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This is very much Whitney's imperial era, where nothing was going wrong and nothing looked like going wrong. As far as I can ascertain, there was no absence of genuine acclaim for Whitney Houston in the 1980s even from the so-called serious music press. Back then, she probably occupied territory currently occupied by Beyonce (though even more successful). It was only really with The Bodyguard soundtrack that she became a significantly more polarising figure. If you liked gloopy, warbly power ballads, you'd buy and cherish one of the best selling albums of all time. If not, she came to represent, along with Mariah Carey, something terrible in pop music.
Two of the very biggest icons of modern pop music died at a similar age within a couple of years of each other at a horrendously premature age. They both (though Jackson a bit more so) straddle the eras between old and new chart pop music, which changed irrevocably in the mid-80s. Both were from old-school royalty, but made r'n'b/pop, not soul, music with very little of a retro edge to it. Of course, Michael Jackson's fame stands alone, but Whitney Houston is really not far behind, and some might argue she's been even more influential on modern chart music.
Every young female with a couple of octaves, a tear just behind the eye and a melisma is "doing a Whitney". I'll say right now I think her influence is pernicious, but I'll also say she's one of the most phenomenal pop singers I've ever heard.
Daughter of singer Cissy Houston, cousin of Dionne Warwick, goddaughter of Darlene Love and "honorary niece" of Aretha Franklin, it's safe to say that Whitney Houston had classic soul running through her. And she'd have been a great soul singer if she'd been born at the right time, just as she'd have been a great R'n'B singer if she's been born a little later. But she was of such an age that she became a star in the late 80s/early 90s, the age of the power ballad and the smoothing of soul into MOR, of dance-pop and key changes. And it's with that sound she'll forever be associated - looking back at it, there's something pretty joyful and awesome about the stuff on 'Whitney' and its predecessor, 'Whitney Houston'. You'd have to be a bit dour not to find some pleasure in the likes of 'I Wanna Dance with Somebody'. And when I was a kid, I can't deny I loved 'One Moment in Time' and even 'The Greatest Love of All'. This oddly earnest, solipsistic, inspirational flood, it was big business.
So, after a 3rd, more urban, album flopped by comparison, she hit even more paydirt with the noise that defines her, the soundtrack to The Bodyguard, and, above all, I Will Always Love You. When people talk about doing a Whitney, they're talking about that extraordinary, unbearable vocal performance (no, that r in the middle of that word is not meant to be a t).
To be fair to Houston, her acrobatics are relatively restrained compared to some of her peers and successors, but has there ever been a song when the listener's been so coerced into feeling something?
I felt nauseated, and that all but finished Whitney Houston as a listenable entity for me, so the fact that, at the end of the decade, when I found myself warming to the even more r'n'b direction she displayed on 'My Love is Your Love' and 'It's Nor Right But It's OK', it was very much a guilty pleasure.
By then, I think, the word was out on Houston's private life. It's something about the horrible nature of a) modern celebrity and b) hard drugs that she went, in public perception. almost overnight from a woman you could never imagine something bad happening to, to a woman whose early doom seemed inevitable.
A ghastly and grim death, after a tour where all reports suggested the flawless voice was completely shot, and, even worse, her death brought this famously maligned pap tribute from UKIP goon Tony Parsehole
Oh well, Whitney Houston. I'm not really a fan, as you can probably tell, so why did I choose to write about her? Because she's one of the most influential artists of all time, because she defined an era of pop, because, in a sense, despite it seeming like everything went right for her, everything went wrong for her. That's obvious. I don't even mean in the obvious sense. I mean, in the narrow way a chap like me looks at it, she comes pretty low on the critical scale, and really that's just an accident of history. Whitney Houston on Motown or Stax, that would have been great. Whitney Houston, as young artist, leading a band like Destiny's Child, that would also be great.
Still, I believe the children are our future ...
Saving All My Love For You
Million Dollar Bill
My Love is Your Love
One Moment in Time
I Wanna Dance With Somebody
I'm Your Baby Tonight
It Isn't, It Wasn't, It Ain't Never Gonna Be - with Aretha Franklin
It's Not Right But It's OK
How Will I Know?
Didn't We Almost Have it All?
Where Do Broken Hearts Go?
The Greatest Love of All
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