Harris pens tribute to Tina Turner: ‘She stood tall and proud’
FILE - Tina Turner performs at The Sprint Center in Kansas City, Mo., on Oct. 1, 2008, the first stop on her Tina!: 50th Anniversary Tour.
Vice President Harris is penning a tribute to Tina Turner, saying as a “lifelong fan,” the “What’s Love Got to do With It” singer “helped evolve the music of our nation.”
Turner died last month at 83.
In an essay published Monday in Rolling Stone, Harris recalled growing up listening to the performer who was dubbed the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
“When I was a child, my mother would play ‘Proud Mary’ on repeat as I danced around our living room, singing along into my toy microphone at the top of my lungs,” Harris, 58, said.
The Grammy Award winner, Harris said, “spoke a universal language.”
“Through her music, she told stories of love and loss, of triumph and pain, and she told them in ways that people around the globe could understand and relate to.”
“So many of those songs were rooted in freedom, individuality, and self-determination — at a time when such concepts felt off-limits to Black female artists,” said Harris, who made history as the country’s first Black vice president and the first female vice president of South Asian descent.
But Turner “did more than just give voice to those values — she lived them,” Harris said of the entertainer, who was the first woman and first Black artist to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1967.
“Onstage and off, she was unapologetically Tina. With her very presence representing an affront to the status quo, she stood tall and proud, demonstrating to the world that rock stars could look like her, too, and reminding us all the power of living as our true, authentic selves,” Harris said.
The vice president lauded Turner, saying she “endured racism, sexism, and domestic violence — experiences that nobody should ever have to face.”
“But she met those challenges head-on with courage and conviction,” Harris said.
“Growing up, my mother often told me, ‘Kamala, you may be the first to do many things. Make sure you are not the last,” Harris wrote in the piece.
Through Turner’s “lifelong work of mentoring and developing younger artists,” Harris said, “she widened the path and made sure that she would not be the last.”