We love to give our pop-culture royalty official titles: Michael Jackson was the King of Pop, Elvis Presley was the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, Aretha Franklin is the Queen of Soul. Whitney Houston, who died yesterday at age 48, was simply known as The Voice.
“The best singer in the world today” is what Clive Davis called her in 2004. Davis signed Houston to his Arista Records in 1983 and released her self-titled album two years later, kicking off a career that would result in 170 million in sales and a revision of the music industry.
Once Whitney hit — and did so with seven straight No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 — the commercial potential for her ornate, melismatic singing style was clear. It was the tone that accompanied the technique that made Houston so special: rich and crisp with several hearts (and octaves) worth of emotional range. The singers Houston inspired to tie their voices into loops could never replicate her exhilarating effortlessness, not even her heir apparent, Mariah Carey.
Houston’s voice was so powerful it lacked vulnerability, but she and her collaborators wrote around that. Her songs were often about strength — finding it in love, God or retrospect. Her iconic take on Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” (for 1992’s “The Bodyguard”) is endurance set to song, apparent in its lyrics, sustained notes and run at Billboard’s No. 1 for 14 weeks (then a record).
It took an impressive amount of time for Houston to show her mortality. She was thin-skinned. She told Oprah Winfrey in 2009 that she stayed in a tumultuous relationship with singer Bobby Brown for so long (14 years of marriage) because she was “determined” to prove the naysayers wrong. Then there were the canceled shows, a nixed Academy Awards appearance and, of course, her public battle with drugs.
The cause of death was not immediately known, but when news of Houston’s death in a Beverly Hills Hilton room broke, the public’s mind went to her habit. Though she told Winfrey she had officially renounced her poison (marijuana rolled with cocaine), she admitted to “a drink now and then.” For Houston, who also smoked cigarettes, substances were vocationally destructive.
Her once-pristine voice suffered as a result. Her last album, “I Look To You” (2009), found Houston’s range and ability limited. The record was sad, but also uncomfortably honest, telegraphing the troubled life that led up to that point, as the best soul music does. Its centerpiece was the Diane Warren-penned “I Didn’t Know My Own Strength.”
Perhaps there was something entirely human in her self-destructiveness — that impulse that so many of us have to renounce what we are and needlessly complicate our own lives. A genuine beauty who had modeled as a teen and the owner of the greatest voice on the planet, Houston rejected her own perfection.
During the last decade of her career, most of Houston’s public moves were potential comebacks. Davis pledged not to let her record another album until her golden voice was back — implying it would be. She had wrapped a remake of the movie “Sparkle,” and last week, there was word she was being offered a judge’s seat on the next season of “The X Factor.” Houston’s career was never dead, her voice not gone — it was all preserved in the amber of potential.
Now, instead of hope, we have a tragedy. Houston’s death arrived just a day before tonight’s Grammy Awards and it will no doubt upstage them. But then, so would have her presence. Whitney was always loved, and larger than life, a living legend who’s now just a legend.
Rich.Juzwiak@thedaily.com
“The best singer in the world today” is what Clive Davis called her in 2004. Davis signed Houston to his Arista Records in 1983 and released her self-titled album two years later, kicking off a career that would result in 170 million in sales and a revision of the music industry.
Once Whitney hit — and did so with seven straight No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 — the commercial potential for her ornate, melismatic singing style was clear. It was the tone that accompanied the technique that made Houston so special: rich and crisp with several hearts (and octaves) worth of emotional range. The singers Houston inspired to tie their voices into loops could never replicate her exhilarating effortlessness, not even her heir apparent, Mariah Carey.
Houston’s voice was so powerful it lacked vulnerability, but she and her collaborators wrote around that. Her songs were often about strength — finding it in love, God or retrospect. Her iconic take on Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” (for 1992’s “The Bodyguard”) is endurance set to song, apparent in its lyrics, sustained notes and run at Billboard’s No. 1 for 14 weeks (then a record).
It took an impressive amount of time for Houston to show her mortality. She was thin-skinned. She told Oprah Winfrey in 2009 that she stayed in a tumultuous relationship with singer Bobby Brown for so long (14 years of marriage) because she was “determined” to prove the naysayers wrong. Then there were the canceled shows, a nixed Academy Awards appearance and, of course, her public battle with drugs.
The cause of death was not immediately known, but when news of Houston’s death in a Beverly Hills Hilton room broke, the public’s mind went to her habit. Though she told Winfrey she had officially renounced her poison (marijuana rolled with cocaine), she admitted to “a drink now and then.” For Houston, who also smoked cigarettes, substances were vocationally destructive.
Her once-pristine voice suffered as a result. Her last album, “I Look To You” (2009), found Houston’s range and ability limited. The record was sad, but also uncomfortably honest, telegraphing the troubled life that led up to that point, as the best soul music does. Its centerpiece was the Diane Warren-penned “I Didn’t Know My Own Strength.”
Perhaps there was something entirely human in her self-destructiveness — that impulse that so many of us have to renounce what we are and needlessly complicate our own lives. A genuine beauty who had modeled as a teen and the owner of the greatest voice on the planet, Houston rejected her own perfection.
During the last decade of her career, most of Houston’s public moves were potential comebacks. Davis pledged not to let her record another album until her golden voice was back — implying it would be. She had wrapped a remake of the movie “Sparkle,” and last week, there was word she was being offered a judge’s seat on the next season of “The X Factor.” Houston’s career was never dead, her voice not gone — it was all preserved in the amber of potential.
Now, instead of hope, we have a tragedy. Houston’s death arrived just a day before tonight’s Grammy Awards and it will no doubt upstage them. But then, so would have her presence. Whitney was always loved, and larger than life, a living legend who’s now just a legend.
Rich.Juzwiak@thedaily.com
