What a gloomy day 11 February 2012 was. We had already lost some big stars and now the news came that Whitney Houston had also passed away. She was only 48 years old... According to Guinness World Records, Whitney Houston is the most awarded female artist of all time and one of the best-selling artists ever with 200 million records sold worldwide!
Houston was a daughter of Cissy Houston (background singer for, among others, Elvis Presley and Aretha Franklin) and John Houston, and a niece of singer Dionne Warwick. Houston came into contact with music at an early age. Together with her mother, she toured various nightclubs as a teenager and developed her singing voice. As a fourteen-year-old girl in 1977, she was the lead vocalist on the song Life's a Party by the Michael Zager Band. Frontman Zager arranged a record deal for the singer, but her mother insisted Houston finish school before diving into possible success. In 1978, Houston was one of the background singers on Chaka Khan's I'm Every Woman, which Houston would record her own version of in the nineties for the soundtrack of the film The Bodyguard. Houston was also heard on records by Jermaine Jackson and Lou Rawls. In the early eighties, her modelling career took off. She posed for Seventeen and was one of the first women with a dark skin tone on the cover. For Houston, this was her debut to a large audience. In 1986, almost a year after the release of her debut album, it spent 14 weeks at number one on the American album chart. With Greatest Love of All, Houston scored her third number 1 hit. At the 1986 Grammy Awards, Houston received her first Grammy: Best Pop Vocal Performance for Saving All My Love for You. This was followed by several American Music Awards and an MTV Video Music Award. The album was at the time the best-selling debut album by a female artist.
In 1992, Houston made her film debut alongside Kevin Costner in the romantic thriller The Bodyguard. She played the successful singer Rachel Marron, who was stalked and developed a close bond with her bodyguard. For the soundtrack of The Bodyguard, Houston recorded several new songs: I Will Always Love You (a cover of Dolly Parton's 1974 song), I'm Every Woman (a cover of Chaka Khan's song). 42 million copies of The Bodyguard soundtrack were sold.
Houston died on 11 February 2012 at the age of 48. The singer was found dead in the bath in her hotel room at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills. According to the coroner, Houston died from drowning, possibly after a heart attack caused by a medical problem and drug use.
In the last years of her life, Houston was mainly in the news due to problems with her husband Bobby Brown and rumours about drug use. In 2005, she was rehabilitated at the Crossroads Centre on the Caribbean island of Antigua. On 24 April 2007, she divorced Brown and gained custody of their daughter Bobbi Kristina (1993–2015). Her daughter died under similar circumstances.
Top 2000
In the 23rd edition of the Top 2000, Whitney is listed as follows:
Sunday Morning Classics: Whitney
On 16 August 2020, Whitney was our Sunday Morning Classic! Whitney has 5 songs in the Top 2000.
Whitney Houston's eponymous debut album from 1985 exceeded all expectations and helped her reach immense heights as a solo artist.
The album not only topped the Billboard charts for weeks, but also served as an introduction to an artist who displayed vocal ability that was nothing less than perfection. An album that would eventually contain three number 1 singles, earn five Grammy nominations, and be hailed as a 'classic' by both fans and critics.
The 10-track studio project was released on 14 February 1985 and had a slow commercial response. The album's first single, "Thinking About You", is a cheerful serenade for an uncertain love, differing from the sound of "You Give Good Love", designed to penetrate the African-American demographic. Her last three singles - "Saving All My Love for You", "How Will I Know" and "Greatest Love of All" - all reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100.
The commercial success of her debut was partly due to her connection with both pop and R&B listeners. In the past, critics tried to separate the artist from the album, while one could not exist without the other. The debut established Houston as a talent too appealing to ignore.
The weakest songs on the album are those where Whitney takes second fiddle to male artists who mostly sing above her. Her voice seems to drown, making Jermaine Jackson and Teddy Pendergrass the ones heard. Nevertheless, Whitney shines on certain tracks with which she began to rise to the top. Starting with "You Give Good Love", continuing with "Saving All My Love" and "All At Once", and ending with "The Greatest Love Of All", these 4 songs make the album worth buying. Even the more pop-sounding "How Will I Know" is memorable, if only for her faster singing.
If Whitney had been able to drop the duets with male voices, told the band to take a walk, brought in an orchestra with saxophone and unleashed her voice (high and low, slow and fast), then her debut album could have been something very special. But that is the popular music scene of the 80s, all style, very little substance. Whitney at least has a voice that makes you forget what she is singing about.
See Whitney's website here
source: Jan Liebregts, Wikipedia and NPO photo: Wikimedia, Mark Kettenhofen and Nisakorn Keanmepol
