But Houston, like so many others we propel into superstar status, fought a dark side. Like Jackson before her, she experienced a meteoric rise and then just as quickly saw her career flounder when her angelic, movie-star image tarnished through years of well-publicized drug abuse. Her failings were fodder for our wide-spread derision, and there are some who, having heard little from Houston but her earliest work, might know her from the satirical mockery of Maya Rudolph’s Saturday Night Live portrayal.
Now that she’s dead, there’s the possibility fans will lionize Houston in the same way as Jackson. Now that she cannot add a music comeback to her legacy, many who had pushed her to the wayside will return her to greatness as they elevate her back to the status of Pop Deity.
It’s easy to bask in the light of a star as it shines and then point and stare as it falls to earth. That’s how our steady diet of reality television conditions us. But we learn nothing from this process. When alive, we see these artists as either a star raised or fallen. There’s only one side we’ll view at a time. When they die, we whitewash the bad and lionize the good while failing to understand that an artist is the product of both the good and the bad.
Why should anyone care about the death of Whitney Houston today? Houston was a legendary musical voice who led a generation of young women to pursue their dreams of pop music stardom. She also succumbed to the world of drugs and the temptations of the superstar’s world. Above all, she was a human being who experienced the highs and lows of life, proving that no one can stand up to the idealized view we have of our celebrity idols. While alive, few could perceive Jackson as more than one aspect of his life. He was either a legendary pop songwriter, or a skewed man-boy and potential sexual deviant. But few could comprehend that perhaps an artist as mercurial as Jackson — or in this case Houston — is a product of all their experiences, not just those we choose to idealize.
Houston should be remembered as a talented woman who impacted the world of music in ways few of this generation can even conceive. But we can also identify the demons which sabotaged her and strive to prevent history from repeating itself in the artists she inspired. In remembering the music Houston made during her lifetime, we can start to understand the sound of true musical greatness. But we also learn from her public failings what happens when gravity takes hold and all we’re left with is our humanity.
Categories: Music, PJ Lifestyle Columns
Tags: celebrity culture, lionizing the dead, music, remembering Whitney Houston
**What stands out above all else is how widely she influenced music over the ensuing 25 years**
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You do realize that the music industry has been in death throes for the last 20 years or so?
Part of that is due to rap/hip-hop, but much of it also is due to the soaring (i.e. full-lunged shouting) screeching singing style that Houston encouraged in today’s wannabes.
Not all influences are good ones (for example, Houston’s torturing of Dolly Parton’s song).
I have to agree. The hype completely puzzles me.
“..due to the soaring (i.e. full-lunged shouting) screeching singing style that Houston encouraged in today’s wannabes.”
Exactly. Also when did it become a musical art form to warble up and down and around each note in an otherwise straightforward melody. It’s a cheap way to get applause from an unsophisticated audience and displaces real creativity and talent.
You cannot blame Whitney for the wannabees. She had the most beautiful and interesting voice I have ever heard in my lifetime. Her downfall was her celebrity and hangers-on wanting a ‘piece’. From her own dad suing her for $100M to Bobby Brown to the entire black community trying to keep her in the box they created for her.
. Yesterday I listened to a news commentator comparing Houston’s drug use as “being a slave to drugs” as an illness “like having cancer”. I sat there amazed. Excuses for failure are piling up for her.
.Whitney gave up her singing voice to drugs many years ago…she gave it up, willingly. She went out and bought the drugs, excuse me, had the drugs delivered…
.Cancer,.. I do not believe can be bought on the street corner and sniffed up your nose.
You become a slave to drugs because it is what you choose to do..”choose to do”.
She had a great singing voice…but being an icon to young people as suggested by the media?..no, young people have enough problems without having a drug addict as a role model.
.She came from an apparently solid spiritual background, she was doing fine, then she gave in…we don’t give in to the “wrongs’ in life..
All of us have problems to deal with…some are much greater than hers..but we don’t revert to drugs to get through it all..
She laid a terrible legacy to on a young daughter.
Whitney was one of life’s gifted failures.
.No excuses.
The music industry is in its death throes, but music itself isn’t.
I was never a Whitney Houston fan, but she did have a huge impact on pop music, even aside from being a remarkable singer.
It makes me uncomfortable when the hype ingores the very real problems that led to her death, but she deserves all the props she can get for her talent.
So sad that cultural criticism is so imperceptive. I don’t know that I did better a week ago when I wrote this blog: http://clarespark.com/2012/02/13/whitneys-spectacular-demise/. I have heard much talk since then of “free will” and outrage over drugs, but nothing about the narrative of the tragic mulatto, or the perils of identifying with the daemonic in Romanticism, or female masochism, all of which may have contributed to her early demise. We are distanced from the reality of her life, as is the case with all “celebrities.”
How many brilliant artists have been killed by the Romantic movement’s ridiculous notions about tragic heroes, mad poets, and early deaths?
In 1985 a beautiful, black, female singer-songwriter made a huge impact on the music industry. I’m talking, of course, about Sade. She still looks and sounds great. I’m going to pop “Lover’s Live” into the DVD player as soon as I get home from work tonight.
In my opinion you’re right on the money: Sade didn’t have a bigger influence because she can’t be copied like Houston can; Sade is unique. Plus she had no train wreck of a life to show on reality TV. If Houston had actually written songs as did Sade, she’d have had the money to at least pretend to some kind of class Houston’s supporters drape all over her but which in fact she didn’t possess. I think Sade would’ve went back to small cabarets before signing a TV deal.
Houston was nothing more than an upgunned gospel singer, very good yes but hardly a true musical influence. As far as I can tell Houston’s songs are middle-of-the-road crap someone else wrote and produced and which betray not one scintilla of a musical philosophy.
Old fogey alert… and strictly for what it’s worth… Aesthetics is one of those things where, I suppose, there is no absolute right or wrong, there is just what you like and don’t like. So disclaimers aside, here goes…
The first time I heard Whitney Houston sing was maybe 25 years ago, when “All at Once” hit the charts. I was absolutely mesmerized by her voice — the sound, its depth, her control of it. I had never heard of her, so I went running to the record store and discovered, behold, not only could she sing, but she was almost absurdly beautiful, to top it off. Reminds of something film critic Roger Ebert once said about Carmen Diaz’s film debut in “The Mask”, something to this effect: Carmen Diaz started as a model, and is amazingly beautiful. And, surprise, she can also act, sing and dance. But it really wasn’t necessary.
However, as time wore on, so did Whitney’s voice. I grew tired of her singing. The virtuosity was still there. She still had amazing control. The tunes were… okay. But there was something else. At the time, I didn’t know what it was, but in the years since, I finally figured it out. I knew an old jazz trumpet player back in the Seventies, when I was a young buck, named Al. Al had played with the big bands in the Forties and Fifties and was now playing in a little West Palm Beach watering hole. He told me what he didn’t like about the youngsters coming out of music schools: “They try to show you everything they know in the first five seconds.”
That happens to singers, too. Ultimately, a musician has to decide whether to serve the song, or to serve oneself. The Lord only knows how many singers/crooners/pop artists in the history of the world have sung mainly to serve and validate their own sense of self. Probably the vast majority. But the great singers always serve the song. Maybe that was easier to do back in the day when the songs were written by great songwriters. But when you hear Ella Fitzgerald sing a George Gershwin tune, she does not show you everything she knows in the first five seconds, and not just because everything Ella knew about singing couldn’t have been shoehorned into five years, let alone a mere five seconds. Ella instinctively understood that, unless virtuosity is harnessed and controlled, it distracts from the musical message. Virtuosity must serve a purpose; it cannot be the purpose. It’s a concept known generally as having good taste. In Classical music terms, I see Whitney Houston as Paganini and Ella Fitzgerald as Brahms: the former was flashier and more popular during his lifetime, but the latter proved to be more substantive and durable.
In any event, I eventually grew tired of listening to Ms. Houston’s exaggerated vocal gymnastics — which have spawned an entire generation of screaming wannabes, all of whom make me want to bury my head under a pillow — because in the final analysis, the overuse of such devices says not, “Listen to this…”, but instead, “Listen to me!” Divas in the music biz are nothing new, and Ms. Houston may have been the greatest diva ever, but she could have been so very much more. Her talent was gargantuan, bordering on epic, but it was never realized. In fifty years, nobody will be listening, while Ella is forever. Tragic.
Bingo.
Most “singers” these days are not interested in music. They are only interested in the adulation that comes from being a famous singer. The music is merely the method that happens to work for them.
They are NOT expressing ANYTHING except their desire to be popular.
But then, given the drivel that passes for “music” these days, I guess that’s not surprising. When there’s nothing to the music, it’s pretty hard to express it.
Houston’s insincerity came through very early. She didn’t write the lyrics or care about the music. We can argue about her versus the relative talents of Stevie Nicks or Sade – but they are (are) sincere. They wrote most their stuff and mean it when they sing it. Houston was a glorified Broadway singer.
Forgive me for taking umbrage, but “Broadway singer” is no insult! Speaking (typing?) as a lover of the musical theater, serving the song – and the character who sings it – is the essence of Broadway, and the opposite of most pop music performance today. When Sutton Foster hits that stage every night, she has to become Reno Sweeney, and make her audience forget that there ever WAS a Sutton Foster as they get caught up in Reno Sweeney and her story. Mark v and the Trombonist surely understand…
It wasn’t meant as an insult. You like to watch Sutton Foster because she can become the character in a musical in a spectacular way. Whitney Houston became an invented character on her albums in the same way. She was acting. Love them or hate them, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Stevie Nicks, Peter Wolf, etc… aren’t acting.
As soon as she had made it huge and accumulated an “F-U” fortune, the real Whitney came out. The one who cared more about liquor and drugs than music.
Whitney Houston as an invented character – what a crock.
> Mark v and the Trombonist surely understand…
Mostly I agree with you on that. I’m not a huge Broadway buff, I’m just not as sensitive to theater as I am to music. But because I’m a music buff, I do listen to a fair number of Broadway singers. Julie Andrews was a Broadway singer, and I defy anyone, Beverly Sills in her prime, Marilyn Horne, whomever, to sing a phrase more beautifully than Andrews. I have heard great bass-baritone voices just clip-clop their way perfunctorily through a Richard Rodgers tune with no more feeling than a falling boulder, but when Alfred Drake or Richard Kiley sang a song, even though they’d sung it thousands of times before, it would make you cry. I can only imagine how hard it is to be both a world-class actor and a world-class singer at the same time, but it does happen.
This is way over the top. Houston was a gifted singer no doubt and she sold a lot of records but I seriously doubt she will be looked back upon 20-30 years from now as a major influence on music. To compare her to Michael Jackson is preposterous. Jackson (who I personally was never much of a fan) was a major childhood Motown star from the 60′s, disco star in the 70′s, major pop/rock star in the 80′s-90′s as a singer, dancer, writer and all around creative force. Jackson is the closest thing to an “Elvis” since Elvis – a great all around showman and pop culture phenomenon.
Houston was a classic diva. She just sang – everybody else had to handle all the other things to put on the show. She was never a bandleader, writer, etc. Even her movies were her looking good and playing herself. And like so many other divas she soaked up the idolatry, living in a roomful of mirrors, completely self centered and without the wisdom to avoid going on national tv looking like an anorexic junkie.
In my opinion she will be remembered as a great signer only – which she truely was – not as a great or influencial entertainer/showman. How sad and tragic – she was really good but she ultimately threw it all away.
That was the point I was trying to make earlier altho’ badly. (It was early) The hangers on were so anxious to ‘take her down’ due to their parasitic nature that she was left without any ballast. Whitney was an artist. This scenario is not unlike what happened to Elvis who did not write any music either. He just made the music his own. Artists cannot be constantly barraged with noise and commotion and other people dangling from their ear lobes. I have a strong feeling she would have written music or at least arranged it had she not been blocked. When Bill O’Reilly bloviates about Whitney killing herself…..no she was murdered by the hangers on. Who could stand the constant barrage.
Would she be getting our sympathy if she were not so gifted? No, when an ordinary person dies this way we do not call it a ‘tragedy’ and look for reasons. Ordinary people with these kinds of probelms are treated with contempt and locked up as criminals. Not so if you are a dazzling star like Whiney.
As a society we should not give up efforts to better understand and find treatment for drug and alcohol addiction. Less emphasis on expensive law enforcement with more resources devoted to treatment and research would be a good start and a better tribute to her than concerts.
That’s the same line of drivel that has given us our current epidemic of drug abuse.
If you could find a simple treatment for addiction with a 50% cure rate the world would be a very different place.
It is an important area for medical research. Addictions are a major problem and always have been.
Nobody in the field of medicine does not deal with this human issue on a regular basis. We need practical approaches to address this. it does not get much attention because it is a political dead end.
Anyway I think she had moments of musical brilliance. Some days she just was right in the pocket.
Boy, do I disagree with your conclusions. Yes Houston had a fabulous voice but in what is certainly a case of “apres moi, le deluge”, and you only have to catch an episode of American Idol to see it, the yodellers have taken over and made much of modern pop music unlistenable. No one can merely sing a song anymore. All have to unveil a coloratura that most can’t control or even make interesting. They all have to run up and down the scale like an opera diva with ADHD. The worst sound like they are searching for the right note while the best merely bore. Give me Gillian Welch and Norah Jones any day!
You must mean why Whitney Houston matters to you. While she did have a powerful voice, and was a successful entertainer, she was an alcoholic drug abuser that was an unpleasant interview according to reporters. Blaming her downfall on others is ridiculous.
I was around when Houston shot to fame and the fact she was immensely popular means nothing compared to the artistry involved. People who think Houston was innovative are missing the mark; she ushered in an era of over-souling hacks the same way Michael Bolton did and the legacy is the caterwauling of Jenifer Hudson and the fakery of Mary Blige, Christina Aguilera and Mariah Carey not to mention American Idol. Carey in fact never advanced beyond the promise of her first hit songs and neither did Houston.
There were in fact innovative singers before Houston; not being there to appreciate that fact doesn’t make Houston the year zero. If I would give marks to someone as an artist in R&B I’d award them to Marvin Gaye, a man who wrote and produced music so innovative it’s level has never been achieved again in that industry, or Edgar Winter and frankly scores of others. I am directly speaking about Gaye’s “What’s Going On” and “Let’s Get It On,” 2 albums the elevator music of Houston has never come close to touching.
There is no denying Houston had a wonderful voice: to me the issue is how it was spent during her career and how she served the songs she sang. Amy Winehouse is a far better singer and artist than Houston’s middle-of-the-road Top 40 ever was.
I’m not even aware of a single instance where Houston rose to even the level of the overstuffed Celine Dion amazing an entirely black audience at Motown Live in 1999 singing “River Deep – Mountain High” or the usually vocally demented Christina Aguilera giving the performance of her life singing James Brown’s “It’s A Man’s, Man’s World” at the 2007 Grammys.
In short, Houston is over-rated and before her were Etta James, Ella, and Franklin and they did spend their voices with artistry. None of Houston’s hits will survive the decades like those 3 or anything close to it. In an era that champions similar elevator music like Adele, it is lost that the greatest female artist of her era was Amy Winehouse and no one, and I mean no one in the last 35 years even comes close. Winehouse wrote, she sang, she played and did it all by the age of 20. Watch her videos on Jools Holland and the respect and amazement for this young woman in a jaded venue that has seen them all drips off the screen.
This article is another canary in the coalmine.
When we start thinking that pop music is important, we’ve already sunk a loooong way down.
Agree wholeheartedly on that account.
PJM, you’ve got to steer clear of providing music op-eds. They’re terrible.
Whitney Houston. Another person who screeched insipid lyrics whose ONLY message was, ‘in love, out of love, wanting to be in love, wanting to leave love alone..’ ad nauseum.
As for trying to draw similarities talent-wise to Michael Jackson.. gimme a break.
MJ’s, ‘Off the Wall’ (Amazing as it is due in heavy part to Rod Temperton and Quincy Jones, respectively) in of itself surpasses Houston’s albums talent-wise, collectively. JMO.
As for Ms. Houston’s timing, it couldn’t have been better.
The USA was suffering from atrocious hair metal and even worse, ballad music at that time.
Musical acts such as Ozzy, Def Leppard, Van Halen (thus becoming Van Hagar) and the like hung up their rock, metal gear for total, complete syrupy Top 40 garbage.
Surprisingly a few rungs down of Houston’s music.. yikes!
The metal bands came back ~’88-’89 thanks in no small part to acts such as Iron Maiden (Bruce Dickinson has better vocal chops and accomplished FAR MORE than Houston ever could imagine), Slayer, Ministry, Pantera, RATM, The Cult, Joe Satriani etc., breathed life back into a music scene which was essentially DOA.
For me the last ~35 years of metal boasts of possessing the most insightful, thought provoking lyrics as well as gathered talent than any other music genre at present time.
You won! Congratulations!
Aesthetics sure is strange stuff. The only way you could hurt me worse than to tie me to a chair and crank up the rap and hip-hop would be to crank up the metal. It seems to run the entire gamut of emotions all the way from coked-up rage to sexed-up rage.
With all due respect, I must make the same kind of comparison as Old Trombonist. Hendrix served the music. Satriani serves himself, amazing as his technique is. (It’s reminiscent of the McLaughlin/de Lucia tracks whose sole point seems to be showing off just how fast they could play.)
Long ago I saw a video that illustrated the same point. I don’t recall the name of the piece, but one fellow took a chorus of it and just blazed through with astonishing skill… and then handed it off to Lester Young, whose leisurely, elegant playing put the first guy to shame.
Oops! Apologies to Reformed Trombonist!
No sweat, James. “Old” is also accurate.
I don’t see what good lecturing us does.
I’m a classical instrumentalist, who listens to contemporary music. 100 years from now, people will still be playing Bach and Mozart. Nobody will remember Houston. Yes, nice voice, very pretty. Historical impact – don’t think so.
This whole mess is sort of symbolic for the state pf American ‘culture’.Just -bury the poor woman and end it. In my book, her singing bore no re= sembalance to what is called music these days. She had a great range and he could sing. I really don’t care what drugs she took. Apparently it was an open secret unlike many of the drug-using athletes. Roger Clemmons burst my bubble about drug use and I’m still recovering from that.
If flag lowering is such a big deal, write regulations for it and stick to them. Don’t blame Governor Christie.
There are regulations, and Governer Christie didn’t follow them.
Dolly Parton did that song better. Houston Hollywoodized it. They should have asked Dolly to sing it at the Grammys.
This is ridiculous. I am sorry that Whitney Houston is dead but she is vastly over-rated as as singer. She had a loud voice, and a forceful voice (that sometimes bordered on screechiness), but it was hardly a great singing voice. As a singer she doesn’t even hold a candle to her own cousin Dionne Warwick who had the voice of an angel.
I heard one of the radio wonders the other day refer to Whitney as *the* best female voice of the 20th Century, and wondered what Aretha thought of that. I guess Aretha is big enough to put aside her own diva-hood and sing at Whitney’s funeral … which says something about something right there.
P.S. Mr Sinatra always put the song first. And there was no discussion about it when they lowered the flags in Jersey for his death.
Houston was to music what the World of Warcraft books are to fantasy literature: dreck.
Aretha Franklin, Donna Summer, Tina Turner, and so many others that I cannot immediately mention didn’t to anything to pave the way for Whitney Houston, right? It was all Whitney that made it possible for young black girls to chase their singing dreams. What drivel. Did Whitney even write a song of her own? Or was she just a singer? The music industry was making stars out of young girls long before Whitney came along, and it will do so long after.
You’re right: it’s a good example of people being born in a certain year thinking the history of pop culture started when they were kids. That’s why it’s important to make a distinction between what is historically significant and what we simply like.
I like tons of stuff I know doesn’t deserves Nebulas, Oscars or Grammys. Let’s give credit where it’s due so we can build on what works as artistry instead of what sells to young people with each new generation. No one is suggesting kids listen to Doris Day, but that they have a place to go to for context so they can distinguish repetition from innovation in the evolution of art. If you read “Dune” before Burroughs you might laugh at Burroughs but without Burroughs there is no “Dune.”
Whitney Houston’s early albums from 1985-1990′s will be celebrated; however, I’m so sure about her albums in her later career given her powerful voice was destroyed by her rampant drug abuse. The irony is people are celebrating Whitney’s powerful voice when it became a causality as a result of her terrible drug abuse. Whitney could not even sing her earlier hits because her voice had been destroyed. People forget this in the shock of Whitney Houston’s death, but it should not be forgotten at all.
I’ll never forget Whitney Houston’s earlier work, but people must not forget her latter album work either which shows Whitney Houston to be a shadow of her former self thanks to same drug abuse which caused her early death.
There weren’t any political primaries going on last week, so the death of Whitney Houston was a great event for our news media to sell during that lull. By the time of the next primary next week. Whitney Houston will be old news, until the fight over her estate begins.(Lawyers, enter stage right). I thought Whitney Houston was a great singer whose life turned into a daily disaster. She wasn’t the first of her kind and she sure won’t be the last. RIP
Regardless of how you look at it, Whitney Houston was one of those superstars who left a colossal imprint on the music world during her quick rise to fame. Like Michael Jackson, she paved the way for a generation of young black women to make their way in the world of popular music. While Jackson broke MTV wide open for young black men, that door had remained obstinately closed for women of the same age.
Right. I guess the Supremes never existed. The Staple Singers. Marilyn McCoo. The whole spate of black female vocalists who dominated the disco era.
Or, going farther back, Josephine Baker, Ethel Waters, Lena Horne, Billie Holiday. Baker and Waters were big on Broadway as well as on records and in cabaret; Waters and Horne had film careers.
What “ground” did Whitney Houston break? The color barriers were long over by the time she came along. What little I’ve heard of her bellowing suggests that she had volume but less control and less finesse than singers such as Bessie Smith or Alberta Hunter who started out recording in the acoustic era. By all accounts, Houston’s relative Dionne Warwick materially helped Houston capitalize on her talent—which, along with the phrase “quick rise to fame” above, shoots to pieces the myth that Houston was “groundbreaking” in any way whatsoever.
What will we learn from Whitney’s example? Her talent was remarkable and she achieved great success at a young age. Her fame was bound to attract the users and hanger on-ers, who probably cared a bit more for the lifestyle than the star. Music and show business often cannibalize their young so while I am tempted to join in with the groups recounting her dramatic fall, it is worth resisting.
Life skills are undervalued and so important when dealing with dramatic success or failure. Being rich and famous can kill you, if you stop being able to hear the word “no”. Ms. Houston was also a daughter and a mother and I wish her peace.
It is a personal tragedy, one that is repeated on a daily basis. It is importent only because of the extreme waste of talent, oppertunity, and wealth that it represents. There will be other singers, many who will repeat the same errors. These people seem never to get any training in money management, self dicipline, or self control. It is too bad that so much of worth is destroyed as a result.
When a pop singer, now matter how talented, gets this much press, there is something deeply wrong.