Whitney Houston: 1963-2012

I'm still in shock over the news that Whitney Houston died last night at 48. Although she'd had her share - more than her share - of mishaps in her battles with all sorts of substance abuse (mostly drugs), she appeared to be on the mend and poised to come back bigger and better than before. She has just wrapped production of a new movie, and she was in Beverly Hills to perform at a tribute to her mentor, record company executive and legend Clive Davis. Now the Grammy Awards ceremony is paying tribute to her tonight.

Although Whitney Houston was a very conventional singer who mostly showed only traces on her records of what she achieved singing gospel songs in church (and I noted over two years ago that Davis, as her mentor, had some responsibility for this by watering down her sound), it's worth noting that even a bland Whitney Houston is preferable to a Britney Spears at her most inventive and creative. You can pick almost any Whitney Houston single and listen to it with the pleasure of appreciating her vocal talent.

Whitney Houston first achieved success with her debut album in 1985, which roughly corresponded to the increasingly annoying trend of female pop singers who cared more about gimmickry and the style than genuine talent. Houston made it big without offensive videos, blue hair, vulgar dancing, or any of that stuff. She just had her voice. Her success led to that rise of other female singers who relied more on vocal talent than tawdry showmanship; it's no accident that performers like Anita Baker, Oleta Adams, and Mariah Carey followed in Whitney's wake.

I don't know where everything went wrong for her, though. After the 1992 movie The Bodyguard and the 1995 movie Waiting To Exhale, she should have been on top of the world, but she sank to the bottom of a drug-infested, soul-sucking living pattern. I was always rooting for her to get back on her feet, but she always seemed to stumble again once she did. Not even her undeniable talent could save her. It's a terrible shame.

Ironically, the news of Houston's death comes even as the British pop/soul singer Adele - now fully recovered from her vocal cord surgery and likely to tour soon - is up for six Grammy awards tonight after conquering her own personal demons.

A new beginning comes from another beginning's end. R.I.P. :-( 

Whitney's Back!

For those of you too young to remember, Whitney Houston is the greatest eighties female R&B female vocalist whose name isn't Anita Baker. She sold millions of records back in the Reagan years, and she had the most astonishing voice most people had ever heard, and as long as she got the right material for it, she was entertaining.

When she didn't, though, she could produce something really annoying (the less said about her cover of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You," the better). More often than not, she got middling material that was neither entertaining nor annoying. It just . . . was. Houston's biggest flaw as an artist (as opposed to being a performer) was that she was more into showing off her voice than saying anything with it. (That's why Anita Baker gets my vote between the two.) Some of the blame for this went to Clive Davis, the legendary Arista Records founder who discovered her and signed her to his label, who watered down her sound and her proficiency for gospel singing and had her records aimed at a mainstream audience.

Alas, Houston didn't merely almost have it all - she had too much of it. Her downward spiral into drug addiction and her disastrous marriage to Bobby Brown ruined her career, but having finally rid herself of Brown - the welcome first step in her twelve-step program to recovery - she's been working her way back up to the charts and she's released her new album I Look to You, which critics say is her finest work in ages. I've heard one track from the record, "Million Dollar Bill," and it's an astonishing revelation. It shows you what she can do with her voice when she does have something to say.

Ironically, Clive Davis, the man accused of keeping her from saying anything back in the eighties, is engineering her comeback today. It's really great to see Davis having taken such a personal interest in Houston when the rest of the world was ready to write her off . . . and did just that.

I really hope Houston makes it back to the top. (Whitney, from one New Jerseyan to another - you go, girl!) I just hope she doesn't employ her trademark melismatic phrasing too much. Melisma only sounds great when it's really dirty.

Which is why I love Roger Chapman. :-D