she teamed up with manager Roger Davies and embarked on a path that saw her filling arenas and stadiums, going from Vegas cabaret act to international rock star.

“You gave me this name,” Katori Hall, who wrote “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical,” says in summarizing Turner’s attitude toward Ike as she achieved personal and professional independence. “But watch what I build with it.”

Directors Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin unearth all kinds of fabulous video of the young Tina, dancing with a sense of joy and power that belied the tumult and pain she endured in private.

Like HBO’s recent  Bee Gees documentary , “Tina” simultaneously takes the audience back in time while rekindling appreciation for the music, virtually ensuring anyone familiar with the songs will be humming a few of them (“Proud Mary” and “I Don’t Wanna Fight,” in this case) days later.

Read more here .

HBO, like CNN, is a unit of WarnerMedia.

Tina Turner "died peacefully," family says

From CNN's Megan Thomas

Tina Turner's family said the iconic singer died after a "long illness."

“Tina Turner, the ‘Queen of Rock & Roll’ has died peacefully today at the age of 83 after a long illness in her home in Küsnacht near Zurich, Switzerland,” her family said in a statement shared to CNN. “With her, the world loses a music legend and a role model.”

CNN has reached out to representatives of Turner.

Tributes pour in on social media for Tina Turner: "You're simply the best"

Tributes are pouring in on social media following the death of iconic singer Tina Turner:

NBA legend Magic Johnson called her "one of my favorite artists of all time."

"She always gave you your moneys worth," the athlete said alongside a picture with Turner.

Grammy-winning singer Ciara thanked Turner "for the inspiration you gave us all."

"Heaven has gained an angel," she wrote on Twitter with pictures of Turner performing. "Rest in Paradise Tina Turner."

"I Will Survive" singer Gloria Gaynor spoke to Turner's trailblazing career in a tribute shared on Twitter.

"I am so, so very sad to hear of the passing of @TinaTurner, the iconic legend who paved the way for so many women in rock music, black and white," Gaynor wrote . "She did with great dignity & success what very few would even have dared to do in her time and in that genre of music."

Actor Forest Whitaker said Turner is "simply the best."

"Tina Turner was an icon, whom we loved for her voice, her dancing, and her spirit," he said on Twitter . "As we honor her, let’s also reflect on her resilience, and think about all the greatness that can follow our darkest days. Thank you for sharing your gifts with us, Tina. You’re simply the best."

Actress and singer Kelly Rowland expressed love for the singer on Instagram.

"Thank you Queen, for giving us your all!" she captioned a post featuring photos of Turner. "We Love You!!"

Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger called Turner his "wonderful friend" and shared pictures on Twitter of the two performing together.

Grammy-winning neo-soul singer Erykah Badu shared the news of Turner's passing on her Instagram account Wednesday.

"Cultural Icon down. Safe Journey Anna Mae Bullock," Badu wrote, addressing Turner by her birth name. "You were HERE."

Singer-songwriter Mariah Carey called Turner "an incredible performer, musician and trailblazer."

"The words legendary, iconic, diva, and superstar are often overused and yet Tina Turner embodies them all and so many more - an incredible performer, musician and trailblazer," Carey said on Twitter . "To me, she will always be a survivor and an inspiration to women everywhere. Her music will continue to inspire generations to come. Rest in Peace, Queen."

Please enable JavaScript for a better experience.