LOS ANGELES
(AP) – 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 the perfect voice and the perfect image: a gorgeous
singer who had sex appeal but was never overtly sexual and
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 forChaka 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 toldRolling 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
firstGulf 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 TheBodyguard 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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