Whitney Houston

With Whitney Houston you have to begin with the one thing that was unique: the voice.

Time magazine put it better than anyone: if the human voice is a musical instrument, hers was a Stradivarius among ordinary violins.

The cleanest, most precise tone any singer produced in the whole of the twentieth century, with the force of gospel underneath, which never left her. Before the circus, before the fall, before everything the press sold afterwards, there was that. And that is what matters to begin with.

The church in Newark

She did not come from nowhere.

She was born in 1963 in Newark, New Jersey, into a family that was close to musical royalty: her mother, Cissy Houston, was a great gospel and soul singer who had sung backing vocals for Aretha Franklin and for Elvis; her cousin was Dionne Warwick; and her godmother, her honorary aunt, was Aretha herself.

Whitney sang in the choir of her local Baptist church from the age of five, and by twelve she was already singing solos. That voice was formed there, singing to God before anyone else.

As a teenager she sang backing vocals for other people. At twenty she was signed, and the world heard her for the first time.

Fourteen weeks

What followed was an enormous career: "Saving All My Love for You", "How Will I Know", "I Wanna Dance with Somebody", "Greatest Love of All".

In 1991, in the middle of the Super Bowl, she sang the American national anthem in a way so overwhelming that it has stood ever since as the finest performance of it.

And in 1992 came "The Bodyguard", and with it her version of "I Will Always Love You", a song Dolly Parton had written for somebody else twenty years earlier. Whitney lifted it into another dimension: fourteen straight weeks at number one, a record, and the best-selling soundtrack in history.

She sold something in the order of two hundred million records. She was, beyond argument, one of the greatest artists who has ever lived.

The shadow

The story has a shadow, and it has to be told with respect.

She married the singer Bobby Brown, had her only daughter, Bobbi Kristina, and the marriage was stormy. In those years her struggle with drugs began, and over time that struggle eroded her reputation and, most cruelly, the instrument: that perfect voice began to crack.

The same press that had crowned her then set about filming her deterioration.

On 11 February 2012, on the eve of the Grammys, she was found dead in the bath of a hotel in Beverly Hills. The coroner determined that it was an accidental drowning, with heart disease and cocaine use as contributing factors. She was forty-eight. The following day's ceremony turned into a farewell.

Three generations

And there is a deeper tragedy still, which has to be named carefully.

Three years after Whitney's death, her only daughter, Bobbi Kristina, died too, at twenty-two, in painfully similar circumstances.

And Cissy, the woman who had taught her to sing in church, had to bury her daughter and her granddaughter. The family that gave the world that voice paid a price you would not wish on anyone.

The miracle

Whitney has to be remembered for what she truly was, not for how she ended.

Before the sad headlines there was a girl in a church choir in Newark with the most prodigious throat popular music has ever had.

If you put on "I Will Always Love You", or "I Wanna Dance with Somebody", or the Super Bowl anthem, you are not going to hear a tragedy: you are going to hear a miracle, a voice that came out of gospel and touched the heart of the entire planet.

The fall was real and it should not be hidden. But it is not the story. The story is that voice, and the fact that we were lucky enough to hear it.

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This piece mentions addiction. If you or someone you know is struggling with alcohol or drug use, help is available, and asking for it is an act of strength. In Chile, SENDA's Drugs and Alcohol helpline answers free of charge 24 hours a day on 1412.

Sources

Whitney Elizabeth Houston (Newark, New Jersey, 9 August 1963 – Beverly Hills, California, 11 February 2012), singer, actress and producer, one of the best-selling artists in history, with figures estimated at between 170 and 200 million records. Daughter of the gospel singer Cissy Houston, cousin of Dionne Warwick and goddaughter of Aretha Franklin; she trained in the choir of the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark. She was signed by Arista, Clive Davis's label, in 1983. Among her hits are "Saving All My Love for You", "How Will I Know", "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)" and "Greatest Love of All"; her performance of the American national anthem at Super Bowl XXV (1991) is regarded as one of the finest versions of the anthem. Her recording of "I Will Always Love You", a song written by Dolly Parton, topped the American chart for 14 weeks and was part of the soundtrack to "The Bodyguard" (1992), the best-selling soundtrack in history. She won six Grammy awards. Time magazine described her voice as "a Stradivarius among ordinary violins". She was married to Bobby Brown; her only daughter was Bobbi Kristina Brown. She faced a widely documented drug addiction. She died aged 48; the coroner ruled accidental drowning, with atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use as contributing factors. In 2015, Bobbi Kristina died aged 22 in similar circumstances; Cissy Houston died in 2024, aged 91. Externally authored text, edited and verified for Rebobinados. Interpretations of the meaning of her work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from NPR, PBS, Time, Variety, Wikipedia and other press coverage.