Tina Turner, ‘Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll’, dies aged 83 in Switzerland
Tina Turner – one of rock’s great vocalists and most charismatic performers – has died aged 83.
Her spokesperson said: “Tina Turner, the ‘Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll’ has died peacefully today at the age of 83 after a long illness in her home in Kusnacht near Zurich, Switzerland.
“With her, the world loses a music legend and a role model.”
‘The world loses a music legend and a role model’ – latest tributes | Live updates
The US-born star was one of rock’s iconic singers, known for her electric stage presence and hits including The Best, Proud Mary, Private Dancer and What’s Love Got to Do With It.
Among the first to pay tribute were Sir Mick Jagger, Sir Elton John, Diana Ross, Bette Midler and Giorgio Armani.
“She was truly an enormously talented performer and singer,” said Rolling Stones frontman Jagger.
“She was inspiring, warm, funny and generous. She helped me so much when I was young and I will never forget her.”
Sir Elton posted a picture of himself with Turner and said she was “untouchable” and a “total legend on record and on stage”.
Turner previously had intestinal cancer and a stroke, revealing in 2018 that her husband had donated a kidney to save her life as she contemplated assisted suicide.
Turner’s stage presence and dance moves were legendary
Ike And Tina Turner With The Ikettes in 1976. Pic:AP
Turner found fame in the 1960s alongside ex-husband Ike Turner, with the classics River Deep, Mountain High and Nutbush City Limits among their hits.
The domestic abuse Ike subjected her to – and her struggle to break free – was documented in a 1993 film starring Angela Bassett, which won three Oscars.
Turner’s life story was also immortalised in a popular West End show that is still running.
Turner lived in Switzerland with her husband. Pic: AP
The singer’s popularity waned by the end of the 1970s and her days in the limelight appeared over, with Turner mainly playing the cabaret circuit as a heritage act.
However, her career was dramatically resurrected in 1983 when a cover of Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together became a huge hit.
Turner, then in her forties, signed a new contract with Capitol Records which led to the Private Dancer album in 1984.
It went on to sell more than 10 million copies and established her as a mega-star.
Turner sang the theme to 1995 Bond film Goldeneye (pictured at the UK premiere)
At a concert in Cologne, Germany in 2009. Pic: AP
The title track from Private Dancer, as well as What’s Love Got to Do With It, and I Can’t Stand the Rain were among the album’s seven singles.
Her most well-known song – with its distinctive intro, steady build and powerful chorus – is probably The Best.
Released in 1989, part of the Foreign Affair album, it’s actually a cover of a song by Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler.
Proud Mary is also an established classic, with Turner performing up-tempo dance moves to its “rolling down the river” refrain well into her seventies at live shows.
Off the back of her comeback, there was also a foray into film alongside Mel Gibson in 1985’s Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
The movie spawned another hit, We Don’t Need Another Hero.
Born Annie Anna Bullock in a segregated Tennessee hospital in November 1939, Turner became a Swiss citizen a decade ago.
Read more:
Simply The Best: Tina Turner in pictures
Turner pictured with her husband Erwin Bach in Zurich, Switzerland
She lived on a sprawling estate on Lake Zurich with her husband and former EMI record executive, Erwin Bach, some 16 years her junior.
The couple met in 1985, with Turner once telling Oprah Winfrey it was love at first sight when he was sent to pick her up from an airport in Germany.
“He had the prettiest face. You could not miss it,” she said.
“It was like saying, ‘Where did he come from?’ He was really that good looking. My heart went bu-bum. It means that a soul has met. My hands were shaking.”
Entertainment
A third of daily music uploads are AI-generated and 97% of people can’t tell the difference, says report
Do you care if the music you’re listening to is artificially generated?
That question – once the realm of science fiction – is becoming increasingly urgent.
An AI-generated country track, Walk My Walk, is currently sitting at number one on the US Billboard chart of digital sales and a new report by streaming platform Deezer has revealed the sheer scale of AI production in the music industry.
Deezer’s AI-detection system found that around 50,000 fully AI-generated tracks are now uploaded every day, accounting for 34% of all daily uploads.
File pic: iStock
The true number is most likely higher, as Deezer’s AI-detection system does not catch every AI-generated track. Nor does this figure include partially AI-generated tracks.
In January 2025, Deezer’s system identified 10% of uploaded tracks as fully AI-generated.
Since then, the proportion of AI tracks – made using written prompts such as “country, 1990s style, male singer” – has more than tripled, leading the platform’s chief executive, Alexis Lanternier, to say that AI music is “flooding music streaming”.
‘Siphoning money from royalty pool’
What’s more, when Deezer surveyed 9,000 people in eight countries – the US, Canada, Brazil, UK, France, Netherlands, Germany and Japan – and asked them to detect whether three tracks were real or AI, 97% could not tell the difference.
That’s despite the fact that the motivation behind the surge of AI music is not in the least bit creative, according to Deezer. The company says that roughly 70% of fully AI-generated tracks are what it calls “fraudulent” – that is, designed purely to make money.
“The common denominator is the ambition to boost streams on specific tracks in order to siphon money from the royalty pool,” a Deezer spokesperson told Sky News.
“With AI-generated content, you can easily create massive amounts of tracks that can be used for this purpose.”
File pic: Reuters
The tracks themselves are not actually fraudulent, Deezer says, but the behaviour around them is. Someone will upload an AI track then use an automated system – a bot – to listen to a song over and over again to make royalties from it.
Even though the total number of streams for each individual track is very low – Deezer estimates that together they account for 0.5% of all streams – the work needed to make an AI track is so tiny that the rewards justify the effort.
Are fully-AI tracks being removed?
Deezer is investing in AI-detection software and has filed two patents for systems that spot AI music. But it is not taking down the tracks it marks as fully-AI.
Instead it removes them from algorithmic recommendations and editorial playlists, a measure designed to stop the tracks getting streams and therefore generating royalties, and marks the tracks as “AI-generated content”.
“If people want to listen to an AI-generated track however, they can and we are not stopping them from doing so – we just want to make sure they are making a conscious decision,” the Deezer spokesperson says.
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Deezer’s survey found that more than half (52%) of respondents felt uncomfortable with not being able to tell the difference between AI and human-made music.
“The survey results clearly show that people care about music and want to know if they’re listening to AI or human-made tracks or not,” said the company’s boss Alexis Lanternier.
“There’s also no doubt that there are concerns about how AI-generated music will affect the livelihood of artists.”
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Musicians protests AI copyright plans
Earlier this year, more than 1,000 musicians – including Annie Lennox, Damon Albarn and Kate Bush – released a silent album to protest plans by the UK government to let artificial intelligence companies use copyright-protected work without permission.
A recent study commissioned by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers suggested that generative AI music could be worth £146bn a year in 2028 and account for around 60% of music libraries’ revenues.
By this metric, the authors concluded, 25% of creators’ revenues are at risk by 2028, a sum of £3.5bn.
Entertainment
BBC apologises to Donald Trump over editing of Panorama but says there isn’t ‘basis for defamation claim’
Saturday Night Live UK has announced its top creative team ahead of the series launching next year.
An American pop culture institution, SNL launched the careers of stars including Bill Murray, Tina Fey, Eddie Murphy, Kristen Wiig and Will Ferrell – and now a “new generation” of British comedians is set to be cast in the first UK spin-off on Sky.
While the show’s stars are yet to be revealed, details of the creative team behind it have now been announced.
Kim Kardashian hosted the show in 2021. Pic: Sky UK/NBC
Two-time Emmy winner James Longman will serve as lead producer, BAFTA winner and live broadcast specialist Liz Clare will direct the series, while writer, comedian and composer Daran Jonno Johnson takes on the role of head writer.
Longman’s credits include The Late Late Show With James Corden, for which he produced famous sketches with stars and notable figures including Sir Paul McCartney, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Cruise and then president Joe Biden.
He also worked on the Friends reunion special in 2021 and hit UK shows such as Never Mind The Buzzcocks, Alan Carr: Chatty Man, The F Word and The Friday Night Project.
L-R: James Longman, Liz Clare, Daran Jonno Johnson. Pic: Sky UK
Clare’s directing credits include An Audience With Adele, The Brits and MTV awards ceremonies, Glastonbury, the BAFTAs and shows such as The Voice UK and Britain’s Got Talent, while Johnson, who is part of the acclaimed sketch group SHEEPS, has written for shows including Wedding Season for Disney+, Siblings for the BBC and Rose d’Or winner Parlement for France.TV.
Saturday Night Live UK marks the first time the US producers have adapted the show, which celebrated 50 years on air earlier this year, for a British audience.
Channel 4 ran several series of a similar programme on Saturday and Friday nights in the 1980s, featuring comedians like Ben Elton and Harry Enfield, but it was domestically produced.
‘A lot of big US comedy is stolen from the UK’
Pete Davidson at SNL’s 50th anniversary celebrations. Pic: Janet Mayer/INSTARimages/Cover Images/AP Feb 2025
Comedian Pete Davidson, another SNL star, told Sky News he’s excited about the UK version – and that it is about time the UK is able to take from US comedy, rather than the other way round.
Speaking in the summer during promotion for The Pickup, Davidson said: “I think it’s a smart idea to have SNL over there because… not that it’s a different brand of comedy, but it is a little bit.
“A lot of the biggest stuff that’s in the States is stuff that we stole from you guys, like The Office or literally anything Ricky Gervais does… there’s just tonnes of great comedy over there. Jimmy Carr is a great stand-up.”
Also highlighting Jack Whitehall, he continued: “I think anything that’s great over there, we just kind of steal… and it doesn’t seem like the other way around. This is the first time I’ve ever heard anything American going to the UK, so I think it’s great.”
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Producers say the UK series will follow the same format as the original, featuring “a new generation of comedy players in the core cast, alongside guest hosts and musical performances”.
The UK show will be overseen by US producer Lorne Michaels. Along with his production company Broadway Video, which has made The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and 30 Rock, the show will be led by UK production team Universal Television Alternative Studio.
Saturday Night Live UK will be broadcast on Sky Max and streaming service NOW in 2026.
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