Tina Turner Dies At 83: Her Road to Success and Major Achievements

On May 24, 2023, a photo was shared on Tina Turner's Instagram account, announcing her passing at 83 years old. In honour of the Queen of Rock 'N' Roll, here's a look into how she rose to fame and the major achievements in her career that made her become a legend.

Tina Turner is most famous for her electric stage presence and her powerful and soulful voice that enchanted millions of people around the world. As a black woman, she struggled to be accepted as a Rock 'N' Roll singer, as people would frequently call her an R&B singer instead.

She was born in 1939 in Nutbush, Tennessee. Her parents were struggling sharecroppers. At 10 years old, her mother left an abusive relationship with her father. Due to this, she was sent to live with her grandmother. Six years later, her grandmother died, so she moved to St. Louis to live with her mother. At 17, she met her first husband, Ike Turner. He changed her name to Tina Turner and started her career, making her the lead singer of the "Ike & Tina Turner Revue".

The duo became very successful and popular during the 1960s and 70s, with hits such as "River Deep", "Mountain High" and "Proud Mary". Both of them were inducted into the Rock 'N' Roll Hall of Fame later on in 1991. However, at the time, things weren't going too well. Despite their success as a musical duo, in 1976, Tina left Ike after a marriage of 16 years due to the abusive relationship they had. She filed for divorce, having nothing but 36 cents and a gas station credit card on her, and took a chance as she started a brand-new life on her own. In a 2018 interview with CBS, she stated "I was just really tired of my life and the situation I was in with Ike".

So in 1984, at the age of 45, she released her first solo album Private Dancer featuring the hit "What's Love Got to Do with It", which was her first No. 1 single in the U.S pop charts and won her 3 Grammy Awards. Other hits from the album included the title track, "Private Dancer" and "Better Be Good to Me". A few years later, she published her memoir "I, Tina", and detailed Ike Turner's emotional and physical abuse and how it had affected her. She kept releasing more albums as a solo artist, such as "Break Every Rule (1986), Tina Live in Europe (1988), and Foreign Affair (1989), which included the hit single "The Best''. This further solidified her status as a pop icon, renowned for her extremely energetic performances and unique style, performing in short skirts and her famous voluminous punk-styled hair.

In October 2008, she started a tour called "Tina!: 50th Anniversary Tour", to mark 50 years since her first recording. After the tour, she retired from performing, as she was nearly 70 when she completed it. In 2013, she married German record executive Erwin Bach and became a Swiss citizen. More recently, in October 2017, she unveiled a musical about her life "Tina: The Tina Turner Musical" in London, which would later debut on Broadway in November 2019.

At the final stages of her life, she had overcome an abusive relationship, won 12 Grammys, one of them being a Lifetime Achievement Award, and many other awards. She released 10 studio albums, toured around the world several times, and got through many rough moments in her lifespan in which she could have given up but didn't. She is not only the undisputed Queen of Rock 'N' Roll, but also Simply The Best.