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ancianita

(35,813 posts)
Thu May 25, 2023, 02:01 PM May 2023

"If anyone is a rock god, it's Tina Turner."

...Ike never denied Tina’s highly publicized claims that he’d abused her, only how much and how badly. But in the great 2021 documentary Tina, Turner made clear that the media’s interest in portraying her as a victim exasperated her. This perhaps explains why, in the ’80s and ’90s, she found solo success with songs that had a kind of hard-won chillness to them. “What’s Love Got to Do With It” and “The Best” are, of course, enormously passionate songs, but they steamroll you gently, dignifiedly, making them apt for all sorts of commercial environments. Around this time, Turner’s lion-mane hair and imperious stage presence lent her the air of a superhero, a perception she embraced with her memorable turn in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

She could have kept going, running victory-lap tours and lending her voice to big-tent projects like she did with her 1995 James Bond theme. But she announced her retirement in 2000 and mostly stuck to it—save one last tour in 2008 and 2009. Her legacy only continued to grow while she watched from her château in Switzerland, where she lived with her husband, Erwin Bach, a former music executive. In pop music, her spirit—a combination of exertion, excellence, vulnerability, and spectacle—has been carried forward by apostles such as Beyoncé. In culture more broadly, her story has become a kind of folktale, told and retold in books and TV shows and on Broadway. By the end of her life, that queen title she dreamed about may have become an understatement.
If anyone is a rock god, it’s Tina Turner.

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2023/05/tina-turner-obituary/674186/



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"If anyone is a rock god, it's Tina Turner." (Original Post) ancianita May 2023 OP
What struck me about Tina Turner chowmama May 2023 #1
Yes! Well said. ancianita May 2023 #3
I never thought Janis Joplin's offstage persona was a calculated act. Aristus May 2023 #4
When she first started appearing on TV it was like nothing seen before, or since. twodogsbarking May 2023 #2

chowmama

(396 posts)
1. What struck me about Tina Turner
Thu May 25, 2023, 05:49 PM
May 2023

was the contrast between her and the other strong-voiced women rock singers of the time. As far as I remember, only Tina kept the strong voice and presence off the stage. I'm thinking especially of Janis and her little-girl interview voice. There were some in other styles - Eartha Kitt. Nina Simone. FAFO with either was a real thing. But rock was seen as male, and there was still a need for rock women to be non-threatening and ladylike.

I loved the strong female rock singers of the period. I loved Janis. And Etta. But Tina was the honey badger. She didn't care. Onstage, she brought it; offstage, they could bring it on.

ancianita

(35,813 posts)
3. Yes! Well said.
Thu May 25, 2023, 08:06 PM
May 2023

The way you put it, her audacity and style on and offstage did stand out in a male dominated rock world.

Thanks for pointing that out.

Aristus

(66,096 posts)
4. I never thought Janis Joplin's offstage persona was a calculated act.
Thu May 25, 2023, 09:47 PM
May 2023

I just thought she was shy and the voice went with the shyness.

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