How Tina Turner pulled off the greatest comeback in entertainment history

The legacy of singer, songwriter and Rock & Roll Queen Tina Turner spans years, genres, and continents.

Over nearly seven decades, the Grammy-Award-winning icon forged a career that can best be described across two distinct periods: the time when she was in her abusive marriage and the years after she broke free. We do her legacy a disservice by continuing to identify her with the first period, especially when she achieved her greatest successes in the second part of her life.

Tina did it all: she sang, she wrote, she danced, and in the face of a devastating divorce that left her financially, mentally and emotionally devastated, she managed to pull off the greatest second act in entertainment history.

On July 1, 1976, before a scheduled performance in Dallas, Texas, Turner fled for her life, crossing several busy interstate lanes and hiding in a Ramada Inn out of fear of her then-husband, manager and musical partner, Ike Turner. She had just 39 cents in her pocket. This was the same woman who rose to prominence with signature frenetic, high-energy performances of hit songs such as River Deep – Mountain High and Proud Mary. But at that moment, she was a scared, battered woman with four children to raise at the mercy of her abuser.

When the divorce was finalised in 1978, Turner, born Anna Mae Bullock, famously walked away with just two cars and the right to continue performing under her married name. In 1986’s I, Tina: My Life Story, she recalls, “[In] the divorce, I got nothing. No money, no house…so I said: I’ll just take my name.

In 1983, Capitol Records took a chance on her, and Tina’s career took off for the moon. The record label gave her just two weeks to record an album, a pace that is nearly impossible even with today’s technology.

What happened next is widely considered the one greatest comebacks in music history.

1984’s Private Dancer, Turner’s fifth solo studio album, was an instant success. It peaked at number three on the Billboard 200, charting for ten consecutive weeks and being certified 5x platinum in the U.S. and 3x platinum in the UK. When the album’s third single, What’s Love Got to Do With It, hit number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, Turner was 44 years old and, at the time, was the oldest solo female artist to top the chart.

Throughout the 1980s, in her 40s and 50’s, Turner’s career was on a perpetual upswing. Not only was she topping charts worldwide, she starred as the villain in 1985’s big-budget film Mad: Beyond the Thunderdome in ensembles that can best be summarised as “Sexy, but make it post-apocalyptic, and see-through.”