Whitney Houston, pop music’s queen until her majestic voice and royal image were destroyed by drug use, volatile behavior and a rocky marriage to singer Bobby Brown, has died. She was 48.
Houston’s publicist, Kristen Foster, said Saturday that the singer had died, but the cause and the location of her death were unknown.
News of Houston’s death came on the eve of music’s biggest night — the Grammy Awards, where she once reigned supreme. Her death is sure to leave a line of heavy hearts on the red carpet of Sunday’s ceremony.
Houston’s long-time manager and mentor, Clive Davis was to hold his annual concert and dinner Saturday; it is unclear if it’s going forward.
At her peak, Houston was the golden girl of the music industry. From the middle 1980s to the late 1990s, she was one of the world’s best-selling artists. Her effortless, powerful, and peerless vocals that combined her gospel roots with modern pop music wowed audiences everywhere. Beautiful, poised, and never over the top sexy, her musings on self-love and falling in love, brought to life by stellar pipes made her a role model and a highly coveted commodity.
Her success carried her beyond music to movies, where she starred in hits like “The Bodyguard” and “Waiting to Exhale.”
She influenced future pop princesses Christina Aguilera and Mariah Carey, among others. In fact, Carey sounded so much like Houston when she landed on the scene that many confused the two singers.
But by the end of her career, Houston became a cautionary tale of the ravages of substance abuse. Her album sales plummeted and the hits stopped coming; her once serene image was shattered by a wild demeanor and bizarre public appearances. She confessed to abusing cocaine, marijuana and pills, and her once pristine voice became raspy and hoarse, unable to hit the high notes as she had during her prime.
“The biggest devil is me. I’m either my best friend or my worst enemy,” Houston told ABC’s Diane Sawyer in an infamous 2002 interview with then-husband Brown by her side. She also declared, “Crack is whack.”
It was a tragic fall both personally and professionally for a history-making superstar with more than 55 million records sold in the United States alone.
She seemed to be born into greatness. She was the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston, the cousin of 1960s pop diva Dionne Warwick and the goddaughter of Aretha Franklin.
Houston first started singing in the church as a child. In her teens, she sang backup for Chaka Khan, Jermaine Jackson and others, in addition to modeling. It was around that time when music mogul Clive Davis first heard Houston perform.
“The time that I first saw her singing in her mother’s act in a club … it was such a stunning impact,” Davis told “Good Morning America.”
“To hear this young girl breathe such fire into this song. I mean, it really sent the proverbial tingles up my spine,” he added.
The New York Times wrote that Houston “possesses one of her generation’s most powerful gospel-trained voices, but she eschews many of the churchier mannerisms of her forerunners. She uses ornamental gospel phrasing only sparingly, and instead of projecting an earthy, tearful vulnerability, communicates cool self-assurance and strength, building pop ballads to majestic, sustained peaks of intensity.”
“Sometimes it gets down to that, you know?” she told Katie Couric in 1996. “You’re not black enough for them. I don’t know. You’re not R&B enough. You’re very pop. The white audience has taken you away from them.”
Some saw her 1992 marriage to former New Edition member and soul crooner Bobby Brown as an attempt to refute those critics. It seemed to be an odd union, given their diverse public image. The couple had a daughter, Bobbi Kristina, in 1993. Over the years, he would be arrested several times, on charges ranging from DUI to failure to pay child support.
But Houston stood by her man. Meanwhile, seemingly making excuses and throwing herself under the bus.
“When you love, you love,” she said. “I mean, do you stop loving somebody because you have different images?… I am nobody’s angel.”
Her moving 1991 rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl, and her role in “The Bodyguard” would betray that “devil’s angel” proclamation, however, and rather seal her reputation as America’s Sweetheart.
Her rendition of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” won two Grammy’s and the “Bodyguard” soundtrack was named album of the year.
She returned to the big screen a couple more times, and received praise from both critics and audiences alike for her on-screen roles as well as their accompanying soundtracks.
But during these career and personal highs, Houston was on drugs. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2010, she said by the time “The Preacher’s Wife” was released, “(doing drugs) was an everyday thing. I was losing myself.”
Whitney has stated that her marriage to her abusive husband Brown was a catalyst for her drug use (something the public already suspected). They divorced in 2007.
Houston would go to rehab twice before she would declare herself drug-free to Winfrey in 2010, after having dropped out of the spotlight for several years. (Aside from the tortuous reality show “Being Bobby Brown” which only cemented Houston as a drug addict in a very unhealthy relationship.)
Houston staged what seemed to be a successful comeback with the 2009 album “I Look To You.” The album debuted on the top of the charts, and would eventually go platinum.
Things soon fell apart. Live television appearances revealed the toll crack had taken on the singer’s once pristine and powerful vocal abilities, and a world tour launched overseas proved no better. Many walked out, unimpressed or angry. Canceled concert dates raised eyebrows that the singer may have fallen off the wagon, but she denied those claims, blaming illness instead.
Whitney Houston, one of my all-time favorite singers – may you rest in peace, sing with the Angels, and make heaven a better place for all who enter after you.
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Republished by Hollywood Today.
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