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As Heard On Morning Edition MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: The queen of rock 'n' roll with a voice and stage presence all her own - who else could we be talking about but Tina Turner? (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PROUD MARY") TINA TURNER: (Singing) Proud Mary keep on burning, burning, rolling, rolling. All right. Rolling on the river. MARTIN: Turner won eight Grammys and was one of the very few to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame twice, once as part of a duo with then-husband Ike Turner and again as a solo artist. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT") TURNER: (Singing) What's love got to do - got to do with it? What's love but a secondhand emotion? MARTIN: Tina Turner died yesterday at her home in Switzerland at the age of 83. Maureen Mahon is a professor and chair of the New York University Music Department, and she's with us now to offer some remembrances of this incredible talent. Good morning. Thanks for joining us. MAUREEN MAHON: Good morning. Thanks for having me. MARTIN: So let's start at the beginning. She was Anna Mae Bullock. She was growing up in Tennessee. She had a pretty rough childhood, moved to St. Louis when she was 16, met the bandleader Ike Turner. Obviously, something about her made her stand out even as a teenager. What was it? MAHON: It was the voice. She had an extraordinary voice. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "RIVER DEEP - MOUNTAIN HIGH") TURNER: (Singing) When I was a little girl, I had a rag doll, the only doll I've ever owned. MARTIN: Ike Turner was famously abusive, I mean, physically, emotionally. Despite that, they produced these incredible hits, you know, "River Deep - Mountain High." But she did leave him. And remember, this was at a time when people really didn't talk openly about things like that. How did she make her escape? MAHON: She - it took her a while to do it. And she started singing with Ike Turner when she was still in high school. And they had hits together in the early 1960s. They'd gotten married even though they hadn't started out as romantic partners, just recording and performing partners. But by the middle of the 1970s, she decided that she just had to leave. And so she did. And she left really everything behind from that relationship with the exception of her name. So she didn't fight for alimony. She didn't fight for, you know, the rights to the music. She just wanted to keep her name because she knew that was the thing that people would remember and recognize and value. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PRIVATE DANCER") TURNER: (Singing) I'm your private dancer, a dancer for money. I'll do what you want me to do. MARTIN: And then that huge comeback in 1984 with the album "Private Dancer" - four songs hit the top 10 in the U.S., won four Grammys. How did she do it? MAHON: She was fortunate to cross paths with a manager named Roger Davies. And he was someone who had grown up in Australia as a fan of Ike & Tina Turner. He knew her music, and he recognized her incredible talent. And he also understood that the recording industry at that time was going to have some challenges accepting a solo Black woman artist over the age of 25 doing the music that she was doing. But they really just doubled down on the rock 'n' roll image. She stopped wearing the sort of flashy outfits that she had been wearing as part of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, and she developed this really cool, tough rock 'n' roll look. And they... MARTIN: Yeah. MAHON: ...Shifted her sound to fit into the pop sound of the early 1980s. And the fact that she was such an extraordinary singer and performer allowed her to really connect with audiences. She managed to get a recording contract, and they put out that album. MARTIN: OK, last question - she retired from touring almost 15 years ago. A whole generation hasn't gotten to see her live, really. What should they know? How should she be remembered? As briefly as you can. MAHON: I think as a Black woman who refused to stay in the box that people wanted to put her in and as a phenomenal vocalist and entertainer and, of course, as the queen of rock 'n' roll. MARTIN: And they can learn more about her in your book, "Black Diamond Queens: African American Women And Rock And Roll." That's Maureen Mahon. Professor Mahon, thanks so much for remembering her life with us.

Heard on All Things Considered By Allyson McCabe As listening habits have shifted away from radio, visual media have become more important for discovering new music. As key scenes in films and television shows unfold, we may find ourselves searching online to identify what song we're hearing. But who decides what song is playing during those moments? As a music supervisor, Amanda Krieg Thomas has worked on hit TV shows such as The Americans and Pose. She says she gets upwards of 50 pitches a day from people looking to get songs on TV. "There's record labels; there's music publishers; there's third party pitching companies; there are production music libraries, producers, songwriters, managers, artists," she lists. "I get music sent to me all day, every day." They're all hoping for something called "sync placement," the industry term for matching a song to what's happening on screen. Licensing that song could earn an artist anywhere from a few thousand dollars to more than $100,000. Negotiating the terms often involves clearing the rights with everyone from record labels to multiple songwriters on a single track. But Krieg Thomas says the creative element can be challenging, too. "It's all led by the showrunner's vision, and so my job is servicing that vision," she says. "Sometimes that involves pitching song ideas, sometimes it involves clearing songs they want. Sometimes it involves coming up with the tapestry, if you will, of the sound of the show." Music supervisor Gabe McDonough does the same, only for major advertising campaigns. In 2015, he helped broker a deal with Ford to feature "Fight Song" by Rachel Platten. "It's brute force," McDonough says. "How many times is that thing in front of people?" Putting songs in front of listeners used to be the domain of record label A&R reps, industry talent scouts who lean on radio DJs to promote entry-level artists. But today, TV has become so effective, even established artists such as Grimes, Migos and Beck are signing deals to plug their songs in ads before they appear on album releases. In the words of music supervisor Morgan Rhodes: "Placement is sort of the new A&R." Rhodes says she looks for opportunities to introduce audiences to artists who haven't been widely exposed. "I love the educational and historical part," she says. "I love the research. I love the digging." Rhodes was spinning records at NPR member station KCRW in Los Angeles when filmmaker Ava DuVernay invited her to work on the 2012 feature Middle of Nowhere. Since then, Rhodes has supervised the music for several of DuVernay's projects, including the 2014 Civil Rights drama, Selma. "There was no limit to where I searched [for inspiration]: news articles, conversations with family members," she says. "And it was a wonderful experience, especially unearthing some artists that hadn't seen placements and may not have been as remembered." One of those artists was Martha Bass. Rhodes chose one of her songs, "Walk With Me," for a key scene: the confrontation at the Edmund Pettus Bridge during the 1965 march from Selma. Later, when Rhodes was searching for a song for a 2017 episode of Dear White People directed by Justin Simien, she thought back to an independent artist she'd featured on her radio show a few years earlier. "We knew that we needed a male voice," she says. "We knew that we needed a particular kind of singing, sort of a soft voice for the scene, and I remembered James Tillman." With tens of thousands of tracks uploaded to music streaming services every day, James Tillman says he tries to get his songs out as many ways as possible. "I was on Spotify, Apple Music, Soundcloud, Bandcamp," he says. "I just wanted to make sure the music was everywhere that it could be." But after his song "Casual Encounters" appeared on Dear White People, Tillman says his streaming counts spiked, leaving a lasting impact on his audience reach. "That showed me that it leveled the playing field in certain ways, giving me a chance to at least reach people," he says. Rhodes says that with such a crowded streaming environment, TV can help break through all of that online noise. "I've seen sort of a shift in people looking to television as an ear for them, looking to television as a source for new music in the same way that we look at places like Spotify," she says. But song placement is still not a magic bullet: Despite getting his song on a hit TV show, for now James Tillman remains unsigned. "One placement could significantly impact your career, but it probably won't push it over the edge," he says.