Legendary Singer Tina Turner Dies at 83

She had been suffering from numerous health problems in recent years.

Tina Turner
(Image credit: Getty)
Rachel Burchfield
By
published
in News

Legendary singer and performer Tina Turner has died at age 83, multiple outlets report. BBC reported that the icon had suffered a number of health issues in recent years, including cancer, a stroke, and kidney failure.

Born Anna Mae Bullock in Tennessee, Turner rose to fame alongside ex-husband Ike Turner in the 1960s with hits like “River Deep, Mountain High” and “Proud Mary.” The Turners—amidst Ike’s rampant abuse—divorced in 1978, and Turner went on to find even greater success as a solo artist in the 1980s, earning the moniker “the Queen of Rock ‘n Roll.” 

Tina Turner

(Image credit: Getty)

Turner was inducted into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame in 2021 as a solo artist, after first being inducted in 1991 alongside her ex-husband. She won eight Grammy Awards. Upon her solo induction, the Hall of Fame noted, per BBC, how Turner had “expanded the once-limited idea of how a Black woman could conquer a stage and be both a powerhouse and a multidimensional being.”

Turner married a second time in 2013 to German music executive Erwin Bac, who she began dating in the 1980s. They lived in Switzerland, and he donated a kidney to her in 2017 after it was discovered she was suffering from kidney failure. Her life is memorialized in the 1993 biopic What’s Love Got to Do With It starring Angela Bassett, and Tina: The Musical on stage. She was also the subject of the 2021 HBO documentary Tina. 

Tina Turner

(Image credit: Getty)

“People think my life has been tough, but I think it’s been a wonderful journey,” she told Marie Claire South Africa in 2018. “The older you get, the more you realize it’s not what happened, it’s how you deal with it.”

There will never be another.

Rachel Burchfield
Rachel Burchfield
Senior Celebrity and Royals Editor

Rachel Burchfield is a writer, editor, and podcaster whose primary interests are fashion and beauty, society and culture, and, most especially, the British Royal Family and other royal families around the world. She serves as Marie Claire’s Senior Celebrity and Royals Editor and has also contributed to publications like Allure, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, People, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and W, among others. Before taking on her current role with Marie Claire, Rachel served as its Weekend Editor and later Royals Editor. She is the cohost of Podcast Royal, a show that was named a top five royal podcast by The New York Times. A voracious reader and lover of books, Rachel also hosts I’d Rather Be Reading, which spotlights the best current nonfiction books hitting the market and interviews the authors of them. Rachel frequently appears as a media commentator, and she or her work has appeared on outlets like NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN, and more. 

Latest