Songfacts®:

• Written by Terry Britten and Graham Lyle, this is the theme song to the film Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. The third installment of the post-apocalyptic Mad Max series finds star Mel Gibson at the mercy of a nefarious leader named Aunty Entity, played by Tina Turner, who is determined to secure her power over Australia's Bartertown.
  
  It was Turner's first film role in over a decade, the previous being The Acid Queen in the Who's 1975 rock opera Tommy. But the glamorous ruler, clad in a chain-mail gown, wasn't quite what Turner had in mind for her big-screen comeback. "Aunty Entity was not as fierce as I wanted her to be," she told Q magazine in 1988. "I wanted her to go back into the trunk and pull out the clothes that she was wearing when she built that city, because she built herself up from nothing and she definitely wasn't wearing that chain dress and those high-heeled shoes."
• The choir from King's House School in Richmond, south London provided the children's chorus. According to The Sunday Telegraph (October 9, 2005), one of the members of the choir was a 12-year-old Lawrence Dallaglio, the future captain of the England rugby team and a rugby World Cup winner. The choir went to the Abbey Road studios to record their backing vocals. Tina Turner was not there and her vocals were added at a later date.
• This plays over the film's ending credits. Turner also sang the opener, "One Of The Living," which was a #15 hit on the Hot 100 and won the Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance.
• Britten, an English singer-songwriter, and Lyle, a Scottish composer, previously teamed up for Turner's smash hit "What's Love Got To Do With It." Their Mad Max collaboration earned them the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically.
• This earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song (winner: Lionel Richie's "Say You, Say Me" from White Nights) and a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance (winner: Whitney Houston for "Saving All My Love For You").
• "We Don't Need Another Hero" was the bridge between Tina Turner's 1984 comeback album, Private Dancer, and its 1986 follow-up, Break Every Rule. Private Dancer was an unlikely success story: Turner was known as half of the duo Ike & Tina Turner, best known for their 1971 cover of "Proud Mary." They hadn't had a hit since 1975, and when Tina released Private Dancer, she was 44 years old - a dinosaur by industry standards (for women, at least). But she had talent and an incredible work ethic that served her well. She was also great to work with and had support from folks like David Bowie and Mick Jagger, who knew how good she was from the Ike & Tina days. Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome added another dimension to her comeback, placing her in a blockbuster film.
• An extended version was released as a 12" single with an instrumental take as its B-side.