The death of Tina Turner yesterday brought to a close one of the great stories in pop music. It’s a well-known story, and it requires no rehashing here (in any case, if you didn’t know it and missed the movie, you’ll read it in the obituaries). Still, it is a triumph of the human spirit that Tina left her abusive husband at the risk of everything she had and knew, and came back, eventually, a bigger star than she was with him.
I don’t have much love for Tina’s output after the Private Dancer album, her big comeback in 1984, but I love her success, which was a permanent fuck-you to her erstwhile abuser, who lived out huis days as a public fool. I hope Tina’s story inspired many abused women to leave their abusive partners (and before anyone objects, “Men are abused, too”, yeah, sure. But that is a different story).
It is remarkable that Tina Turner was seen as a bit of a rock granny when she made her comeback at the age of 44. It seemed so unlikely, and it was unprecedented that a woman of that age might have a second stab at superstardom (and here we might remember the role the members of Heaven 17 played in returning Tina to the big stage). If you were a woman, you were considered past-it once you had crossed the threshold of 30. That comeback helped change things for women in popular music. Beyoncé is only three ye
Cover Me -