She was born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939, in a segregated hospital in Nutbush, Tennessee, and the world lost her on May 24, 2023, in her adopted home of Küsnacht, Switzerland. But two years after her passing, on what would have been her 86th birthday, Tina Turner is still burning brighter than ever. The woman who simply introduced herself as “Tina from Nutbush” became the undisputed Queen of Rock ’n’ Roll – a title no one has dared challenge since she first exploded onto the stage in the late 1950s. With over 100 million records sold, twelve Grammy Awards (eight competitive, three honorary, one Lifetime Achievement), a Kennedy Center Honor, induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame twice (with Ike in 1991 and solo in 2021), and a Broadway musical that grossed $150 million, Tina didn’t just break barriers – she detonated them with a smile and a high kick that could stop traffic on the Vegas Strip.

The stats are staggering, but they barely scratch the surface. She is one of only three women (alongside Aretha Franklin and Madonna) to have multiple albums certified Diamond in the U.S. Her 1984 comeback masterpiece Private Dancer moved 20 million copies worldwide and turned a 44-year-old domestic-abuse survivor into the biggest female rock star on the planet. “What’s Love Got to Do With It” – the song she initially hated – became the biggest hit of 1984, made her the oldest female solo artist to top the Hot 100 (at 44), and finally won her the Record of the Year Grammy after eight previous nominations. She sold out stadiums in Europe when America had written her off. She headlined Rio’s Maracanã Stadium in 1988 in front of 188,000 people – still the largest paying concert audience ever for a solo artist. And she did it all after walking away from Ike Turner in 1976 with nothing but 36 cents and a Mobil gas card.

The comeback story is the one everyone knows, but the full arc is pure American mythology dipped in Tennessee holy-roller fire. Picked cotton as a child. Discovered at 17 by a wild-eyed Ike Turner in an East St. Louis club when she grabbed the mic during a Kings of Rhythm set and sang B.B. King’s “You Know I Love You” so fiercely that Ike handed her a microphone for life. Renamed “Tina” because it rhymed with Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. Forced into an abusive marriage that left her suicidal. The turning point in Dallas, 1968: Ike beat her bloody in the back of a limousine; she fought back for the first time, and eight years later she finally left for good.

Then came the wilderness years – singing in hotel lounges for $300 a night, cleaning houses to feed her four sons, laughed at by record executives who told her rock was a young man’s game. Until Roger Davies, an Australian manager with nothing to lose, saw her in 1981 and bet everything on the 41-year-old with the legs and the voice. Three years later she was on the cover of Rolling Stone, headlining Wembley, and dating a 28-year-old German record executive named Erwin Bach who would become the love of her life for 38 years.

The second act was supernova. Private Dancer. The 1985 Mad Max cameo. The Pepsi commercials. The 50th-anniversary Grammy performance at age 68 that brought Beyoncé to tears backstage. The 2008–2009 50th Anniversary Tour that grossed $130 million and proved she could still outrun dancers half her age in six-inch heels. And when her body finally said enough – strokes, intestinal cancer, kidney failure – she faced death with the same defiance she faced Ike. In 2017, Erwin donated a kidney to save her life. She called the transplant “a second chance from the universe.”

Her final years were quiet, Swiss, and deeply happy. She became a Swiss citizen in 2013, renounced her American citizenship, and lived in a lakeside château with Erwin, her wig collection, and a Buddhist altar where she chanted every morning. She published two memoirs that sold millions, saw her life story become the Tony-winning musical Tina (which she personally approved, down to the last high kick), and in her last interview with The Guardian in 2021 simply said: “I got to the point where nothing was scary anymore. I had nothing left to lose, and everything to give.”

Today, on her 86th birthday, the tributes are everywhere. Beyoncé posted an old clip of Tina teaching her the “Proud Mary” dance with the caption “Forever learning from the Queen.” Adele broke down mid-concert in Las Vegas last night singing “Simply the Best.” Mick Jagger called her “my ultimate rock ’n’ roll sister.” Oprah wrote a full-page remembrance in O Magazine titled “She Showed Us How to Survive – and Then How to Fly.” And in Nutbush, Tennessee (population still under 300), the tiny Tina Turner Museum added a new exhibit: the actual Mobil gas card she carried the night she left Ike.

The streams tell the story best. On Spotify alone, Tina has gained over 2 billion streams since her passing – more than many artists manage in a lifetime. “What’s Love Got to Do With It” just crossed a billion streams on the platform. Gen Z discovered her through TikTok dances to “Proud Mary” and now argues online about whether she or Beyoncé invented performance. (The correct answer: Tina did, and Beyoncé is the first to tell you that.)

She once said, “I never wanted to be a star. I just wanted to be free.” She got both – and gave the rest of us the blueprint for how to turn pain into power, trauma into triumph, and 86 years into immortality.

Happy heavenly birthday, Anna Mae. The legs, the voice, the fire – none of it ever left the stage.