Mitch Tambo honours Tina Turner with Indigenous cover of (Simply) The Best ahead of NRL grand final

Mitch Tambo follows his hit Indigenous language version of You’re The Voice with a remake of Tina Turner’s (Simply) The Best. Watch video.

Mitch Tambo will never forget the historic moment he introduced his Gamilaraay language version of You’re The Voice to Australia.

It was the Fire Fight bushfire benefit at Sydney’s Olympic Stadium in February 2020 and in front of more than 70,000 fans and millions more watching at home, the young First Nations artist joined Australian music royalty John Farnham and Olivia Newton-John and Queen’s legendary guitarist Brian May for the triumphant performance.

His remake of the Aussie anthem has now cracked more than one million streams on Spotify alone, the first song in his language to reach that milestone.

“When I decided to do it, you never know how people will respond, and if you change it up too much, you can wreck the whole thing so to have cracked a million streams, it’s beautiful,” he said.

“I remember John giving me a big hug at the Fire Fight rehearsals and saying ‘Thank you for everything you’ve done with this song; it’s not my song anymore, it’s our song’. It was an incredible moment.”

Australian singer, Mitch Tambo to release The Best on September 27 in time for NRL Grand Final week. Picture: David Caird

Emboldened by that success, Tambo has now tackled Tina Turner’s (Simply) The Best ahead of the 2024 NRL Grand Final to honour his love of the iconic Queen of Rock’n’Roll.

The singer performed a version last year to pay tribute to Turner after she died on his social media channels and it started to get traction online and was picked up by radio stations.

“That song is embedded in Aussie culture and when people started loving it online and radio picked it up, I thought I should do a recorded version,” he said.

Just as Farnham had supported his vision for a First Nations version of You’re The Voice, so the team behind (Simply) The Best made it easy for him to gain the permissions needed to release his reinvention.

Tina Turner performed at the 1993 NRL Grand Final. Picture: Supplied

The song has several Australian ties beyond its history as a beloved NRL theme. It was co-written by Aussie producer Mike Chapman who helped create hits for Suzi Quatro and Blondie.

And Turner was managed by legendary Australian talent whisperer Roger Davies who has also steered the careers of Sherbet, Newton-John, Cher, Sade and P!nk.

“Some songs can be difficult (to get permission) even though they’ve been done in almost every single language going. But when it comes to a language they don’t know like First Nations languages, it can be hard sometimes for the big publishing houses outside of Australia to get their head around it,” he said.

“But with The Best, the team was right, they heard it and understood what I was trying to achieve so I’m forever grateful to Tina Turner’s team and all the writers for understanding what I was doing.”

Tambo said remaking popular songs in Gamilaraay was also helping to keep the language alive.

“The Best isn’t just a song; we’re keeping language and culture alive by bringing it to the mainstream and putting it into places it’s never been,” he said.

He has released (Simply) The Best now and hopes he will be able to perform it during the NRL Grand Final celebrations.

Originally published as Mitch Tambo honours Tina Turner with Indigenous cover of (Simply) The Best ahead of NRL grand final