ESSAY: A mega-fan's appreciation for Tina Turner's limitless energy and lessons of survival

msn.com:

Tina Turner died at age 83, I found myself drifting back to the fourth grade, to the day I truly discovered her voice. I was on Thanksgiving break — bored — when I decided to rummage through my parents’ old cassette tapes in search of entertainment.

What I found was astonishing: an album called “Private Dancer. ”“I look up to the stars with my perfect memory. I look through it all and my future’s no shock to me. ”“Who was this magnificent woman?” I thought as the lyrics of the song “I Might Have Been Queen (Soul Survivor),” flowed through the headphones of my Walkman. “What had she been through?”I quickly consulted an expert on the matter: my mom, who as a teenager in the '60s, had been listening to Tina since she first made hits with her then-husband Ike.

Mom, like Tina, didn't sugarcoat the superstar's history: Off-stage, Ike was beating her. It was something she herself — and most others — didn't know when she and Dad first went to see her live in the '70s.

It was shocking and sickening to hear. But Mom also shared Tina's triumphs, how she continued to mesmerize and dazzle fans despite the hell she endured.