The legacy of singer, songwriter and Rock & Roll Queen Tina Turner spans years, genres, and continents.
Over nearly seven decades, the Grammy-Award-winning icon forged a career that can best be described across two distinct periods: the time when she was in her abusive marriage and the years after she broke free. We do her legacy a disservice by continuing to identify her with the first period, especially when she achieved her greatest successes in the second part of her life.
Tina did it all: she sang, she wrote, she danced, and in the face of a devastating divorce that left her financially, mentally and emotionally devastated, she managed to pull off the greatest second act in entertainment history.
On July 1, 1976, before a scheduled performance in Dallas, Texas, Turner fled for her life, crossing several busy interstate lanes and hiding in a Ramada Inn out of fear of her then-husband, manager and musical partner, Ike Turner. She had just 39 cents in her pocket. This was the same woman who rose to prominence with signature frenetic, high-energy performances of hit songs such as River Deep – Mountain High and Proud Mary. But at that moment, she was a scared, battered woman with four children to raise at the mercy of her abuser.
When the divorce was finalised in 1978, Turner, born Anna Mae Bullock, famously walked away with just two cars and the right to continue performing under her married name. In 1986’s I, Tina: My Life Story, she recalls, “[In] the divorce, I got nothing. No money, no house…so I said: I’ll just take my name.
In 1983, Capitol Records took a chance on her, and Tina’s career took off for the moon. The record label gave her just two weeks to record an album, a pace that is nearly impossible even with today’s technology.
What happened next is widely considered the one greatest comebacks in music history.
1984’s Private Dancer, Turner’s fifth solo studio album, was an instant success. It peaked at number three on the Billboard 200, charting for ten consecutive weeks and being certified 5x platinum in the U.S. and 3x platinum in the UK. When the album’s third single, What’s Love Got to Do With It, hit number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, Turner was 44 years old and, at the time, was the oldest solo female artist to top the chart.
Throughout the 1980s, in her 40s and 50’s, Turner’s career was on a perpetual upswing. Not only was she topping charts worldwide, she starred as the villain in 1985’s big-budget film Mad: Beyond the Thunderdome in ensembles that can best be summarised as “Sexy, but make it post-apocalyptic, and see-through.”
- EntertainmentIs Baby Reindeer's ‘Cotton Mouth’ show real?
In 1985, she embarked on the 177-date Private Dancer tour, playing to sold-out audiences across the world. Turner was 56 years old when Goldeneye, the theme song for the 17th James Bond film of the same name, was released. The Twenty-Four Seven Tour meant to serve as a farewell (she would come out of semi-retirement for a tour in 2008), was the highest-grossing tour of 2000, beating out teen boy band pop sensations N’Sync.
In an industry that idolises youth and puts female stars on an invisible timer to obscurity, Turner pulled off a feat that, to this day, cannot be easily replicated: a Black female singer in her 40s, starting over from scratch, rising from the ashes like a blonde phoenix to become one of the biggest music acts of the 80s and 90s. And while many modern singers have commercially successful careers well into their late 30s and early 40s these days–Beyonce, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Mariah Carey, etc. it’s a continued success. Sure, there are always lulls for any entertainer; the public is fickle, and there’s no way to figure out if what’s hot today won’t be ice cold tomorrow.
But Tina? That was different. In a modern recount of her career, if you were to ask the general public, the diva secured her divorce and was immediately back on top, playing in arenas around the world. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the 2021 HBO documentary, Tina, Turner candidly discusses the time following her divorce and how record labels hesitated to sign half of the former iconic duo.
In the early years of her post-Ike and Tina career, the Tennessee native was regarded as a nostalgia act, forced to play small venues, and Vegas-style cabaret shows to pay back debt and support herself. She was even forced to relive her abuse, detailing her time with her former manager and ex-husband in a bombshell 1981 People interview because both the general public and the music industry refused to give her the opportunity to be just TINA, not Ike and Tina, but Tina Turner, in her own right.
But, in the end, she proved them all wrong. And that is a legacy worth celebrating.
Turner was more than a battered woman or an on-stage force of shimmying and shaking on stage, a powerful voice and million-dollar legs. She was a 100% self-made legend, the very essence of a woman determined not only to survive but thrive.
When she fled to that hotel room in 1976, she had no way of knowing that her best years were ahead of her, that time was on her side.
The legendary singer passed away at age 83.
