King Charles Offers Surprise Tribute to Tina Turner

Band performs 'The Best' during changing of the guard outside Buckingham Palace
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted May 29, 2023 1:09 PM CDT
King Charles Offers Surprise Tribute to Tina Turner
Tina Turner performs in Kansas City, Missouri, on Oct. 1, 2008.   (AP Photo/Orlin Wagner, File)

If you can't get enough of the tributes honoring Tina Turner, who died at age 83 after a long illness, here's one more, courtesy of King Charles III. Each day, visitors outside London's Buckingham Palace are treated to the changing of the guard, a 45-minute ceremony in which one group of sentries makes way for the next. On Friday, things were a little different, per USA Today: As the switch got underway, the Band of the Welsh Guards performed Turner's 1989 hit "The Best," in a clip now widely seen from Force News. The band had help with the cheerful tune from the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards Corps of Drums.

The Independent notes that King Charles and Turner first met more than 35 years ago, when she performed during the Prince's Trust All-Star Rock Concert at London's Wembley Stadium. That wasn't Turner's only connection to the British royals: Prince William has fond memories of Turner in general, and "The Best" specifically, which he says his mother, the late Princess Diana, would play in the car while driving him and his brother, Prince Harry, to school. "Sitting in the back seat, singing away, it felt like a real family moment," William recalled in a 2021 Apple interview, adding he still "secretly" loves the song. "When I listen to it now, it takes me back to those car rides and brings back lots of memories of my mother." (More Tina Turner stories.)

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