Updated: February 11, 2012 8:15PM
LOS ANGELES — Whitney Houston, who
reigned as pop music’s queen until her majestic voice and regal image
were ravaged by drug use, erratic behavior and a tumultuous marriage to
singer Bobby Brown, has died. She was 48.
Publicist Kristen Foster said Saturday that the singer had died, but the cause and the location of her death were unknown.
At her peak, Houston 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. She wowed audiences with effortless,
powerful, and peerless vocals that were rooted in the black church but
made palatable to the masses with a pop sheen.
Her success carried her beyond music to movies, where she starred in hits like “The Bodyguard” and “Waiting to Exhale.”
She had the he perfect voice, and the perfect
image: a gorgeous singer who had sex appeal but was never overtly
sexual, who maintained perfect poise.
She influenced a generation of younger singers,
from Christina Aguilera to Mariah Carey, who when she first came out
sounded so much like Houston that many thought it was Houston.
But by the end of her career, Houston became a
stunning cautionary tale of the toll of drug use. 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.
It was a tragic fall for a superstar who was one of
the top-selling artists in pop music history, 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.
Before long, the rest of the country would feel it,
too. Houston made her album debut in 1985 with “Whitney Houston,” which
sold millions and spawned hit after hit. “Saving All My Love for You”
brought her her first Grammy, for best female pop vocal. “How Will I
Know,” ‘’You Give Good Love” and “The Greatest Love of All” also became
hit singles.
Another multiplatinum album, “Whitney,” came out in
1987 and included hits like “Where Do Broken Hearts Go” and “I Wanna
Dance With Somebody.”
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.”
Her decision not to follow the more soulful
inflections of singers like Franklin drew criticism by some who saw her
as playing down her black roots to go pop and reach white audiences. The
criticism would become a constant refrain through much of her career.
She was even booed during the “Soul Train Awards” in 1989.
“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; she was seen as pop’s pure
princess while he had a bad-boy image, and already had children of his
own. (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 said their true personalities were not as far apart as people may have believed.
“When you love, you love. I mean, do you stop
loving somebody because you have different images? You know, Bobby and I
basically come from the same place,” she told Rolling Stone in 1993.
“You see somebody, and you deal with their image, that’s their image.
It’s part of them, it’s not the whole picture. I am not always in a
sequined gown. I am nobody’s angel. I can get down and dirty. I can get
raunchy.”
It would take several years, however, for the
public to see that side of Houston. Her moving 1991 rendition of “The
Star Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl, amid the first Gulf War, set a
new standard and once again reaffirmed her as America’s sweetheart.
In 1992, she became a star in the acting world with
“The Bodyguard.” Despite mixed reviews, the story of a singer (Houston)
guarded by a former Secret Service agent (Kevin Costner) was an
international success.
It also gave her perhaps her most memorable hit: a
searing, stunning rendition of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You,”
which sat atop the charts for weeks. It was Grammy’s record of the year
and best female pop vocal, and the “Bodyguard” soundtrack was named
album of the year.
She returned to the big screen in 1995-96 with
“Waiting to Exhale” and “The Preacher’s Wife.” Both spawned soundtrack
albums, and another hit studio album, “My Love Is Your Love,” in 1998,
brought her a Grammy for best female R&B vocal for the cut “It’s Not
Right But It’s Okay.”
But during these career and personal highs, Houston
was using 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 would do my work, but after I did my work, for a
whole year or two, it was every day. ... I wasn’t happy by that point in
time. I was losing myself.”
In the interview, Houston blamed her rocky marriage
to Brown, which included a charge of domestic abuse against Brown in
1993. They divorced in 2007.
Houston would go to rehab twice before she would
declare herself drug-free to Winfrey in 2010. But in the interim, there
were missed concert dates, a stop at an airport due to drugs, and public
meltdowns.
She was so startlingly thin during a 2001 Michael
Jackson tribute concert that rumors spread she had died the next day.
Her crude behavior and jittery appearance on Brown’s reality show,
“Being Bobby Brown,” was an example of her sad decline. Her Sawyer
interview, where she declared “crack is whack,” was often parodied. She
dropped out of the spotlight for a few years.
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. A concert to promote the
album on “Good Morning America” went awry as Houston’s voice sounded
ragged and off-key. She blamed an interview with Winfrey for straining
her voice.
A world tour launched overseas, however, only
confirmed suspicions that Houston had lost her treasured gift, as she
failed to hit notes and left many fans unimpressed; some walked out.
Canceled concert dates raised speculation that she may have been abusing
drugs, but she denied those claims and said she was in great shape,
blaming illness for cancellations.
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