Celebrated songwriter Holly Knight is bringing her new memoir to Phoenix

The video for Tina Turner’s 1989 song, “The Best,” open with the camera zooming in on her trademark legs and a large horse running around her, seemingly untamed. That was not only the spirit of the legendary singer, but also the spirit of the decade, and no one captured that unbridled regality better than Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee Holly Knight.

But actually, the song wasn't originally written for Turner

That's only one of the revelations in Knight’s new memoir, “I Am the Warrior: My Crazy Life Writing the Hits and Rocking the MTV Eighties,” which she'll be signing at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe tomorrow night, Thursday, July 13.

Knight was born in New York City, which some might call the creative epicenter of the world. There's a rich artistic atmosphere, especially when it comes to music, that seems to generate musical prodigies.

Knight is no exception.

“I came into this world with a creative spirit in music, and many other things,” Knight says. “Creativity comes in many forms, but it's always a form of expression of your inner self, and whatever else you're tapping into. It's kind of a partnership, you know. But music was my first language. And I always thought it was normal. I think at that time, I thought everybody was like that.”

Her mother took notice of Knight’s abilities and paid for piano lessons.

“My mother was grooming me to be a concert pianist,” she recalls. “So, it was already sort of obvious to people outside of me that I had a talent for music. As far as the lyrics, that came much later.”

Fast-forward to the early '80s; Knight was in the band Spider when she met songwriter and producer Mike Chapman. Together they wrote a song called “Better Be Good to Me” for the group.

But it wasn’t until Turner covered it on her album “Private Dancer” that the fuse was lit, and Knight was on her way to becoming one of the most prolific songwriters of that decade.

Her songs were sung by some of the most powerful women of rock at the time: “Love is a Battlefield” and “Invincible” by Pat Benatar, “The Warrior” by Patty Smyth, “Pleasure and Pain” by the Divinyls. She also contributed to songs such as “Never” by Heart and “Baby Me” sung by Chaka Khan.

But it was perhaps her relationship with the late Turner that was the most profound. The foreword of Knight’s book was written by the legendary artist, which Knight says was a sentimental milestone for her. She cried after reading it, she says.

“I was in a doctor's office, and I burst into tears because it really was such a big thank you. And you know, often in this career of mine, there aren't a lot of thank yous.''

Knight wrote many songs for Turner of which she recorded nine, including “The Best.” But although the song has become synonymous with Tina Turner, technically, it is a re-write: It was originally performed by Bonnie Tyler for her 1988 album “Hide Your Heart.” That version was a moderate hit overseas, but it wasn’t until Turner released it as a single from her seventh studio album, “Foreign Affair,” that the song became an international mega-hit. But not before it had been re-worked by both Knight, Chapman and Turner.

“[Turner] called me up after Bonnie Tyler had already released the song and she said, ‘I love this song. I want to cut it. I want you to write a bridge. I want you to, after the bridge, make the key go up.’ So on a level of production, she was absolutely right, because I went and rewrote the song with Mike Chapman, who I co-wrote it with. And it was so much better after that. So, she really made it her own,” Knight recalls.

Long after "The Best" was on the charts, it found its way back into the news for a different reason. The song became a political pawn during the pandemic when it was one that Donald Trump used at his events.

Knight protested, but there was nothing she could do. Under a rule called blanket licensing, his campaign was able to use the song without permission. (If the campaign had specifically asked her to use “The Best,” she could have said no.)

“I said, OK, well, from now on, if that happens, tell him no. And then I thought, you know, I'm going to call up my co-publishers at Primary Wave, and I said, ‘If you want to call Biden's campaign and tell him that if they want to use “The Best,” they can use it non-gratis, forever in perpetuity.'”

As it happens, the Biden campaign did use “The Best” in a televised speech. As she watched, she remembers “I just thought, you know, this makes me feel a lot better. This is justice.”

Today, in addition to promoting "I Am the Warrior," Knight is returning to her rock band roots. She says she is producing a female group called The Terrible Truth, but they're not what you think of when you think of a typical girl group, she says: “They’re all virtuosos.

“So, I'm producing them and we're doing an EP,” Knight says. “One of the songs, which was a really big song I did when I was in this group, Device, called ‘Hanging on a Heart Attack,” we're gonna redo that and it's gonna have a woman singing it because I have so many fans, like half a million fans out there that keep saying they either want a reboot or a reunion or something. And I thought, well, this will be better because it'll be a new band doing the song, but I'll still be involved in it.”


Through the decades, Knight has been through a lot, from difficult family relationships to being a woman in the music business to forming a bond with one of the greatest singers who ever lived. But she didn’t get here by taking “no” for an answer. In fact, one of her great bits of advice is to tell someone who tells you "no" to fuck off.

She says it is those difficult adversarial moments that make you want to rise up and do better.

“If you didn't have that as a challenge, you might just be complacent and just sort of coast through life,” Knight says.

Someone even told her that she shouldn't write a memoir because she wasn't a household name.

“You need those people, you need those naysayers, so you can then stand up and say I'm better than this and fuck you, you know.”

"Holly Knight: I Am the Warrior" book signing: 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday, July 13. Changing Hands Bookstore, 6428 S. McClintock Drive, Tempe. Tickets are available now through Eventbrite.