By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY
AP Music Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Whitney
Houston, who ruled as pop music's queen until her majestic voice and
regal image were ravaged by drug use, erratic behavior and a tumultuous
marriage to singer Bobby Brown, has died. She was 48.
Houston's publicist,
Kristen Foster, said Saturday that the singer had died, but the cause
and the location of her death were unknown.
News of Houston's death
came on the eve of music's biggest night - the Grammy Awards. It's a
showcase where she once reigned, and her death was sure to cast a heavy
pall on Sunday's ceremony. Houston's longtime mentor Clive Davis was to
hold his annual concert and dinner Saturday; it was unclear if it was
going to go forward.
At her peak, Houston the
golden girl of the music industry. From the middle 1980s to the late
1990s, she was one of the world's best-selling artists. She wowed
audiences with effortless, powerful and peerless vocals that were rooted
in the black church but made palatable to the masses with a pop sheen.
Her success carried her beyond music to movies, where she starred in hits like "The Bodyguard" and "Waiting to Exhale."
She had the perfect voice
and the perfect image: a gorgeous singer who had sex appeal but was
never overtly sexual, who maintained perfect poise.
She influenced a generation
of younger singers, from Christina Aguilera to Mariah Carey, who when
she first came out sounded so much like Houston that many thought it was
Houston.
But by the end of her
career, Houston became a stunning cautionary tale of the toll of drug
use. Her album sales plummeted and the hits stopped coming; her once
serene image was shattered by a wild demeanor and bizarre public
appearances. She confessed to abusing cocaine, marijuana and pills, and
her once pristine voice became raspy and hoarse, unable to hit the high
notes as she had during her prime.
"The biggest devil is me.
I'm either my best friend or my worst enemy," Houston told ABC's Diane
Sawyer in an infamous 2002 interview with then-husband Brown by her
side.
It was a tragic fall for a
superstar who was one of the top-selling artists in pop music history,
with more than 55 million records sold in the United States alone.
She seemed to be born into
greatness. She was the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston, the
cousin of 1960s pop diva Dionne Warwick and the goddaughter of Aretha
Franklin.
Houston first started
singing in the church as a child. In her teens, she sang backup for
Chaka Khan, Jermaine Jackson and others, in addition to modeling. It was
around that time when music mogul Clive Davis first heard Houston
perform.
"The time that I first saw
her singing in her mother's act in a club ... it was such a stunning
impact," Davis told "Good Morning America."
"To hear this young girl breathe such fire into this song. I mean, it really sent the proverbial tingles up my spine," he added.
Before long, the rest of
the country would feel it, too. Houston made her album debut in 1985
with "Whitney Houston," which sold millions and spawned hit after hit.
"Saving All My Love for You" brought her first Grammy, for best
female pop vocal. "How Will I Know," ''You Give Good Love" and "The
Greatest Love of All" also became hit singles.
Another multiplatinum
album, "Whitney," came out in 1987 and included hits like "Where Do
Broken Hearts Go" and "I Wanna Dance With Somebody."
The New York Times wrote
that Houston "possesses one of her generation's most powerful
gospel-trained voices, but she eschews many of the churchier mannerisms
of her forerunners. She uses ornamental gospel phrasing only sparingly,
and instead of projecting an earthy, tearful vulnerability, communicates
cool self-assurance and strength, building pop ballads to majestic,
sustained peaks of intensity."
Her decision not to follow
the more soulful inflections of singers like Franklin drew criticism by
some who saw her as playing down her black roots to go pop and reach
white audiences. The criticism would become a constant refrain through
much of her career. She was even booed during the "Soul Train Awards" in
1989.
"Sometimes it gets down to
that, you know?" she told Katie Couric in 1996. "You're not black enough
for them. I don't know. You're not R&B enough. You're very pop. The
white audience has taken you away from them."
Some saw her 1992 marriage
to former New Edition member and soul crooner Bobby Brown as an attempt
to refute those critics. It seemed to be an odd union; she was seen as
pop's pure princess while he had a bad-boy image, and already had
children of his own. (The couple had a daughter, Bobbi Kristina, in
1993.) Over the years, he would be arrested several times, on charges
ranging from DUI to failure to pay child support.
But Houston said their true personalities were not as far apart as people may have believed.
"When you love, you love. I
mean, do you stop loving somebody because you have different images?
You know, Bobby and I basically come from the same place," she told
Rolling Stone in 1993. "You see somebody, and you deal with their image,
that's their image. It's part of them, it's not the whole picture. I am
not always in a sequined gown. I am nobody's angel. I can get down and
dirty. I can get raunchy."
It would take several
years, however, for the public to see that side of Houston. Her moving
1991 rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" at the Super Bowl, amid the
first Gulf War, set a new standard and once again reaffirmed her as
America's sweetheart.
In 1992, she became a star
in the acting world with "The Bodyguard." Despite mixed reviews, the
story of a singer (Houston) guarded by a former Secret Service agent
(Kevin Costner) was an international success.
It also gave her perhaps
her most memorable hit: a searing, stunning rendition of Dolly Parton's
"I Will Always Love You," which sat atop the charts for weeks. It was
Grammy's record of the year and best female pop vocal, and the
"Bodyguard" soundtrack was named album of the year.
She returned to the big
screen in 1995-96 with "Waiting to Exhale" and "The Preacher's Wife."
Both spawned soundtrack albums, and another hit studio album, "My Love
Is Your Love," in 1998, brought her a Grammy for best female R&B
vocal for the cut "It's Not Right But It's Okay."
But during these career and
personal highs, Houston was using drugs. In an interview with Oprah
Winfrey in 2010, she said by the time "The Preacher's Wife" was
released, "(doing drugs) was an everyday thing. ... I would do my work,
but after I did my work, for a whole year or two, it was every day. ... I
wasn't happy by that point in time. I was losing myself."
In the interview, Houston
blamed her rocky marriage to Brown, which included a charge of domestic
abuse against Brown in 1993. They divorced in 2007.
Houston would go to rehab
twice before she would declare herself drug-free to Winfrey in 2010. But
in the interim, there were missed concert dates, a stop at an airport
due to drugs, and public meltdowns.
She was so startlingly thin
during a 2001 Michael Jackson tribute concert that rumors spread she
had died the next day. Her crude behavior and jittery appearance on
Brown's reality show, "Being Bobby Brown," was an example of her sad
decline. Her Sawyer interview, where she declared "crack is whack," was
often parodied. She dropped out of the spotlight for a few years.
Houston staged what seemed
to be a successful comeback with the 2009 album "I Look To You." The
album debuted on the top of the charts, and would eventually go
platinum.
Things soon fell apart. A
concert to promote the album on "Good Morning America" went awry as
Houston's voice sounded ragged and off-key. She blamed an interview with
Winfrey for straining her voice.
A world tour launched
overseas, however, only confirmed suspicions that Houston had lost her
treasured gift, as she failed to hit notes and left many fans
unimpressed; some walked out. Canceled concert dates raised speculation
that she may have been abusing drugs, but she denied those claims and
said she was in great shape, blaming illness for cancellations.
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