A commentary tribute in memory of Tina Turner, who died Tuesday at the age of 83
When Tina Turner hit her stride with the release of her 1984 hit album “Private Dancer,” MTV had barely been around for three years, which placed the bulk of the generation it influenced in its adolescence. Turner was 44 years old, an age at which most women in entertainment experience a career recession if they aren’t pushed toward early retirement.
But to an audience still in awe at seeing their radio stars’ hits come to life on TV screens she was just getting started. Turner became one of the first Black artists to be featured on MTV after “Private Dancer” went on to be certified five-time Platinum in the United States, yielding her only No.1 hit on the Billboard 100, “What’s Love Got to Do With It.”
A year after its release she played to stadiums on a world tour that drew audiences of all ages. Turner also became an action star, playing the regal, daunting Aunty Entity in 1985’s “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.” When she retired from touring after headlining the highest-grossing rock roadshow of 2000, she was 60.
These achievements are not the sum of Turner’s 83 years, a rich life defined by resilience, stamina and a refusal to be defined by the hardship and abuse by which others sought to measure her legacy. But in a world that still obsesses over what constitutes a woman’s prime, Turner lived and leaves an unrivaled blueprint. Nobody but Tina Turner decided when she was done.
Turner, who died Tuesday after a long illness in her home in Küsnacht near Zurich, Switzerland, was the rare rock icon who meant something to Generation X and their parents in their youths, and adulthoods, up until the day she left us. Her musical style merged soul traditions with a wiry jolt of rock n’ roll, making her one of the few Black women to claim her spot, and an especially bright one, in a firmament that primarily venerates white men.
Turner was a force of aerobic power, belting her way through covers of John Fogerty’s “Proud Mary” and Sly Stone’s “I Want to Take You Higher” as her limbs churned away with precision and in double time. And her voice, a supernatural approximation of molten honey and rough sugar, earned her the role of the Acid Queen in the 1975 film version of the Who’s “Tommy.”
Nobody but Tina Turner could decide when she was done.
In the 1980s she transformed into an entirely different type of rock star than the fireball powering the Ike & Tina Turner Revue in the 1960s and 1970s – all leg muscle, lion’s mane wigs, sparkle, and an afterburner of a voice that could melt you slowly in one moment and blast you with hot diamond dust in the next, with an inhale’s space between.
“Private Dancer” yielded some of its decades’ defining hits, including “Better Be Good to Me” and its title track. Singles from the albums that followed remain nearly as popular, including “Typical Male, “I Don’t Wanna Fight” and her cover of Bonnie Tyler’s “The Best.
