Just an hour or so ago, the world was informed of the death of Tina Turner. The acclaimed singer, songwriter, and actress, reportedly passed at her home today in Küsnacht, Switzerland after a long battle with an unnamed illness. She was 83 years old.
Within moments of the announcement, social media was inundated with memorials, tributes, and remembrances, from generations of fans, both marquee and pedestrian. “The King & Queen. She was everything,” wrote a mournful Questlove on Instagram. “Cultural icon down. Safe journey Anna Mae Bullock,” said Erykah Badu in her own post. Even some of the singer’s peers and contemporaries have offered a few words on her passing. “She was truly an enormously talented performer and singer. She was inspiring, warm, funny and generous. She helped me so much when I was young and I will never forget her,” says Rolling Stones frontman, Mick Jagger, in a rare dispatch on Twitter.
“How do we say farewell to a woman who owned her pain and trauma and used it as a means to help change the world?,” asked Oscar-nominee, Angela Bassett, in a statement via Hollywood Reporter. Bassett portrayed the singer in the 1993 biopic, What’s Love Got To With It?, which was based on Turner’s 1986 memoir, I, Tina.
Turner was a somewhat reclusive figure for the last two decades. In 2013, she notoriously relinquished her US citizenship and lived out the rest of her life with husband, Erwin Bach, in Switzerland, where she was diagnosed and treated for intestinal cancer in 2016 and underwent a kidney transplant the following year. It’s unclear if either of those health bouts contributed to her passing.
Scroll through some of the reactions to the death of Tina Turner below.
