When I became “Whitney Houston” . . . my life became the world’s.
My privacy. My business. Who I was with . . . I just wanted to be normal.
Whitney, in her interview with Oprah
Whitney didn’t have a trophy case; she had a trophy room. Where do you think all those Grammys and platinum records went? They made their way to her trophy room and they sat there, under the lights, never making a sound.
Whitney is no longer with us, but her prizes in this life remain behind. None of them went with her. Now, do they mean nothing during this lifetime? I think they do have some significance, but not more than a small percentage of life’s whole. They hold only the value of the moment, and when that moment passes, they sit beneath those glaring trophy case lights, idle. You pass them by every day, glancing momentarily toward their gleam, but what more is there? After the lights go down and you’ve taken off your work clothes and slipped into your comfy shoes, you go back to your house and sit in your favorite chair and fall asleep, just like the rest of the world.
But a tension does exist, if we’re honest. The awards and accolades accumulate and the feeling of success wanes, but out there in the world, your craft, your talent, your voice remains. It remains on vinyl records and cassette tapes, CDs, and MP3s. At any given moment, anyone can play your song. They can hear your voice singing passionately over and over again. Some simply click on to the next song or album, while others may sit and cry at the memory of where they were when they first heard that music.
Whitney knew this tension better than anyone. Later in her career, she knew that the public viewed her with some disdain, and that she’d made some bad decisions. Yet she also knew that people still listened and that her voice still mattered. The question so many wanted to know was, “Why? Why did you lose yourself? Why did you disrespect your gift? Why?”
You can’t take back your songs. You can’t take back the performances. And you can’t take back who you are to so many. You can only cope and try to stay aligned with that version of yourself you know—the you that you truly are.
‘Coping” was something Whitney did on her own. I knew she was coping when I didn’t hear from her. The phone would stop ringing. The visits grew sparse. There was a sense of not being able to look one another in the eye—like when you broke your mother’s vase as a child and you couldn’t face her square and tell her.
When Maya Angelou was interviewed just before President Clinton’s inauguration, Bryant Gumble asked if she would be able to control her emotions while reading the poem she’d written for the event. Of course she was concerned about her emotions. Why? Because of what she wanted to accomplish with the words—the high hopes that lay within the lines.
‘I want us to look at each other,” she said. “So often we find some place right up above the eyebrow line and we don’t look into each other’s eyes, as if we are afraid of that. . . . We will only be able to really trust each other if we can find trust in each other’s eyes.”
Whitney and I never lost trust between us, but there were times when our eyes didn’t meet, to use Maya’s metaphor. I do think, however, that Whitney struggled at some point to look the public in the eye. Not out of shame necessarily, but out of weariness. She tired of defending herself. She yearned for normalcy. And as Bobbi Kristina grew older, she yearned for it even more. So much so that she thought of giving up all that she had accomplished in order to be with Bobbi Kris and enjoy the everyday stuff of motherhood.
But looking someone in the eyes is a two-way affair. The public didn’t look Whitney straight in the eyes either. Instead, they stared at the persona the media pitched on television and in the tabloids.
Is there a scenario where Whitney was totally set up by the media? Think about it. The very people who made her into a household name were the same people who made her into a doping diva. Those people didn’t know anything about her. Even months after her death, I’ve seen the tabloids still working salacious headlines and conspiracy theories. There’s really no way to justify what appears in the news now. And the more I think about the level of scrutiny Whitney endured, the harder it is for me to comprehend how she survived it all for so long.
Everyone remembers the “crack is wack” interview with Diane Sawyer in 2002. We watch moments like that and immediately make up our minds: “Whitney’s nothing but a junkie diva who’s blowing her talent on the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle.” Do we ever stop and think that maybe Whitney was trying to get out of a situation? What better way to get the media and the masses off your back than to give them every reason to write you off?
After that infamous interview, Whitney fell off the map by some accounts. It’s true that she didn’t record another album for seven years.
She was in a dark place. And when I say dark, I mean, a place of anger. Because she realized, “Hey, y’all didn’t love me. You said you loved me, but you didn’t really love me. I’m not getting the invitations I used to get, or the respect I was afforded. What I’m getting now is the truth—that you didn’t care in the first place.” Her anger came from realizing how disingenuous people were.
The truth, in this instance, did not set her free. When she was presented with that kind of public sentiment, it weakened her. It weakened her in the sense that she had trouble dealing with it. And so, rather than dropping off the deep end as the media claimed, Whitney retreated. She kept to herself a lot more.
She would still call me, and we’d catch up—but I always knew when she was feeling down, because she didn’t talk as much. When she was happy, she talked nonstop. During this time of seeming inactivity, she was more still, trying to get away from the light of fame.
When Whitney resurfaced in 2009, people were saying she sounded tired. In truth, she was tired. She was still, in a sense, recovering from the breakup with Bobby and trying to live her life on her terms. In the state she was in, she had no business being in front of a camera, promoting her new album, hitting all the big talk shows. She wasn’t in good voice either. When you’re known for your vocal prowess, you don’t go on national television to try and prove anything if you’re physically not ready.
I know Whitney was angry with her situation, but her appearance on Good Morning America made me angry with her. She had no business being on that show. When your vocal cords are tired, you have to let them rest. It wasn’t drugs or whatever story people were concocting. She was worn out. Her voice was worn out. She needed rest.
If you want to discover why her voice was worn out, try and sing her song list three times in one day. That will run your voice down. She was a vocal powerhouse to be able to sing the songs she did night after night. Everything revolved around her voice.
I don’t take drugs, and yet there are times when my vocal cords are done. People give Celine Dion a hard time about how she babies her voice, and maybe she takes it a bit too far, but you don’t see her doing a lot of interviews when she’s on tour, and that’s intentional. The less talking, the better. The adoring public knows Celine for her vocals, not her dance routines. It was the same with Whitney. And when that’s the case, you simply have to preserve your voice, for even whispering can injure it.
This is where Whitney got into trouble. She loved having a good time. She loved talking. I’d say, “Whitney, you need to stop talking and get some rest.”
“Okay I will, but . . .” And on and on she’d go. She was unruly in a good way—which is the Whitney we loved—but at some point I’d end up saying, “Girl, go to bed. Get some sleep.” Yet she didn’t want to do that; she wanted to hang out.
When you don’t sing for a long time and then you begin to sing regularly again—really singing like the professional that Whitney was—your voice is going to get sore just like any other muscle would. It’s no different than working out at the gym. If you haven’t regularly ridden a bike for a few years and you walk into a spin class, you’re barely going to be able to walk the next day. Whitney hadn’t been singing regularly, and therefore she wasn’t ready to perform.
But I guess the bigger point is that she didn’t really need to get out in public and do interviews at all. In my thinking, why give the media a bone? You’re not ready, and you’re not obligated to do any of it.
When I saw her give the Oprah interview, I became even angrier, not with her or with our friend Oprah, but with the industry. I knew that the media and the masses would take that interview and use it to sum up Whitney as a person, which to me was unfair. But that’s what the industry does. In any way it can, it will try to sell you—whether it’s an interview about your sex life or drug abuse or one of your songs. Doesn’t matter. At some point, you cease to be a person. You represent dollar signs and your life seeps away; it becomes a transaction.
CeCe and I told Whitney that “if you can’t sell an album because of your raw talent, then forget about them [industry people].” I didn’t want her to do that Good Morning America show where she sang in Central Park. Why? Because she had no voice. I wanted her to wait. But there again was that notion that drove Whitney—the notion to prove people wrong and to show she was in control.
She knew where I stood with it all. I loved her and wanted to see her succeed, but I wanted her to show up like the Whitney I knew her to be.
We did, however, get a kick out of the media’s hype about her sudden “resurfacing,” as they called it. The I Look to You album was supposed to be her comeback? Where had she gone? The last time I’d checked, Whitney’s record sales weren’t in need of a comeback.
She told me, “This ain’t no comeback. I ain’t went nowhere.”
We laughed about it a bit, but that didn’t take away her anger about the situation. It was almost as if she did those shows to tell the world, “I’m still here, and this is who I am.” But for those of us who really knew her, she had remained the same person all along.
It doesn’t matter who you are, you don’t want to hear bad things said about you. The irony of Whitney singing the line, “I look to you, after all my strength is gone,” on Good Morning America was that at this point in her career, she had lost much of her strength. Her voice was not what it once was because she was so run down and hadn’t properly taken care of herself. She was not confident. Her performance that day in Central Park was fearful and tentative.
I hurt just watching her get through it. She wanted so badly to show everyone that she was still the same Whitney. But I don’t think she needed to show us anything. I think time was working its healing magic. And we all need time, just to be ourselves.
During her seven-year hiatus from the music industry, I saw a Whitney who wanted to return to the simplicity of life before the stardom. And her desire to get back to a simpler life was really her wanting to get back to the joy of God.
You and I aren’t much different than Whitney in this regard. We face tough times in life, and those trials challenge the core of who we are. If we are people of faith, difficulties challenge our faith. It’s in those times that we cry out for God’s help, and that’s what Whitney was doing when things got crazy—when her marriage began to unravel and people began to reject her. She wanted out of the world’s light so she could find peace again in God’s light.
Whitney was a down-to-earth kind of girl—a jeans and T-shirt type of girl. When she became “Whitney Houston,” her life was not her life anymore. She was whisked away for years, around the world and back again. And I saw her—not the Whitney Houston the media portrayed, but the real Whitney—begin to wither under the stress of it all. Any celebrity will tell you that, in the thick of it, when you’re making loads of cash and people wait on you hand and foot, it’s good. For a time. But that time does not last. It can’t; it’s not sustainable.
After Whitney returned from her first trip to Paris, she told me she never really saw the city. She sang and she left. She passed through Paris because her schedule didn’t allow a real visit. She was in the world, but not really in the world—so busy with the rigors of touring that she was either overbooked or too tired to do anything. Whitney had to sleep and stay in during the day to rest up for each night’s concert, which included “meet and greets” after the show. I don’t know who came up with that tradition, but for a performer to visit with fans after you’ve just given your heart and soul on stage wears you out. All you want to do is go back to your bus or hotel and sleep as much as you can. Because at the next stop on the tour, the audience will want the same performer the last city got, and the one before that.
This is unimaginable to many of us. We fantasize about fame and fortune, but when it hits you the way it hit Whitney, it’s a beast.
The Whitney we saw and heard in 2009 was a wounded woman. She said it herself for all the world to see: she wanted to return to the “joy”—that “peace that passes understanding”—because it alone fulfills.
Whitney was quoting Philippians 4:7 from the Bible. What’s interesting about that verse is what precedes it. The previous verse says that we should not worry or be anxious about life. Instead, we should pray to God. Take refuge in him. He alone can calm our hearts and ease our fears and bring back our joy.
That’s what Whitney desired. That’s what she was trying to do. She was giving it all to God. She was waiting on him and taking refuge in him.
Though you can’t explain this peace that is beyond human understanding, you sure can know when it’s not in your life anymore. When your joy leaves, peace is hard to come by.
So much had built up in Whitney’s life that she just needed to let go and cling to God. Clinging to God isn’t some mystical thing. It simply means that we place our trust in him; that we go about our everyday life with him in mind, not the things the world throws at us. God promises that when we give him all our worry and anxieties, he will give us a peace we can’t explain, a peace that will guide and enrich our lives.
My friend Luther Vandross used to call me as soon as he stepped off the stage . . . because it’s lonely. When he or Whitney or any performing artist steps off of the stage, they stand alone. The crowd has returned home and moved on with their lives. They’ve taken a piece of you with them, but you’re standing there by yourself and the only thing you can think to do is call someone who knows you. That’s what Luther would do, and that’s what Whitney would do. She wanted to talk to her brother. Why? Because I cared about her. The real her.
Could she have called her label and told them that she was homesick and wanted to go home? No way! As long as you’re making money hand over fist, you put your head down and move through your obligations. Only when you stop selling records and selling out stadiums will they leave you alone.
Those obligations and pressures never really ended for Whitney. She took herself out of that world instead.
As I listened to the other speakers at the funeral talk about Whitney, and as I listened to my brother Marvin preach about priorities, the inevitable question crossed my mind: Why am I here?
I wasn’t supposed to be sitting at Whitney’s funeral. I was supposed to be planning her fiftieth birthday. I was supposed to be catching up with her, listening to her stories about her life and career and her daughter.
I think it’s always unfair when a young person passes. It’s too early. In those circumstances, only God can answer why. But to me, Whitney was too young as well. Forty-eight is not old by any stretch. Her youthfulness and her amazing talent incited questions: “Why, God, would you allow her to be taken from us now?” It’s when I ask those questions that I’m reminded of humankind’s brokenness: broken relationships, broken morality, broken health, broken governments—all stemming from broken people.
There aren’t a lot of answers to “Why?” When I ask why, I’m reminded of the irony layered into the lyrics of “I Will Always Love You,” with its wishes for a gentle life and fulfilled dreams, happiness, and love most of all. Whitney’s career afforded her wealth and fame beyond measure. Her dream of being a singer did bring her joy and happiness to a certain extent. But imperfect people stand at the controls in this life. The gatekeepers of the music and media empires will let you in if you have the talent. And if you’re a born super-talent like Whitney was, they will push cash into your gift with little regard for the personal ramifications. But it all cost her something very dear: her privacy and the normalcy that the rest of us often take for granted.
Sometimes our dreams can lead us down a path we never thought we’d walk. They can deceive us into thinking we want something that wouldn’t be so great for us after all. It makes me wonder what is really worthy of our dreams in this life.
I don’t think it’s wrong to desire prosperity or success. So don’t hear me saying that you shouldn’t dream to be like Whitney. Go ahead: Chase your dreams, and dream big. But be wise.
Jesus once advised that one should consider the cost before taking on a project—and he didn’t just mean financially. The world will shower abundance upon you if and when you achieve your dreams, but it will also bury you with expectations and strip away the simplicity of your life.
Whitney missed that simplicity most of all. I think when she finally made it back into the public eye, she held her career and private life in good balance. She’d regained some of what she’d lost along the way and was pursuing the balancing elements that really make life worth living: family and faith.