Global Courant 2023-05-24 23:50:18
Singer Tina Turner has died at the age of 83, one of her representatives said on Wednesday.
She died peacefully after a long illness at her home in Küsnacht near Zurich, Switzerland, her representative said.
Turner began her career in the 1950s during the early years of rock and roll and developed into an MTV phenomenon.
LOOK | Turner performing at St. John’s in 1985:
Tina Turner in Newfoundland in 1985
In the summer of 1985, Tina Turner played four dates in St. John’s.
In the video for her hit What’s Love Got to Do with It, in which she called love a “second-hand emotion,” Turner epitomized 1980s style as she paraded through the streets of New York City with her spiky blonde hair, dressed in a short denim jacket, miniskirt and stiletto heels.
With her penchant for musical experimentation and bluntly worded ballads, Turner fit perfectly into an 1980s pop landscape in which music fans valued electronically produced sounds and scorned hippie-era idealism.
Dubbed the “queen of rock ‘n’ roll,” Turner won six of her eight Grammy Awards in the 1980s. In the decade, she landed a dozen songs in the Top 40, including Typical Male, The Best, Private Dancer and Better Be Good to Me. Her 1988 Rio de Janeiro show drew 180,000 people, which remains one of the largest concert attendances for a single artist.
LOOK | Turner in the music video What’s Love Got To Do With It:
‘An international sensation’
By this time, Turner had been free from her marriage to guitarist Ike Turner for ten years.
The superstar has been candid about the abuse she suffered from her former husband during their marital and musical partnership in the 1960s and 1970s. She described bruised eyes, busted lips, a broken jaw, and other injuries that repeatedly took her to the emergency room.
“Tina’s story is not one of victimization, but one of incredible triumph,” singer Janet Jackson wrote of Turner in an issue of Rolling Stone that ranked Turner No. 63 on a list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
“She has transformed herself into an international sensation — an elegant powerhouse,” said Jackson.
In 1985, Turner gave a fictional twist to her reputation as a survivor. Playing the ruthless leader of a nuclear wasteland outpost, she starred opposite Mel Gibson in the third installment in the Mad Max franchise, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
