By Jackson Iwuanorue jacksoniwuanorue@yahoo.co.ukHER VOICE IS GOLDEN. Her powerful vocals in such ballads as “I Will Always Love You” and “One Moment In Time” send tingles up the listener’s spine. When she duets - “Could I have this Kiss Forever” with Enrique Iglesia, “There Can be Miracle” with Mariah Carey, or the more gospelic “Count On Me” with Cece Winans – her tone is even more surreal. Her voice leaves you gleeful and gobsmacked. For the record, that is the only voice with a credible bravura in any performance, be it soul, pop or R&B. With the perfect pitch, that voice can hit high notes effortlessly. Again, for the record, that voice was acknowledged as one of the finest [or greatest] voices in the [whole musical] world; in fact, it was certified as the “best voice on the planet.” The voice was the very soul of Whitney Houston, who once upon a time was America’s golden girl of music.
At the age of 5, she sang gospel in a Baptist Church choir; at 15, she backed up recording artistes; by 25 she ruled the world. At 35, that voice had won a cache of honours that include six Grammy awards, two Emmys, 30 Billboard Music Awards, and 22 American Music Awards. Sadly, after singing “Yes Jesus Loves Me” at a pre-Grammys party held at the Tru Hollywood club, the Singing Nightingale was silenced forever on February 11, 2012. So it was that Whitney Houston died at the age of 48. The global sadness occasioned by her passage was as much about a life lost, as it was about a voice lost. Her death was the latest chapter in the never-ending tales of celebrity tragedies that thrive on dark plots of substance abuse, dreadful twists of dire consequences and the epilogue of untimely death.
THE SHOCKING DEATH of the Heartbreak Hotel singer happened inside a Beverly Hilton Hotel, where she was staying for pre-Grammy parties. She took an interlude from a high-octane drink party to go to her room upstairs and was discovered hours later drowned in her bath. Dead. Her death had a tinge of irony and a tincture of superstition. She died at the very event where she was first unveiled to the world - at a Clive Davis gala. She died after starring in Sparkles, a film that was stalled for 12 years because another diva, Aaliyah, who was slated to play a role, died before the movie shoot commenced. Wasn’t dying on Brandy’s birthday, her younger lover’s sister, another twist? The grit of her death is that she followed in the tragic footsteps of pop icon Michael Jackson and British soul sensation, Amy Winehouse. Her life – the sorry story of a songbird - can be neatly couched in three comprehensive chapters - her rise to phenomenal stardom, her troubled marriage (and its terrible consequences) and the sad conclusion.
A True star
Historically, Whitney Houston was the anchor between the old musical corps of the 1980s that sang We Are The World and the constellation of stars of the 1990s. Musically, she was the female musical avatar for Generation Next.
She was born by Cissy Houston, a mother who was a gospel singer aside. She had singing cousins, Dionne and Deede Warwick, and she also had a musical legend, Aretha Franklin, as godmother. Either by gene or gratis, she was destined for musical greatness. And Indeed, Whitney Houston was a musical wunderkind.
Starting with singing gospel songs in the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey, young Whitney as a youngster became back up vocalist to established artists such as Chaka Khan, Lou Rawls and her own mother. At 19 she was as extraordinary as to attract the attention of Clive Davis, head of Arista Record, while she was playing in a Manhattan night club.
From there it was an upward trajectory. Her self-titled debut album, released on Valentine’s Day in 1985, was huge. The biggest-selling album by a debut artist. It spawned several hits among them the Grammy winner, Saving All My Love for You, How Will I Know, You Give Good Love, and The Greatest Love of All. She hit seven consecutive No 1 singles in the United States and by that surpassed the Beatles. When she released her second album, her place as a superstar was sealed.
Whitney’s claim to fame and fortune was her voice. A voice with force and feeling, a vocal that was pure and powerful.
Yes, Michael Jackson was great. So was Whitney. Michael had unparallel influence with his fans; Whitney’s unrivalled influence was over her peers. It is an incontestable fact that for the last 30 years, Whitney Houston’s voice is “the template for female vocal performers,” from Mariah Carey to Christina Aguilera. A fact further substantiated by Simon Cowell, X Factor executive producer. “Ever since I’ve been doing this job, particularly doing talent shows over the last 10 years, the number one singer anyone ever wanted to emulate, if they really wanted to be a superstar, it was always Whitney,” Cowell conceded.
She carried over the success of her music into movies, acting in blockbuster films such as The Bodyguard (1992) and Waiting to Exhale (1995) and The Preacher’s Wife (1996) both spawning soundtrack albums, and hit studio album.
Destructive marriage
WHITNEY HOUSTON sang the title soundtrack of the movie Waiting To Exhale, a movie about a TV producer who fell in love with a married man. In the opening stanza, she mulls: Every one fall in love sometimes/ Sometimes it’s wrong/ sometime’s its right – Whitney’s falling in love with Bobby Brown was wrong; getting married to him was calamitous. Staying married to him for 15 years was her doom.
Right from the onset, their union was knock-kneed. Brown, a member of New Edition group, was a certified bad boy - a jailbird with a string of DUIs( Driving Under Influence) and arrests for failure to pay support for children from previous relationship. He was toxic. That he would drag her down was a simple deduction. Together, they shocked fans with one of the stormiest marriages in modern music.
A woman of “heavenly voice” in a “hellish marriage”, Whitney never did finish paying for her mistake till the day she died. On one count, their union was fraught with domestic violence. She once lost a pregnancy because of domestic violence. On a second count, she suffered deterioration of character, and fell to a moral rock-bottom whereby she began to aid and abet her husband’s drug habit, until she inexorably became an addict. Once, they were both detained at Hawaii airport because of drug in their bags. Their story was a practical study of Differential Association theory of deviant behaviour, a textbook example of how negative influence corrupts. The adage that “s sheep that befriends a dog will soon be eating faeces,” aptly sums up Whitney’s transformation. She plunged into the cardinal sins of doing drugs, from marijuana, she indulged in crack cocaine.
The scale of her addiction was shocking. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2010, she made a chilling confession that by the time the film The Preacher’s Wife (1992) was released, [doing drugs] was an everyday thing. She came clean: “I would do my work, but after I did my work, for a whole year or two, it was every day…I didn’t think about the singing part of it any more.”
As sure as a celestial body travelling on an elliptical orbit, her life travelled the tragic curve till she ended as another locus classicus of suicidal indulgence. In the course of her 15 years marriage, her personality plunged steadily from hero to zero; as she plummeted from grace to grass, she lost commercial value as an artist, and most tragically, she lost that vital part of her identity: her voice.
When she eventually divorced Bobby Brown in 2007 and also got custody of their daughter, Bobbi Kristiana, Houston checked in to rehab twice before she would declare herself drug-free in 2010. It was expected that she would soon found her feet, only a matter of time. Unfortunately, like a blown fuse, her person, public persona and psyche had suffered an irreparable damage.
And the voice died
By the time she was given a clean bill, Whitney had lost the one treasure that defined her. The voice was gone. More like a talent leaving someone who abused it. What she was left with was a raspy and hoarse voice, badly ravaged by drugs. Musically, she could not hit the long high notes that were the trademark of her career. She was forced to cancel some of her UK tour because of her inability to live up to expectation.
There were other collateral damages too - her psyche for instance was dented. What could have led her into an on and off dalliance with Ray Jay, Brandy’s younger brother, who is not only 18 years younger, but is fecklessly notorious for making celebrity sex tapes.
The physical deterioration was even more pathetic. Slowly, the golden girl became a gollywog. She was such a bag of bones during a 2009 Michael Jackson tribute concert that she was rumoured dead the next day. Even after she was rehabilitated, Whitney remained a shadow of herself. The gloss was gone.
Last act
Not until her unfortunate death did it became clear that The woman who once had it all, lost it all in the tempest of substance abuse. Shortly before the ill-fated pre-Grammy party, it was becoming a common knowledge that the soul star was on the brink of bankruptcy, her fortune having dwindled away due to her addiction.
Whitney was a husk
She couldn’t even put herself together as she used to in the past. Two days before her death, she was pictured looking dishevelled and disorientated as she left a Hollywood nightclub with her daughter Bobbi Kristina after performing at a pre-Grammy party.
Overall, Whitney Houston’s pathetic end is an allegory. It is often said that “He who [must] dine with the devil must have a long spoon”. The Whitney Houston tragedy proved that false. No one dines with the devil and live to relish it. A growing list of celebrities, tragic involvement with the devil called substance abuse – alcohols, marijuana, cocaine, heroine, prescriptive drugs – ranging from Michael Jackson to Amy Winehouse, Janis Joplin to Jimi Hendrix, are hard lessons for others. Whitney Houston’s death is just a new variant of the Richard Cory template of celebrity tragedy.
Who’s to blame for Whitney Houston’s tragedy? Yes, Bobby Brown is a ready scapegoat, for leading her down the dark path. Others blame the music industry, and even the circle of friends who invited her, a recently detoxed alcoholic to a party where alcohols is aplenty. However, Chaka Khan, who appears on CNN Piers Morgan Tonight told the host the blame belongs to the late singer lamented: “she is to blame for everything,” It’s her choice, she insisted.
How true could she be? Before her death, Houston had stewed in self recriminations for 10 years. When she appeared in a 2002 ABC interview, she avowed: “The biggest devil is me. I’m either my best friend or my worst enemy,’’ Houston.
If the hands of time were turned back, and the Fates favourable disposed to extend her life, would Houston have been able to find her feet? Definitely not. Kenneth “Babyface” Edmond, a long time friend and musical colleague, told Piers Morgan the irreparably loss of her voice would ultimately kill her. Indeed, Whitney Houston died the day she lost her voice. Her passage was the final rite. You can but argue that she was making a gradual come back. Her career appeared to be set for a revival. Afterall her 2009 comeback album, I Look To You, reached No. 1 in the US. And she had recently finished filming a new movie, Sparkle. And she looked glowingly healthier. There is however, stronger counterargument: Didn’t they always die at the verge of a successful comeback?
No comments:
Post a Comment