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(AP)
LOS ANGELES - 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 case 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 he 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 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.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-207_162-57376028/singer-whitney-houston-dies-at-48/
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