Now, look, don’t embarrass us.
BeBe to Whitney, playfully, before her Super Bowl solo
When Whitney sang the National Anthem at Super Bowl XXV in Tampa Stadium on January 27, 1991, time nearly stood still, and America’s song would never be the same. She set a standard so high, so flawless, that most consider it untouchable. More than twenty years later, it remains a legend—a YouTube hit, a record-breaking single, the defining musical moment of a generation newly at war in the Persian Gulf.
Desert Storm was only ten days old when Whitney stepped up to the mic and, backed by the Florida Orchestra, made history. A reported worldwide television audience of 750 million watched, about one-fifth of them Americans. And for the first time ever, our troops in the Middle East were able to be part of the moment too, via live telecast. It created a shared experience for humanity, bringing Americans together from nearly every corner of the world.
“She was pure of timbre and bursting with emotion,” wrote Lisa Olson, AOL Fanhouse columnist, in recalling that breathtaking performance. It was “the night when Houston’s majestic voice bounced off stars and circled the planet.” And when Olson learned of Whitney’s death, it comforted her—like it does so many people now—to remember how Whitney, for that two minutes on a January evening, “humbled us, left us in awe, and made us feel so very connected and alive.”
Whitney called me before she sang, and I told her what I always told her: “Now, look, don’t embarrass us.” And what I meant was that since we all (Whitney, CeCe, and myself) had gospel roots, she had to represent. And she knew it.
We were always playing around about not embarrassing each other—but we still respected the notion. It’s what made us so close. I said it to her then, just like I heard her saying it to me while I was seated in the church pew at her funeral.
After Whitney and I exchanged a few playful barbs with each other on that Super Bowl Sunday, we hung up. Then she walked onto a global stage while I, along with the global community, watched that skinny young woman from East Orange—in her red, white, and blue warm-up suit—sing her guts out.
But did the world watch and listen to Whitney sing as much as we watched and listened to Whitney paint a picture of hope and confidence that we so desperately needed at that pivotal time in our nation’s history? “If you were there,” she would later say, “you could feel the intensity. . . . A lot of our daughters and sons were overseas fighting. . . . We needed hope . . . to bring our babies home, and that’s what it was about for me; that’s what I felt when I sang that song.” 
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While the troops were serving in Desert Storm, Whitney brought her own storm to the world’s stage. With each word and note, she seemed to be saying, “We will make it through this time together—come what may.” The football fans forgot all about football for that brief moment in time. They were caught in her whimsy, a magic that she wove into the sky just in time for the F-16 fighter jets to rip through, stamping her performance with an emphatic, “Yes, we are brave! Yes, we are free!”
And there she stood, arms raised in a confident “V”, her fists tight and her mouth open, holding that perfect note, then melting into her angelic smile. What could eclipse that moment? Everyone watching knew they had witnessed not only a never-to-be-forgotten performance but also the transcendence of an artist into the stratosphere of fame. If you didn’t love Whitney up to that point in her career, you loved her now. You loved her forever.
I remember when she finished, she called me and asked, in her typical playful way, “Well, how was that? Did I embarrass you?”
“Um, you nailed it. In fact, you probably sang it so good you ruined it for the rest of us. No one can sing that song now without thinking of that performance you just pulled off.”
Before Whitney’s death, she and I discussed the new album project I was working on. It was a collection of patriotic songs, including “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and she would kid me about it, reminding me that she had nailed that song and sold a ton of copies to boot (all of her proceeds on the platinum-selling single went to charity). Jokingly, she said, “You sure you want to record it?”
“I’m not afraid of you, girl! My God is your God,” I proclaimed. And we laughed.
But she always encouraged me—always stood by my abilities as a songwriter and a singer (though few people know that she arranged the vocals for that “Star-Spangled” moment). She thought I had the right to do the patriotic album and couldn’t wait to hear it. But I wasn’t fooled: “The Star-Spangled Banner” will always be Whitney’s song. Those remarkable two minutes at the Super Bowl are forever etched into her legacy.
Yet even after she did something so amazing for so many people to experience, she remained the playful girl I met that night in Detroit. When I watch the video of her singing that song on such a grand stage, I see what everyone else around the world saw: true Whitney. When she sang, her eyes glimmered and her mouth smiled and the words smiled and rose too, and then the tones rising out of her took on a new aura. Each one of us could see the rockets’ red glare; we could hear the bombs bursting in air. They were bursting from the veins in her neck as she effortlessly pushed those notes into the solar system.
Just like we did when she performed it live, now we watch on our computers and still hold our breath, marveling at her gift. We choke up at the end because we know that Whitney isn’t merely singing a song, she’s communicating her heart. And that’s what separates singers who sing, from the singers who sang’e. It’s that magic fusion that we just can’t explain other than, “God, this voice had to come from you. It had to come from heaven.”
Something else came from her performance: unity. Whitney, more than any person I’ve ever known, had the uncanny ability to bring people together. No matter your race, religion, or creed, she blurred whatever lines the culture tried to draw. When she sang at the Super Bowl, Whitney wasn’t only a beautiful black woman. She was every woman—and every man for that matter. I wouldn’t be surprised if people of every ethnicity watched that performance and felt a family connection to Whitney.
She smashed stereotypes and bridged a racial gap in our country like few who’ve gone before her. And she and Kevin Costner did the same in The Bodyguard, with the interracial romance portrayed between their characters. Color mattered little to the film’s audience, and not at all in the film itself—33 million albums and $400 million in ticket sales made that crystal-clear. Whitney tended to “extinguish . . . boundaries,” as Entertainment Weekly’s Sheldon Platt put it, again and again. And her performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” was proof once more that our differences should not overshadow our similarities and our common languages of love and music.
That was Whitney’s “Star-Spangled” moment. She brought together each person within earshot and made him or her part of her family. That night, a nation stood as one.