Born: 26 November 1939, United States
Died: NA
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women founder Allison Tyra’s book The View from the Hill: Women Who Made Their Mark After 40.
The year she turned 45, singer Tina Turner began one of the most impressive comebacks in music history. With hits like “River Deep – Mountain High” and “Proud Mary,” Turner had established a successful career earlier in her life, but it had not been her own—both personally and professionally, she was largely under the control of her abusive husband, Ike Turner. For 20 years, from meeting him in 1956 until she divorced him in the late 1970s, there was no Tina without Ike. When she finally found the strength to break away from him, she was left with nothing but debt and the name she had fought to keep. The male-dominated industry seemingly sided with Ike and she found it difficult to find opportunities as she reinvented herself as a solo artist, particularly one approaching and then passing 40.
After years working in cabaret and as a guest artist on others’ songs, she released “Private Dancer” in 1984. It proved to be a massive critical and commercial success, selling more than 20 million copies and earning Turner her first three solo Grammys out of five nominations (she’d previously shared Best R&B Vocal Performance By A Group for “Proud Mary”). Along with making her the oldest female solo artist to top Billboard’s Hot 100, the album also featured the iconic “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” which would become Turner’s signature song.
In 1985, she garnered a cult following for co-starring as the villainous Auntie Entity in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, winning a Grammy for “One of the Living,” a song she contributed to the film. The next year she published her autobiography, I, Tina, which would later be adapted into the 1993 film What’s Love Got to Do With It, and followed by a second autobiography, My Love Story, in 2018. She continued releasing new albums, including Break Every Rule (1986), Foreign Affair (1989), and Wildest Dreams (1996). In 2018, a jukebox musical about her life, Tina, premiered on London’s West End before debuting on Broadway the following year and launching multiple international tours. Among other accolades, the Broadway run was nominated for 12 Tonys, winning one.
As for Turner herself, at the time of her final concert at age 69 as part of her last world tour, she had become one of the best-selling female artists in music history. Nominated 25 times for Grammys, Turner had the last of her eight wins in 2008 for Album of the Year, as well as a lifetime achievement honor in 2018. Ike and Tina Turner were jointly inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1991; it was only 30 years later that Turner was inducted as a solo artist in her own right.