This past week, the world mourned the sudden death of Tina Turner – the legendary singer, who became known as the “Queen of Rock’n’Roll”. Throughout her life, Turner overcame a series of obstacles including an unhappy childhood, an abusive marriage, a stagnated career, and serious health challenges.
Yet, in a 2021 interview with Harvard Business Review (HBR), the eight-time Grammy Award winner shared how embracing the spiritual practices of Buddhism transformed her life. Her personal experience led her to pen her 2020 memoir “Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good” with the aim of sharing the wisdom she had gained and providing her readers with tools to chart their own paths to happiness. In light of one of the greatest life stories ever recorded, StoryTerrace – the nation’s leading biography-writing service – reflects on what we can learn from the icon’s legacy.
Turner wrote “Happiness Becomes You” on her own, cultivating stories from her childhood to lessons learned during her more than six decade-long career in show business. Turner’s book serves as a catalyst for her readers to reflect upon their own lives. The raw and unfiltered account of her life behind the headlines humanised something which seemed so alien and untouchable to the public, encouraging us to document our own life stories. By sharing her experiences, the legendary singer gave a voice to those of us who want to speak out on our own personal journey. In fact, StoryTerrace’s proprietary data supports this finding that over half of the public (51%) say that reading stories they relate to help them to understand themselves.
Coinciding with the memoir boom, another subset of memoirists is entering the literary world. Since the pandemic, ghostwritten memoir services, such as StoryTerrace, have noticed a meteoric rise in the number of people having their own biography written. Having witnessed a more than 200% growth in projects submitted since 2019, the service is now home to thousands of individuals or groups who all have a story to tell.
