WHITNEY HOUSTON
REBECCA HAITHCOAT
ILLUSTRATION BY JULIE WINEGARD
When you quiet all the drama, the rumors and reality shows, the sleazy tabloid stories and gossipy headline teases that eventually turned Whitney Houston’s life into a tempest, what remains is that voice. Pristine and bright as a cloudless day right after a rain, that voice flutters like a bird as she trills a snippet of the first song she ever sang in church, “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah.” For such a light and flirty pop song as “How Will I Know,” that voice is surprisingly full-bodied. Tremulous and sweet, it skips lightly up and down her range as she unleashes a furious rendition of “I Have Nothing.” That voice stretches out and renders anyone within its reach awestruck during her tour-de-force version of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.”
Houston could shift from a belt to a purr in a finger snap, her voice billowing out in effortless, satiny waves. So exquisite was that voice, superlatives don’t do it justice. So massive was that voice, the New York Times deemed her an “exceptional vocal talent” on her debut. And so powerful was that voice, it broke down the door to millions of white living rooms across the country so that one day Mariah Carey, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Zendaya, and so many more would also gain entrance.
Whitney Houston was born in Newark, New Jersey, on August 9, 1963, with music in her blood. Her mother, Emily “Cissy” Houston, was a gospel singer and cousin to Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick; Aretha Franklin was Whitney’s honorary aunt. Growing up in a Baptist church, Houston learned to play the piano and was a soloist in the choir. Her mother taught her to sing and took her to nightclubs where she was performing. By the time Whitney was fifteen, she had sung background vocals for Chaka Khan.
Still, her mother shooed away record labels, insisting that her daughter finish high school before signing a deal. Houston found early fame anyway—her clean-scrubbed good looks landed her modeling gigs. Foreshadowing her later life, she quickly started breaking barriers in the fashion world, becoming one of the first black women to book the cover of Seventeen magazine. Eventually, the record executives couldn’t be held off any longer, and Clive Davis signed Whitney. In 1985, Arista released her self-titled debut, which garnered four Grammy Award nominations, one win for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female for “Saving All My Love for You,” and high praise from publications like Rolling Stone, which deemed hers as “one of the most exciting new voices in years.”
The rich layers of Houston’s vocals ground the frothy pop confection “How Will I Know,” the third single from her debut. The accompanying video spearheaded her breakthrough as a visual performer as well: it features Whitney wearing a Madonna-floppy bow and metallic minidress, bopping around a paint-splattered maze adorned with funhouse mirrors. There’s some (very) loose plotline, a chorus of avant-garde dancers wearing black shifts, and a dude in shades “playing” a sax solo. In other words, “How Will I Know” meshed perfectly with the early aesthetic of MTV. Launched in the summer of 1981, the new music video channel was more popular than anyone had predicted. Yet with its high profile came heavy criticism, especially of the fact that the channel played mostly white musicians. Houston helped break down that color barrier as well.
From “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)” to “Heartbreak Hotel,” Whitney’s videos were spun in heavy rotation, making her the first black female artist to be a regular, and beloved, presence on the channel and a visitor in white homes. Showcasing her voice, yes, but also her elegance, bubbly personality and girl-next-door appeal, the videos helped her became a universal sex symbol. Everyone—everyone—listened to Whitney Houston. No longer were black female singers constrained to urban radio. Whitney wasn’t just on pop radio; she was pop radio. She dominated the airwaves for over a decade.
Houston continued to set records. With Whitney (1987), her sophomore album, she became the first woman to land four number-one singles from a single album. In the nineties, she accelerated her success even more via movies. Her first acting foray, The Bodyguard, was razzed, but its soundtrack, led by the best-selling single of all time by a female solo artist, “I Will Always Love You,” won the Grammy for Album of the Year. Waiting to Exhale won more critical praise, and its sensuous, produced-by-Babyface soundtrack was another smash.
Her last great album, My Love Is Your Love, was released in 1998. Gone was the purely sweet tone, replaced with a new, welcome sharpness. After all, she was a grown woman who had experienced plenty of heartache and pain. Houston’s image had shifted from the all-American girl to something edgier after she married R&B star Bobby Brown in the early nineties, but few knew the extent of the changes in her life. She suddenly was often hours late to interviews and performances, if she didn’t cancel them outright. Airport security guards in Hawaii found marijuana in both her and her husband’s bags. In 2002, she granted an interview to Diane Sawyer in which she announced, “Crack is cheap. I make too much money to ever smoke crack.”
And then there was Being Bobby Brown, a reality show starring Houston as much as Brown that aired on Bravo in 2004: the Hollywood Reporter deemed it the “most disgusting… series ever to ooze its way onto television.” Indeed, the two could be crude, with Houston elaborating on parasites as the family is eating. What struck viewers most, however, was the bizarre, if sometimes charming, world in which the couple alone existed, excluding even their children. Watching over a decade later, what’s horrifying is not how doomed their union might be, but how desperately sad they seem. She’s worn completely ragged by fans’ constant hounding—forget eating dinner in peace, they can’t even sit in the steam room without an autograph request. It came as no surprise when Brown later revealed these years to be the most tumultuous in terms of their both trying—and failing—to get and remain sober. The show ran only one season, but it tarnished Houston’s golden reputation.
Still, when she was found unconscious and subsequently pronounced dead of a drug overdose in a bathtub at the Beverly Hilton hotel the weekend of the 2012 Grammy Awards, the world was shocked. She possessed that voice, that sweet, pellucid voice that propelled black female artists places they had never been. That voice that could whisper or belt. That voice that touched everyone who heard it. That voice that touches everyone who hears it still.
Houston even changed lives in death. She proved that no one, not a middle-aged mother nor the world’s most famous singer nor simply someone gifted with a voice like that, is safe from addiction and mental unrest. And with all the number-one records, with all the new records set, with all the doors broken down, that might be the most powerful message that voice ever delivered. 