Remembering Tina Turner

The world is mourning for Tina Turner. Beyonce and Lizzo have both paid tribute to the late star, who died last week at the age of 83. At her show in London, Beyonce performed a cover of Turner’s iconic song River Deep, Mountain High in honor of the singer. 

Image: Phil Ramey via The New York Times

Tine Turner is considered to be the “Queen of Rock & Roll” during her sixty year long career. For much of her career her songs could be regularly found on the Billboard Top 40 list, earning her Grammys, a Kennedy Center Honor, and a spot in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. 

Turner earned her first breakthrough success through the music she made with her ex-husband, Ike Turner. This success, however, was heavily sullied by her relationship with Ike, physically violent and psychologically abusive partner. Ike’s brutal volatility led Turner to escape their marriage while the band was on tour in 1976, famously leaving the hotel at which they were staying with only a Mobil card and 36 cents in her pocket. 

Image: Anton Corbijn via Harvard Business Review

Through the course of their divorce, Turner only asked that she get custody of her children and that she get to keep her stage name, which Ike Turner owned. Once free from her abusive relationship, Tina Turner continued creating hit songs like What’s Love Got to Do With It and Private Dancer. The ‘80s also welcomed the rise of MTV, and Turner’s music videos ushered in a new generation of fans for the star. 

By the mid 1980s, Turner was a global icon. In the ‘90s, she published a memoir called I, Tina and a film about her life called What’s Love Got to Do with It was released. Most recently, a documentary about her life was released on HBO. Turner died after struggling with a long illness in Switzerland, where she lived with her second husband.