We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome) – Tina Turner | Top 40 Chart Performance, Story and Song Meaning

Chart Performance: Pop (#2); 1985

Story Behind The Song By Ed Osborne

By 1985, Tina Turner found herself along way from her cotton picking days in Tennessee. In the past year, her album Private Dancer had spawned five hit singles, and earned Tina four Grammy awards.

Now, with her years of hard work paying off, she wanted another movie role. (A decade earlier Tina played the Acid Queen in The Who’s Tommy) The gods smiled on her again, when the Australian director, George Miller, approached her about starring in the third Mad Max movie.

Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome features Tina as Aunt Entity, The Queen of Bartertown, alongside Mel Gibson in his recurring role as Max. As expected, Tina also recorded two songs for the soundtrack.

Hero lost out at the annual Grammy awards to Whitney Houston’s Saving All My Love For You, however, Tina’s other Mad Max recording, One Of The Living, won for Best Female Vocal Performance – Rock.

This content and all Song Meaning articles were created and written by Top 40 Contributing Editor Ed Osborne. © 2024 Ed Osborne. All Rights Reserved. In addition to these song meaning articles, Ed has written our “Year in Music 1960s-1990s” articles.

Produced by:

• Terry Britten

Lyrics Written by:

• Graham Lyle
• Terry Britten

Awards:

• “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)” was nominated for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance at the Grammy Awards in 1986
• “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)” Music Video was nominated for Best Female Video at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1986