Brownsville, Tennessee, wanted to honour its most famous daughter, Tina Turner, but it ended up becoming a meme instead.
Over the weekend, a 10-foot bronze statue of Turner was unveiled in Heritage Park, located near her former high school.
The monument, designed by Atlanta-based sculptor Fred Ajanogha, was meant to capture the Queen of Rock ’n’ Roll mid-performance: microphone in hand, hair wild, legs powering the kind of strut that filled arenas.
The project was backed by Ford Motor Company, which chipped in $150,000 (£118,000) through its Good Neighbor Plan.
‘We are proud to support this statue in the community where Tina Turner’s journey began,’ Ford Community Relations Director Gabby Bruno said.
But when the cloth came off, fans weren’t exactly rolling on the river with joy. Instead, social media was flooded with comments that veered between bewildered and brutal.
‘…is Tina Turner in the room with us??’ asked @basicbeach.
‘They don’t even care how they make our icons look any more,’ groaned @LECKS_
Others didn’t hold back, with @mistergeezy declaring the statue looked like ‘Ronald McDonald with a shaggy wig.’
@HappyT1meHarry asked: ‘Who is making these statues lately? Absolutely terrible.’ And @BCConservative wondered if Ford had been scammed: ‘Was it donated or FREE? I hope nobody actually paid money for that!’
Even those trying for diplomacy couldn’t resist a jab. ‘Words fail,’ wrote @jameszimmermann. ‘Great art does that, leaves you speechless. So does an abomination like this.’
It’s not the first time a celebrity tribute has backfired. Cristiano Ronaldo’s airport bust still haunts Lisbon.
A statue of Lucille Ball in upstate New York was nicknamed ‘Scary Lucy’ until it was replaced.
And who could forget Liverpool’s eyebrow-raising likeness of Mo Salah that looked more like a Funko Pop than a Premier League star?
Tina Turner’s fans had hoped for something different for the icon.
Turner, who died in May 2023 at age 83, survived an abusive marriage, reinvented herself in the ’80s with hits like What’s Love Got to Do With It, sold more than 100 million records, and became the blueprint for sheer resilience.
The Brownsville statue, in contrast, seems to have captured… none of that.
To be fair, public monuments are notoriously hard to pull off. Bronze has a way of turning expressive faces into strange caricatures, and a still figure rarely reflects the energy of someone whose power was all in movement.
But still, for fans who trekked back to Turner’s hometown to celebrate her, the likeness felt less like an honour and more like an insult.
Whether Brownsville doubles down on the statue or eventually commissions a new one remains to be seen. For now, the consensus online is clear: Tina Turner deserved better than Ronald McDonald in a miniskirt.
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