After a 25-year career, Tina Turner had her first solo No.1 single in the US with What’s Love Got To Do With It in September 1984.
This song was originally written for Cliff Richard, however it was rejected. It was then offered to Donna Summer, who has stated she sat with it for a couple of years but never recorded it. It was eventually recorded by Tina for her fifth solo album, Private Dancer, and became her most successful single.
Although Turner had already scored a late-1983 Top 30 hit with her version of Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together, What’s Love Got to Do with It gave her the first and only Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single of her career, selling over 1.5 million copies worldwide.
At the time, aged 44, she became the oldest solo female artist to top the Hot 100 chart. It was the second-biggest single of 1984 in the U.S. The song would go on to receive three awards at the 1985 Grammy Awards: Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.
In 1993, the song’s title was used as the title for the biographical film about Turner’s life and in 2012, What’s Love Got to Do with It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, giving Tina her third Grammy Hall of Fame award.
Hear all of Tina’s hits on our Exclusive radio station.