Whitney Houston R.I.P.

Reported on the bbc that her publicist has confirmed it

https://twitter.com/#!/AP/status/168498854671556608

waiting to see if its mentioned on sky news

dead pool thread on ile got bumped before the ilm threads btw

on sky news now

waht

daaamn

she was 48

Not really a surprise tbh, but rip

fucking hell this is pretty horrible.

its really weird when pop stars from when i was a kid are dying. 48 ffs

http://news.sky.com/home/showbiz-news/article/16168012

honestly, the crack stuff still surprises me to this day compared against the Whitney of my 80s childhood

(not that I was a fan then but the image she had)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-17001548

Worldwide trends
· Change

R.I.P Whitney Houston
#IWillAlwaysLoveYou
Wanna Dance With Somebody
Ray J.
The Bodyguard
Kevin Costner
#LionKing
Bobby Brown
Watching CNN
Kristen Foster

waht

I can't believe this. She was just out preforming last night..

i still stand behind my whitney vote on that 1987 adult-contemporary pop thread. RIP.

:(

would not want to be in a karaoke bar tonight.

gotta get my thoughts together, but RIP to a terrific talent who I loved, warts & all

Wow.

Yeah. Blindsided. Blasting 'It's Not Right, But It's Okay' in her honour.

Sometimes I think the cover of "Memories" she sang with Material (at least 2 years before her first album came out) was the best thing she ever did. RIP.

what?! RIP

WmC otm. Archie Shepp is on that too. It's really great.

Sometimes I think the cover of "Memories" she sang with Material (at least 2 years before her first album came out) was the best thing she ever did. RIP.

Playing this and "You Give Good Love." She sounded so sweet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_rId-X64hg

did she do the grammy's last night?

ABC walking it back

thats from sept 13

Yes sorry I just realised that :(

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=z_yiCIow6fI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-iLG8UmSes

Anyway, self-destructive drug addict diva dies shockah. The tragedy preceded the death by at least a decade. Lookout, Lindsay.

when was her last hit?

The I Look To You singles didn't go top 40, though two went R&B top 20. Her last pop hit was actually the re-issue of "Star Spangled Banner" after 9/11.

with itunes and amazonmp3 she will get a good few hits now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMdXi6f5KRg

oh, serge

trying to find the best live version of My Name Is Not Susan

rip

neve campbell at the leafs game = the only non-whitney twitter trend lol

at the time I thought "What an odd, awesome name for a Top 40 single."

xpost

oh no....rip

Holy shit. She was performing last night.

Holy hell

RIP

rip

Gotta agree with this:

https://twitter.com/#!/joncaramanica/status/168515061055369216

mmmmm.

damn shame. not really a fan of hers but i remember liking her in a couple of films (the preacher's wife, i'm thinking?). she seemed, at the time, to be pretty charming and classy and chill( kinda like lindsay used to be : / ) none of which makes her drug issues and fucked up personal life any more tragic in a way but still...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxZD0VQvfqU

The fact that her first record was a Soft Machine cover featuring Archie Shepp completely blows my mind.

xp

was just singing the bridge to 'how will I know' in the shower last week

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdCDLQew0LI

imo this was the best of 80s pop whitney

Yeah, I'd heard she sang fairly well Friday night, seemed like she was continuing uphill--so this is fairly startling, disheartening if not a shockah. Whether she was sober, and something like a long-damaged metabolism finally running all the way down, or toasting Friday night's recent little victory, with one last rock too many: "Memories, they hang you up and hold you."

ts: anita baker whitney ("you give good love") vs. teenpop whitney ("how will i know") vs. new jack whitney (the '90s)

crazy this happened the night of Clive Davis' pre-grammy gala

wonder how much of this is still going to happen

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501368_162-57375894/clive-davis-gala-is-white-hot-kinks-to-perform/

clive cancelled the event btw.

love this so much
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdoamCoYTs0

xpost makes sense

At the Beverly Hilton on Friday, Alicia Keys was getting ready to rehearse. Monica and Brandy will also hit the stage. Vintage clips of the annual event played on the big screen, showing performances from Houston, Lou Reed, Rod Stewart, Aretha Franklin and Usher.

Houston isn't on the performance list, but that could change.

"It's her favorite night of the year ... (so) who knows by the end of the evening," said Davis, who founded Arista Records and is now the chief creative officer of Sony Music Entertainment.

http://justjared.buzznet.com/2012/02/11/clive-davis-grammy-party-canceled-after-whitney-houstons-death/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDzdqranbUc

:(

90s whitney was the best

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6J538b-OLRU

i forgot how good love will save the day is; total winner.

I am truly shocked, still hard to even process this.

apparently this sparkle remake was first going to happen around 2001, and was pushed aside after aaliyah (who was supposed to co-star) died

"It's Not Right..." is the last time I remember her as a Billboard/cultural force. That Thunderpuss remix was everywhere in '99.

so sad...r.i.p. whitney.

Holy shit Whitney what the fucking fuck

yeah that moment of "it's not right but it's okay" being released was sort of a revelation--i fucking love that song.

my sister somehow didn't know about her drug problems and she was sort of shocked that whitney houston had extensive enough drug problems that they might conceivably have caused her to die at 48. she was like, "courtney love's still alive!" and i considered whether the only difference between the two in terms of their demons was that whitney houston had powerful handlers for the early portion of her career.

"Whether she was sober, and something like a long-damaged metabolism finally running all the way down"

judging from the pictures of her the night before, she definitely wasn't sober...

shit, 48. RIP

or earlier this week. not last night.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=4wsCdxdRIL4

dammit let's try that again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wsCdxdRIL4

that thunderpuss remix was the stone cold shit for real

I remember Elvis Costello doing a Guest VJ hour on MTV when Blood & Chocolate came out. He played one of her videos, "How Will I Know" I think, and came on afterwards saying "please please please please Whitney, please can I write some songs for you? omg what a voice"

i have the first album on and was just reminded of a great album track called "someone for me":

http://open.spotify.com/track/57gkU8WvqF62FTRDIIHqjH

When she was on, she was ON

she is a great example of taalent elevating horrible source material, because so many of her singles were schlocky nonsense that she imbued with so much depth and feeling

yeah that Thunderpuss remix is 10/10 classic.

"you give good love" will always be my favorite song of hers, though. this performance is absolutely perfect:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM3rM1DTJ9Y
the last minute or so in particular... just staggering. what a voice, for real.

I remember the EC MTV thing. I thought he had said, "Please. Let me write you some good songs."

xp

i remember reading an interview with her where she said she hated a lot of the material she was given, and that was a big reason for her going over to more hip/young r&b stuff later on.

she is a great example of taalent elevating horrible source material, because so many of her singles were schlocky nonsense that she imbued with so much depth and feeling

― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP)

100% OTM. I've always had reservations about her recorded output - a little too schlocky, middle-of-the-road, AC - but there was no denying her voice.

"You Give Good Love" is still the shit. She sounded so sweet and ready for non-Clive-Davis-validated experience.

I remember the EC MTV thing. I thought he had said, "Please. Let me write you some good songs."

Ah, I think you're right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_yiCIow6fI

Elvis Costello would be, like, the last person I'd ask to write Whitney Houston songs.

for better or worse she was stuck with these ridiculous, histrionic, hysterical songs; the little things like "Memories" were just that.

he'd probably write her bacharachy stuff. i have mixed feelings about that.

iirc there was a lot of criticism of whitney in the 80s for the sound of those first two records.. 'in living color' did a really mean sketch on her for singing pop songs and not being much of a dancer.

i wonder about that. then we got new jack whitney (those songs was great) but if you look up the shows on youtube they have her during the faster songs with all this choreography (it is kind of awkward) and not singing live. like it wasn't enough at the time that she had the most amazing voice in the world

she couldn't be anything other than WHITNEY HOUSTON singing songs that made Clive Davis wet. It's up to us to separate the crap.

I mean -- imagine Tennant-Lowe giving her a Dusty Springfield number. As awesome as this looks on paper I don't think it would've worked.

this is depressing me so much in this way where i feel like i could just as easily have started a joke thread about it. i think i've mentioned before that the first single i ever owned was her version of i will always love you, which still feels about perfect. i listened to it last maybe about a week ago. it was a gift from my aunt who i guess passed the black sheep mantle to me sometime during the course of my teenage years. i still own that cassette but i've lost the cover. it still feels like we were making some sort of pact. i guess i have this thing with whitney where i've kindof loved her music in this weirdly personal way, thinking about it almost feels autobiographical. but her voice was so clean, and her singing so efficient and capable. and i feel like a big part of her later narrative was how the messiness of her life gradually encroached on that voice. i find it hard to draw the line with her, where one thing starts and another ends. that career comeback with wyclef. her being the absolute opposite of lauren hill. the clean lines of her voice, dancing in a blackout. and all the things people will say about her being "troubled". and bobby brown. and the absurdity of it. and bittersweet memories, that is all i'm taking with me. RIP.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxZD0VQvfqU

the clean lines of her voice,

otm

http://youtu.be/3JWTaaS7LdU

Yeah, it was either then or another occasion when Costello wondered why she was doing "The Greatest Love": "That's for when you're 37 and living in Vegas", approximately. So maybe getting disgusted, then apathetic with the biz so young made her more likely to compensate (yes, I'm auditioning for Nancy Grace)

xpost - oops, can't type - those songs *were* great

the really sad thing to me was that single 'million dollar bill' from a few years back, song ok i guess but you could just hear that voice was gone

vocal track of how will i know:

http://jakefogelnest.com/post/17460767716

yeah i like that song, but you can tell her voice has suffered on it

xp about million dollar bill

isolated vocal tracks from "How Will I Know" - smart as a whip.

http://jakefogelnest.com/post/17460767716

xp scooped in the xpost

Rest in peace.

the reverb on so many of her vocal tracks sounds so dated which is a shame

vocal track of how will i know:

http://jakefogelnest.com/post/17460767716

― scott seward, Saturday, February 11, 2012 10:11 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh jesus christ

no -- whitney houston

i love million dollar bill but it's absolutely a referendum on her state. in many ways an oddly appropriate exit note though there's an inevitable flood of material on the way that will outchart it

I am really sad. She was one of my favorites as a kid and just . . . not surprising but fuck. How will I know was one of my first favorite songs as a kid. :(

do you remember the video? i was so obsessed with it + thought she was the prettiest ever.

"How Will I Know" redeems that zippy Narada Michael Walden sound.

yeah i loved her as a kid, i wonder if my cassette of 'whitney' that i got in 1987 is still around here!

certainly she does more with him than Aretha did in that period.

do you remember the video? i was so obsessed with it + thought she was the prettiest ever.

― horseshoe, Saturday, February 11, 2012 10:15 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hell yeah I do! I did too. Aw, it's just so sad. Listening to those isolated vocals now. Man. RIP.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3-hY-hlhBg

We also did a dance to "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)" in a dance class I took the year it came out and I swear I still remember at least 1/2 of the moves. Loved that one too.

First one to post the David Byrne cover gets four SB's.

do you remember the video? i was so obsessed with it + thought she was the prettiest ever.

omg me too! i got a perm and tried to do my hair like that. it didn't work out so well but i kept trying

she really pulls off that purple eyeshadow magenta lipstick gigantic metallic minnie mouse bow look

i think "i wanna dance with somebody" might still be my favorite whitney song, real talk. or "it's not right, but it's ok."

she sparked some early heterosexual identification for me on friday night videos

^^^she lived a worthwhile life then

one more notch on her bedpost

she sparked some early heterosexual identification for me on friday night videos

― little clouds of citrus spritz as i peel (forksclovetofu)

this is hilarious to me bc i feel like i had a completely different experience of whitney as i hinted above.

Wow, "How Will I Know" sounds so much better without the music tracks.

A damn shame. Also I'm going to throw up if I see another Facebook post that starts out "I didn't like her music much, but..."

Haven't seen much of that sentiment yet!

although I didn't like her music much but

that was a beautiful post btw judith, you should write something longform on your whitney fandom, would read

Just heard about this. Oh man... :,-( RIP

fond memories of that thunderpuss remix... rip

I had no use for her really but damn RIP. her impact on the genre is pretty undeniable.

http://www.chicagonow.com/lists-that-actually-matter/files/2011/06/Whitney_Houston.jpg

I didn't really like the influence she had on pop tbh but respek regardless

The expression on that single sleeve is terrifying

This is really sad.

Big fan of turn of the 90s, ripped jeans, "I'm Your Baby Tonight" Whitney

RIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOF09vrYQRE&feature=related

I share xp doubts about benefits of working with Costello. Ashford and Simpson, Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards wrote and produced decent albums for Diana Ross; if they could deal with her, why not Whitney--before "BobBEHHH", anyway. Prince too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE_IONM8RR0&feature=related

aw man i'd never seen that. that song really *gets* to me as it is.

xxp about "i am changing"

damn guys.

still reeling.

yeesh, the whole thing about jeering at sick celebrities (I admit following some of them some of the time with a...usually...non-jeering "curiosity", not that wholesome in itself).Easy to fuck up when you know people are expecting you to, taking it for granted and/or counting on it, as several comedians and gossip sites were when she and Bobby were peaking/bottoming out.

how is not even one station in san diego playing whitney, wtf man, wtf

it's not right but it's ok. RIP.

she was like the FM soundtrack to elementary school - more so than any other artist. so this is hella surreal.

can't imagine the response when Madonna dies.

My Whitney singles:

Saving All My Love
The Greatest Love Of All
How Will I Know
I'm Your Baby Tonight
It's Not Right But It's Okay
My Love Is Your Love

Grudging respect to I'm Every Woman as well

On Thursday, Houston dropped by the rehearsals to offer vocal tips for Brandy and Monica, who were slated to be one of the evening’s headliners.

Press, including The Times, were in attendance for a junket with the reunited R&B divas and Davis. Though Houston greeted people her with a warm smile, she appeared disheveled in mismatched clothes and hair that was dripping wet with either sweat or water.

The visibly bloated singer displayed erratic behavior throughout the afternoon -- flailing her hands frenetically as she spoke to Brandy and Monica, skipping around the ballroom in a child-like fashion and wandering aimlessly about the lobby. It was mentioned by a Grammy staffer that security personnel received calls of the singer doing handstands by the pool.

After leaving rehearsals, Houston returned to the ballroom -- with her teenage daughter Bobbi Kristina in tow -- as camera crews set up for interviews. The singer smelled of alcohol and cigarettes. A Grammy staffer said that during the interviews with Brandy, Monica and Clive, Houston was dancing just off camera to make the singers and Davis laugh. Grammy personnel expressed concern that she'd be caught on camera, and that reporters would write about her behavior.

Finally her daughter pulled Houston out of the room, and the singer skipped off. In our post of the event, we called Houston's behavior "loose and lively."

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2012/02/whitney-houston-dead-erratic-behavior.html

The big four of 80s pop were MJ, Whitney, Madonna and Prince. We're down to half of them now. (George Michael would arguably be the fifth, and we almost lost him last year.)

Also respect to My Name Is Not Susan

i wasn't sure whether i liked that song or just salt 'n pepa's reference of it on "whatta man," but it turns out i do, in fact, like it.

Wow that story gave me huge "Where are the RECEIPTS?" vibes

that Diane Sawyer interview is one of my favorite things ever. So many quotables.

6 studio albums. and the soundtracks. a holiday album. and one of the biggest selling artists ever. she didn't exactly crank stuff out, but it didn't matter. she was just massive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitney_Houston_chart_records_and_achievements

like massively massive.

200 million records or something like that.

i know everyone knows that, but just in case someone forgot for a minute...

it is weird how i kind of forgot how massive the soundtrack to Waiting to Exhale was. that weirdo "shoop" song where almost nothing happened.

The big four of 80s pop were MJ, Whitney, Madonna and Prince. We're down to half of them now. (George Michael would arguably be the fifth, and we almost lost him last year.)

The weird consolation I guess is that no one will sell like they did ever again

no big 4 would be complete without mariah, and i just can't imagine how i would feel in this situation. my heart goes out to all the whitney fans who's lives were changed by her music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxIN79n4jVo

filmed where i work!!!!

how i will remember her: summer of 1985, after her first album, opening for jeffrey osborne on the pier in nyc. she came out in a floral print dress, very unassmuing, no superstar trappings yet, opened her mouth and SANG.

everybody was blown away. RIP.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjBf3RnZ-EQ

And we have Grammy tribute:

http://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/66502545.html

The big four of 80s pop were MJ, Whitney, Madonna and Prince. We're down to half of them now. (George Michael would arguably be the fifth, and we almost lost him last year.)

for whatever reason, wanna add brooce to this roster. figure he's in for the long haul.

Clive's party is still happening!

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/entertainment/post/2012/02/live-clive-davis-pre-grammy-party-continues-as-planned/1

An emotion Clive Davis came onstage at 9:38 p.m. PT.

"I don't have to mask my emotions. I do have a very heavy heart. I am personally devastated. She was so looking forward to tonight," he said. (She was not scheduled to perform, only attend.)

"My heart goes out to her daughter Bobbi Christina and her mother Cissy." Davis talked about the party-goers as Houston's extended family. "Whitney was a beautiful person and she had a talent beyond compare. She graced this stage with her regal talent so many times. So, simply put, Whitney would have wanted the music to go on."

He dedicated the evening to Houston and said the gala went on with the blessing of her family. "Now, ladies and gentlemen, let the music begin."

Tony Bennett came on stage and said, "First, Michael Jackson, then Amy Winehouse and now Whitney Houston. I'd like to have every gentleman and lady in this room to get the government to legalize drugs."

Tony Bennett came on stage and said, "First, Michael Jackson, then Amy Winehouse and now Whitney Houston. I'd like to have every gentleman and lady in this room to get the government to legalize drugs."

hmmm

never mind that mj died from "legal" drugs anyway (thanks, conrad murray).

I kinda assume that when Clive Davis dies he has a squad of goons at the ready to make sure he's properly mourned or else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DknbDWwUznE

never mind that mj died from "legal" drugs anyway (thanks, conrad murray).

and amy winehouse died from getting off alcohol too quickly. Not sure drug legalization would have kept any of these people from becoming addicts.

that said if tony wants to campaign for legalizing pot i'm for it

Damn, didn't know she sang backup on (Chaka's) "I'm Every Woman" until just now.

This is really sad. RIP

when people vanish behind a veil of something, you sort of lose sight of them in the moment, but keep waiting for them to emerge as something else. and you hope it won't be like this. RIP, whitney.

Loved the voice, hated 90% of the material. I also think I projected too much of her negative influence on so much 90s pop (as someone noted above) onto Whitney herself at the time.

That said, I'd been sorta hoping for a quote-unquote respectable career resuscitation over the last cople years. Give her a nice stripped down production and some songs tailor made for her by, say, Cee Lo or Raphael Saadiq along with some choice covers---not saying it would have been amazing, but certainly interesting.

her voice was gone, though.

reminds me of charlie louvin. he had a brief career resurrection before he died but unfortunately the chief selling point of the louvin bros and his earlier solo work was his high, pure voice, which had been almost completely devastated by old age. so listening to those records was as much sad as inspiring for me.

houston's voice hadn't degenerated that bad, but it lost about everything that had given it its unique character, and she had taken to speak-singing and using autotune to obscure the flaws.

Million dollar bill was a really great track.

This is so fucked up. Was at a bar when I heard and people were cracking really cruel jokes, but that's New Hampshire I guess. Fuck this state.

no that's "bars"

oh shit :( horrible horrible news to wake up to.

my favourite whitney songs were her late 90s comeback ones, but "i will always love you" was my first memory of being completely awestruck by the power of a voice.

mark sinker's essay on it last year was pretty incredible - http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2011/11/i-am-the-0-00000001-percent/

youtube autocorrect already suggests "whitney houston dead" :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GFTeoqAx5I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUE6Zu0FaOc

RIP Whitney

RIP

really sad news to wake up to. RIP :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYTFJvgxx5Q

"How Will I Know" is probably my ultimate favourite, but I love all of the big songs from The Bodyguard, esp. "I Have Nothing". I don't care how schlocky it is. It's like a tidal wave.

RIP Whitney.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14Sgnlz719Q

;_; RIP

'tidal wave', 'massively massive' indeed...

:-(

That 98/99 Whitney comeback was really great - certainly better than the Bodyguard balladosaurus era. 80s dancepop Whitney forever though. RIP.

Works shockingly well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7DHjUH2UbM

Wait, this is the better one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKjZAsbLCxQ

I really like the Whitney mash-ups, because they underscore something in her voice that the boilerplate '80s pop backing didn't always convey. And again, that's the real tragedy, that she was rarely matched with music that truly suited her vocal talent. And she truly didn't give a shit, either.

2nd one is great

I really like the Whitney mash-ups, because they underscore something in her voice that the boilerplate '80s pop backing didn't always convey. And again, that's the real tragedy, that she was rarely matched with music that truly suited her vocal talent. And she truly didn't give a shit, either.

It's pretty much the classical definition of a tragedy, isn't it?

I dunno, I think the original music for "How Will I Know" is fabulous.

The Material collaboration is an anomaly; her voice was still embryonic. Houston was custom designed for big productions.

It's a crying shame we never got Whitney Houston Tortoise dubs.

xpost "How Will I Know" would have been fabulous for anyone.

damn -- I didn't know Jermaine Jackson had three productions on the debut album (only knew the duet).

The only cluster of songs which leaves me cold: the blockbuster trilogy from Whitney ("So Emotional," "Didn't We Almost Have It All," and "Where Do Broken Hearts Go").

It's pretty much the classical definition of a tragedy, isn't it?

Well, it is a waste of epic proportions. No one would fault her voice, an incredible thing. The tragedy is that despite that voice, and beauty, and fame and money and success, fate had other plans for her. Hooking up with Bobby Brown, of all people, only enhanced the classical Greek aspect of her fall.

Like, most people confuse tragedy with anything bad that happens. But in the classic sense, it's really inevitable self-destruction. See: I believe we are in the catharsis stage of the narrative.

(Creepy true story: in I want to say elementary school music class, all those years ago, the day the teacher taught us what a "figure" was he used Whitney Houston as an example. Like, a creepy punny example, as in, "check out Whitney's figure!" Left an impression, I guess.)

...because they underscore something in her voice that the boilerplate '80s pop backing didn't always convey. And again, that's the real tragedy, that she was rarely matched with music that truly suited her vocal talent...

which is why when her vocals were isolated as in the first few minutes of this, it is utterly wondrous

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enbfmqmBBqI

It would have been nice if she made a full album with Kashif and Paul Laurence around '82-'84, or Jam and Lewis around '85/'86, or Foster and McElroy around '90/'91. She still MOVED/affected millions of people! I see no "waste of epic proportions" in that.

OTM andy k

the "boilerplate backings" weren't the point.

Man...the musician deaths in the last 2 years have been brutal. :(

RIP Whitney

would not want to be in a karaoke bar tonight.

― pplains, Saturday, February 11, 2012 8:29 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

I was. only one person did an attempt at a 'tribute' song tho thankfully....

I dunno, I think the original music for "How Will I Know" is fabulous.

― Tim F, Sunday, February 12, 2012 8:28 AM (1 hour ago)

yeah i never knew people preferred the acappella version before! song is perfect as is!

i don't think anyone does prefer the acappella, it's just a pretty astonishing demonstration of her voice

this sucks

watching videos of her when she first became a star and then thinking of what she became when she got into drugs is just ridiculously tough to reconcile

anyway RIP, life is mad short

from Newark, so RIP

i don't think anyone does prefer the acappella, it's just a pretty astonishing demonstration of her voice

― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Sunday, February 12, 2012 9:42 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalin

right--i love the music to that song but i think the acappella is what we need today; that shit just haunted me last night.

She still MOVED/affected millions of people!

Dunno how old you are, but I imagine there are at least as many people who know her best as a drug-damaged wreck than as a pop force. MJ's global ubiquity transcended his infamy. But Whitney's reality show descent I think proved far more damaging to her career. Lots of folks have moved and affected millions. Far fewer so perfectly eroded such good will. That, I'd argue, is her legacy, not some ace pop tunes released nearly 30 years ago.

You sound as if her hits aren't played on the radio. I hear them all the time!

her global ubiquity DID transcend her infamy

uh....no, I think most people remember her as both. Like do you really think her songs haven't survived the test of time and the damage she did to her rep, because you're definitely wrong if so. xxpost

Lots of folks have moved and affected millions. Far fewer so perfectly eroded such good will. That, I'd argue, is her legacy, not some ace pop tunes released nearly 30 years ago.

feel like the second part of this isn't really connected to the first... whether or not her "legacy" is her descent into drugs or the songs she put out before that (the reality of course is that the entire thing is her legacy) is irrelevant to whether or not she moved and affected millions of people

i'm young enough and have friends young enough to basically only remember her in her addict period, but most reactions from ppl younger and older than me that i've seen have remembered who she was before that, so idk.

Alfred otm. FFS I still hear her songs all over the place, and "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" was always one of the most popular choices at the local 'rising star' karaoke joint. in clubs people still dance to the goddamn song (usually at 80s nights but still).

I have many friends (ages ranged from like 20-45) who loved (and often publicly performed) her music. mostly singers, but they both embraced her music while still acknowledging her personal issues. They're devastated atm. But the idea that her music has fallen out of public favor is LOLworthy. maybe some of her lesser 80s hits, but for God's sake, stuff like "I Will Always Love You" and "I Have Nothing" is timeless.

Stunningly, so far, the public reception to her death in my general circle has been less "ehh she got what was coming" than with say Amy Winehouse...I really think the public was sympathetic to her trying to make a comeback, that and possibly because most of her personal drama was private and not as public as Amy's. I don't think her addiction issues are damaging her legacy anywhere near as much as other deceased singers.

the thing with whitney and drugs is that while it's overwhelmingly sad to have seem her throw a large portion of her life away... i don't think most ppl feel like we didn't get enough out of her, musically speaking. she's not someone that lost her life at the prime of her career because of her addictions... it's more of a michael situation where you're just generally smh at what can happen to people, but it's not like there isn't a deep catalog of music to go back to

^^^ also otm

i think amy was also contemporary enough that people (inc the dicks making jokes) felt able to have ~opinions~ on whether she was any good or not, whereas whitney and michael's legacies are a) so obvious b) so far back in the past that it's kind of pointless to argue their validity

or put another way, one's opinions on amy could be seen as integral to constructing one's taste set in 2011; whitney and MJ, not so much.

or, like, if you didn't like amy's music, that's an ongoing conversation you'd have been having when you died. if you didn't like MJ's music or whitney's music, those would have been old thoughts, pointless to dredge up at a time like this.

any auditions portion of any given season of american idol (and i would assume other singing contest shows from around the globe) is pretty much enough to put the kibosh on the idea that whitney songs (at least the monster ballads) are considered by the youngs to be off-limits/forgotten/the embarrassing evidence of a drug casualty rather than (for better or worse) the big lung-busting showstopper standards of their generation.

<---- drowning in a sea of OTM posts

"I Wanna Dance With Somebody" was always one of the most popular choices at the local 'rising star' karaoke joint.

I got big applause when I did this at karaoke a few years ago. I pretty much never hear her songs anymore (don't listen to much MIX-FM-type radio), but people have a lot of fond memories...

Yeah, like these young kids actually pick those songs. Young kids had their Christinas and Mariahs, who granted, were not possibly, maybe, without Whitney, but I'm not so sure how much someone born in the '90s cares about Whitney any more than they care about Motown.

I guess that's the part I'm having trouble coming to grips with. Undeniably, she's popular, or was popular, but I never go the sense there was as much affection for her as there was for someone like Michael Jackson. Like, I'm sure people were rooting for a comeback, but unlike MJ, I'm not entirely sure how devastating it is that it never arrived. Just sad. But I could be wrong, I guess.

And really

"I Wanna Dance With Somebody" was always one of the most popular choices at the local 'rising star' karaoke joint. in clubs people still dance to the goddamn song (usually at 80s nights but still).

(sorry for typos and xposts)

One crucial difference: MJ (and Winehouse to a lesser extent) boasted dozens of critics who considered Off The Wall and Thriller classic albums whereas Houston endured a lot of sneers for most of her career.

anyway r.i.p. lady. my mom was a big fan and the 80s pop hits are ingrained in me from childhood and those late '90s club mixes were an essential part of my going out experiences in the major period when i bothered to go out. i always kinda hoped you'd do more house diva stuff.

wow, almost ALL whitney vinyl is selling on ebay right now. haven't seen that since MJ. needless to say, whitney not big with vinyl fans. you couldn't give it away. very much a cd artist.

Whitney's first album released at the cusp of CD's going blogal.

*global

lol i was wondering wtf pun you were trying to make there

i like a lot of the ballads. its weird i don't think i ever actually thought about who else she should have worked with or other material she should have used. it never occurred to me. she sold more records than, like, anyone. so, she was probably good with that.

xpost to Al: Yeah, I mean, it's totally unfair, by my memories of her at her peak, when I was at my peak pop-music consumption period, I suppose, was that she epitomized pop as product, and that between S/A/W and Clive Davis she was kind of a polished cog in a well oiled machine. Again, totally not far, and ur-rockist, but I'm not sure how much respect Whitney ever got as more than a singer or a gormless shipper of units. She was never considered an Artist, and in fact when the Dolly cover came out she was actively derided for her total lack of subtly and nuance (even as she sold umpteen millions).

(Just how I remember it)

also i have as many gripes about this being the Most Ahistorical Generation as anyone (and a whitney thread is not where i thought i'd be making this argument) but i remember how many motown songs *i* knew and loved as a kid in the '80s, when "oldies" meant 50s/60s. now that it means the 80s (hell, almost the 90s), i doubt their aren't kids into r&b/soul/showtunes/whatthefuckever who dont know whitney songs. also i might (maybe) argue that these singing shows have done a lot of heavy lifting keeping her rep alive during the dark years by completing the transition from working pop artist to Great Voice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx2siUl5L8I&feature=related

I liked Whitney Houston, more than I would expect considering I was never a fan per se (though I did/do really like "I Wanna Dance with Someone"). Back around 1992/93 I had a next door neighbor named Belinda who was a nurse from the Philippines. The walls were very thin, and I think the only recording she owned was by Whitney Houston.

Also, so funny about the Material song. I'm pretty sure I owned a copy of that album at one time, but I never knew she had anything to do with it until now.

For real. Anyone who doubts the impact of her legacy need only watch "American Idol."

an unintentionally Shakey observation

here's another fabulous 2-step remix a friend has just unearthed

http://soundcloud.com/bat020/whitney-houston-2step-remix

xpost But I think that's her legacy as a show-off unit shipper, alas, thus justifying rampant melisma.

i don't think anyone does prefer the acappella, it's just a pretty astonishing demonstration of her voice

― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Sunday, 12 February 2012 14:42 (52 minutes ago) Permalink

I do. I suppose this will qualify me for rockism or some such egregious sin, but it's just a personal preference - the '80s, tinny pop production values of producers like Arthur Baker sound tuneless so me and detract from the voice.

man there was some speed garage tune (ha ha probably something really obvious like "ripgroove") that looped a bit of whitney melisma until it sounded like god's own emergency broadcast system.

Arthur Baker is tinny?!?!

i always kinda hoped you'd do more house diva stuff.

so many remixes over her career which did this job for her though - thunderpuss mix of "it's not right" as correctly rhapsodised over upthread, also hex hector's "i learned from the best" and jr vasquez's "how will i know"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMdXi6f5KRg

I adore this performance, espesh ~ 4:00 in : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_4PlM85NJo&feature=BFa&list=PLFB0C6BC1061DAE04

awww, my brother dan bunny wrote something nice on facebook just now:

"i miss whitney..working in record stores when her first record came out i felt th sky shift a little every day..people were berserk for that voice..moms..teens..old frumpy dudes..all they wanted was to be taken out of whatever hell the 80's had to offer and escape to a cloud w a caramel angel..when i djed for some mafia at a steakhouse,,dipping low behind the booth to snort some cocaine.,i couldnt wait to blast the new record and make people happy..th dirt and grime will forthcome in th press..but i will always feel like a saved soul of some sort in th presence of that amazing voice,unequalled,poorly imitated and never forgotten"

guthrie ramsey on facebook:

"Perfect vibrato. (Deceivingly) effortless diaphragmic support. Excellent way of "crowding" the cadences with "just enough" sonic information before landing coyly in the next structural part of the song. Widest of ranges: hardly ever "bailed out" by flipping into falsetto. Used the falsetto flip as a subtle garnish. Impeccable intonation (builds "trust" in a listener). Grew more melismatic as time progressed--never overdid this, though--mostly clever twists at the ends of phrases or tossed in between plainly rendered melodic statements that allowed us to sing along at full voice, by ourselves, in the car. Through musical economy and powerful execution could shape the emotional contour of a song whether in long concert-versions or on a 4:00 minute record. A come hither/don't come another step closer or I'll call my cousin camera presence. She and "the voice" seemed like two separate entities: she performed it; allowed us to witness it, she obviously enjoyed it herself. But in the end it just couldn't keep up."

there's an x-men remix of "it's not right" that you can find on the internet but the b-side is an alternate mix they did that i like even better. i have ripped it from the white label JUST FOR YOU and encoded it, and uploaded it here -

http://www.mediafire.com/?uyr8m4v86eycb83

: /

According to TMZ, Whitney Houston was found in the bathtub of the Beverly Hills hotel with her face underwater. She had been in the bathroom for over an hour when her hairdresser went to check on her, only to discover her head underwater and legs in the air, as if she'd slid down the back of the tub. It is unclear if the official cause of death was drowning.

damn scott, helluva quote

<---- drowning in a sea of OTM posts

― Bo Jackson Overdrive, Sunday, February 12, 2012 10:21 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Grew more melismatic as time progressed

Yeah, Josh, there's no rampant melisma on her early hits.

im pretty sure that's where the general public all started to think she was an amazing singer.

Grew more melismatic as time progressed--never overdid this, though

Beg to differ. In addition to showcasing two dynamics--soft and LOUD--she oversings the living shit out of "I Will Always Love You."

I don't pretend to know her catalog through and through or anything. And I apologize if I'm being too unsentimental for people less than 24 hours out.

But I feel like people are confusing her talent--which she had in abundance--with artistry. And while I don't deny talent alone can take even the most banal of material to somewhere emotional, even artistic (see: The Star Spangled Banner), I'm not entirely sure a handful of moments to that effect over a span of three decades justifies some of the tributes we're hearing. Put another way, Whitney Houston wasn't a legend -- she was a star. And like every star, she burned bright for a while and then burned the fuck out.

let's agree to, not exactly disagree, but that we are completely right and you are completely wrong

Glad you brought up The Star Spangled Banner, because that performance was pretty widely debated- people who loved her loved it, but I can also recall a lot of catty and/or skeptical reactions to the display going on there.

I'm also wondering if I"m the only person who remembers the very long and elaborate Henry Rollins spoken word bit about Whitney Houston's version of "The Greatest Love of All"- I recall it being an extended cranky rant about race in America with some aside about Houston's undeniable pipes.

What's the difference between a star and legend? A "legend" in this context is a showbiz word.

I encourage unsentimentality -- it's a tonic to the shall we say wetter tributes I've read in the last nineteen hours.

About the only edifying thing emerging from the death of someone as big as Houston is figuring out what made her awesome and gross. I'm not a fan and said so in my obit. To my ears she recorded quite a few misconceived songs. I dislike a third of her hits. I was in the anti-Whitney camp in '93.

But I've learned a lot about gospel and R&B in the interim, specifically how to listen and judge it. Thus, I'm reacting more kindly to those moments in vast catalog that ARE powerful. But it's a waste of time to pine for a purer Whitney who could have kept working with Bill Laswell.

It's funny, being born in late '82 I always felt Whitney was just a hair before my time, whereas it seems like I grew up with Mariah Carey (her heir to the big-ballad/pop-soul/M.O.R&B throne, of course). And despite that voice, her music never really signified for me either, though I can feel that great big gorgeous voice now more than I ever could as a kid. But her decline spooked me for real. After the drugs she turned into an utterly, completely different person. Look at early and late interviews, or performances. It's terrifying. What a fucking shame.

(Lex has already linked my piece on how "I Will Always Love You" actually works and where the hostility to it comes from, so I won't spam: it isn't to do with her "oversinging" it, though, it's to do with her singing exactly as she means to, and the response this inevitably entails.)

(<i>a purer Whitney who could have kept working with Bill Laswell</i> : "purer" also i think misunderstands laswell's project)

I was going to stick square quotes around "purer."

Whitney wasn't the kind of icon i had much time for when she was big, but I think Rich J's piece in The Daily does a great job of summing up her accomplishments in a critically aware way without engaging in hollow acclaim or unnecessary pontification about drugs, music-liked-by-grandmas, etc.

http://www.thedaily.com/page/2012/02/12/021212-news-whitney-houston-appreciation-1-2/

Jody Rosen:

Houston was the queen of Adult Contemporary—but her adultness made her not quite contemporary. She was old-fashioned, a little bit fuddy-duddy; your grandmother loved her. She sang about grown-up emotions, and had no feel for the attitude, or the rhythms, of hip-hop. She spent the early '90s in a tug-of-war with Mariah Carey for chart supremacy, but Carey’s hip-hop savvy ensured that she’d come out on top in the end—even though Whitney could sing circles around her.

She captured the zeitgeist in other ways, though. Her message was self-esteem: She made opera out of Oprah. A historian wishing to understand America’s late-20th-century therapy culture can begin and end his research with Whitney Houston: “Learning to love yourself / Is the greatest love of all.”

The self-esteem was inseparable from self-regard—she was a diva, after all. But she was not just singing for herself. She was criticized for being too milquetoast, too “white,” but you could hear the black church in every note of her records. There was a reason that African-American women were her most loyal fans: When she unleashed her fearsome melisma, singing about struggle and resiliency, demanding love and fair treatment in the face of indifference, only a dolt could miss the politics. You can hear it in the stormy final chorus of one of her greatest ballads, “I Have Nothing.” “Don’t walk away from me!” she commands in a wild gospel growl. It’s a sound that will outlive her, and the rest of us.

the first paragraph of that slate piece pretty much sums up why i'm impressed with the daily's.

Did she sing about "grown-up emotions"? I never thought she did, even at her best ("Exhale" is an exception, maybe). She sang from the point of view of a blinkered sixteen-year-old.

the "let us not forget that mariah took whitney down with the achilles heel of hip-hop" part made me think of maura's rule no. 3: Are you comparing the artist you're writing about to other female artists only? If so, why?

seriousness and carefulness more than grown-upness (and ha, obv those are the hallmarks of the kind of teenager who wants to be more mature than they are) (kind of opposite to mariah's whole "eternally 12" thing)

must not let myself read any of these pieces til i've finished mine

What's the difference between a star and legend? A "legend" in this context is a showbiz word.

Ok, how about genius? Or one of the greatest artists of the modern era? My point is, she never actually transcended the business. She was basically a creation of it.

But it's a waste of time to pine for a purer Whitney who could have kept working with Bill Laswell.

Honestly, that's a terrifying thought. For me, the bigger issue is that she never hooked up with particularly good songwriters or producers. Where Dionne, Dusty and Thelma hooked up with Bacharach/Stax/Gamble & Huff and Britney, Beyonce and Mariah have been square in the middle of the R&B producer-ama of the last decade, Whitney hooked up with...Clive Davis. Which pretty much tells you all you need to know about her, her interests and her career (and in fairness, her era).

XXP - Considering Mariah was marketed as the next Whitney, and that's effectively what she became, I think it's an entirely appropriate comparison.

whitney also hooked up w/rodney jerkins, babyface, missy elliott, danja, swizz beatz and tricky stewart

For me, the bigger issue is that she never hooked up with particularly good songwriters or producers

Babyface? Rodney Jerkins? Annie Lennox? Narada Michael Walden?

I'll grant you Michael Masser.

i mean the reason she wasn't in the middle of the producerama you speak of is that for many of those years she wasn't recording music at all

Michael Masser wrote "Touch Me in the Morning!"

I get the logic of comparing Whitney to Mariah, but not the logic of playing "TS: Mariah Carey vs. Whitney Houston" in her obit. I like the Rich's piece (while acknoweldging Clive's paternalism) let's Whitney own her victories and failings, rather than making the thinkpiece about us.

I like that Rich's piece lets, rather

Seriously bill laswell mostly sucks guys, he's done way worse than whitneys worst song...are people really mourning some shitty, thinly produced theoretical funk/fusion record she might have made with him? Oh no!!

Narada Michael Walden was a very good drummer. I think my broader point is that I just never got the sense that Whitney cared all that much about what she sang or who she worked with. And I can't really think of another *great* singer I could say that about.

XP Crouper: Yeah, good article. One thing Rich got wrong, tho: Whitney's death isn't going to overshadow the Grammys. Instead, it'll be the biggest ratings boost the show has ever had. It never ceases to amaze me, the, well, "awesome and gross" drawing power of celebrities dying. Perfect timing, huh?

god damn bobby brown for laying his crack dusted fingers on her

"Croupier", rather

think my broader point is that I just never got the sense that Whitney cared all that much about what she sang or who she worked with

haha -- dude the competition is thick in this category! Ray Charles comes immediately to mind. Lady Dionne too.

i thought whitney made some pretty bitchen music. it never occurred to me that she was some kind of schlockmeister. 'i will always love you' still gives me chills, who cares if its not subtle or tasteful. since when does ILM care about that crap!!

Whitney's death isn't going to overshadow the Grammys. Instead, it'll be the biggest ratings boost the show has ever had.

i think he means the whitney tribute will overshadow the Adele-fest or the resurrection of chris brown, not that ratings will go down.

i was actually thinking about whitney last week, & was contrasting her with mariah and how mariah's kept her nose to the grind to maintain her empire, while whitney sadly stopped caring about her career. that contract she signed more than 10 years ago, the deal that toppled arista, what a disaster! lets kill boby brown yall

I don't know much about Whitney Houston's whole personal thing but I never assume anybody's decision to abandon public life is necessarily a sad one

m@tt so otm about laswell; this is the last place i expected to read ppl pining for that stuff tbh

can you abandon public life while being a reality TV superstar

Well you know what I mean

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QFSoEsKKco

xpost Yeah, Laswell had already found a much better voice for his purposes in Nona Hendryx.

Whitney would have been better, I think, born later, had she come of age alongside the likes of Mariah, let alone Mary J. Blige, two singers much better in tune with the pop music tenor of their times. Whitney was too young to hit R&B/soul's heyday, too old to work well in the hip-hop era. She may have thrived in a Celine Dion mode, but rather than ease into that role she retreated into de facto retirement numbness.

Perhaps this explains why folks only seemed half-heartedly hoping for a comeback, knowing that the Whitney we got wouldn't be much better than the divas we already had and didn't really want.

God, Bobby Brown is like one part Ike Turner, one part Flava Flav.

Osama kept coming back to Whitney Houston. He asked if I knew her personally when I lived in America. I told him I didn't. He said that he had a paramount desire for Whitney Houston, and although he claimed music was evil, he spoke of someday spending vast amounts of money to go to America and try to arrange a meeting with the superstar. It didn't seem impossible to me. He said he wanted to give Whitney Houston a mansion that he owned in a suburb of Khartoum. He explained to me that to possess Whitney he would be willing to break his color rule and make her one of his wives. I tried to hide my outrage at his racist remarks, but it would come to pass that for the entire time that I would be trapped in his palm, Whitney Houston's was the one name that would be mentioned constantly. How beautiful she is, what a nice smile she has, how truly Islamic she is but is just brainwashed by American culture and her husband—Bobby Brown, whom Osama talked about having killed, as if it were normal to have women's husbands killed. In his briefcase I would come across photographs of the star, as well as copies of Playboy, but nobody in the West believes me when I tell them this. It's like they have this totally bogus image of Osama bin Laden. Anyway, it would soon come to the point where I was sick of hearing Whitney Houston's name.

^^^boof boof ridin

Meanwhile, Houston's daughter Bobbi has been taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

Only things wrong with "Memories": Shepp, struggling with his lip for years, overplays the very first note of his solo, a little "ethereal" breathiness/brain fart, but then redeems himself (thing of no wrong notes if you can come up with the right context); also, do we really need kitchen percussion to show how real this is? But the song, the singer the feeling merge perfectly. Also, some stuff in here I didn't know:
JOINT STATEMENT FROM KENNETH GAMBLE & LEON HUFF, LEGENDARY ‘SOUND OF PHILADELPHIA’ PRODUCERS AND PIONEERS, ON THE DEATH OF WHITNEY HOUSTON

GAMBLE & HUFF WROTE AND PRODUCED HITS WITH THE LATE LINDA CREED,
WHO LATER WROTE HOUSTON’S #1 SMASH, ‘GREATEST LOVE OF ALL.’

“Whitney Houston was an unbelievable talent and one of the greatest voices of all time. Her passing is a tremendous shock and a terrible shame. She had a rough life and was under so much pressure as an artist, because she meant so much to the music community. She was one of the most admired singers ever, who was loved by everybody. We’re praying for her family.”

Gamble & Huff also recalled Ms. Houston’s strong Philly connection:
- A then-unknown Whitney Houston recorded “Hold Me,” a duet with Gamble & Huff recording artist Teddy Pendergrass for his 1984 Elektra album, “Love Language,” his first following the automobile accident that left him paralyzed.

- Gamble & Huff wrote and produced a number of hits with the late Linda Creed, who later wrote Houston’s #1 Smash, “Greatest Love of All.” They first met Houston in Philadelphia at a memorial for Creed, following her death from breast cancer, recalling that Houston “looked like a model and had so much going for her” when they went to her dressing room. They also recalled seeing Houston for the last time at Clive Davis’ annual pre-Grammy party in 2008.

- Gamble & Huff’s relationship with the Houston family began in the late ‘60s when they worked with the R&B act the Sweet Inspirations, founded by Cissy Houston. A Gamble & Huff composition, "Gotta Find Me A Brand New Lover" appeared on the group’s fifth album (Sweet Sweet Soul) in 1969, and “whenever Cissy couldn’t find a baby sitter, she’d bring Whitney to our studio in Philly. Cissy always used to talk about her daughter when we were recording with her, and what a great talent she was going to be.”

Only things wrong with "Memories": Shepp, struggling with his lip for years, overplays the very first note of his solo

I wondered about this! I agree. At any rate it's too loud for a few seconds.

Kind of a "Hahhh", quietly overwrought stage whisper--not just the lip, maybe also the perils of what the young Shepp mocked as "my Stan Getz shit", talking to Leroi Jones. But when they were on it, Getz and Shepp made a lot of good records fueled by that shit (among other things).

i hope this isn't too soon. but maybe a wee bit of light relief and its not as if its spiteful.
http://a3.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/428102_358378920853436_210616982296298_1235836_2145095829_n.jpg

Only things wrong with "Memories": Shepp, struggling with his lip for years, overplays the very first note of his solo

This didn't particularly stick out for me. It sounds like what I assumed Archie Shepp sounded like in the 80s (I've only heard his early '60s recordings).

One thing I often think of w/r/t Whitney (and this before recent events) is not a performance by her per se but rather all the Whitney cover versions I've seen on shows like Idol by aspiring divas.

Doubtless many would assume that these are all awful but at least two spring to mind as quite amazing, both being covers of "I Have Nothing" - Jennifer Hudson on US Idol and Rickie-Lee Coulter on Australian Idol (perhaps the only time Rickie-Lee actually lived up to her promise).

These performances are always tributes to Whitney first and foremost, the contender trying to step into the biggest shoes possible and not lose her feet in them. There really is a sense of the big Whitney ballads as the gold standard for powerhouse emoting.
If anything, the more exposed to that idea I am the more I feel comfortable with it; and concomitantly can't really vibe with the idea of Whitney having wasted her talent or career (except in the more prosaic sense that she could have put out more music) - as good as My Love Is Your Love is (and it's my favourite Whitney album) I'm not sure that her legacy would be greater if she'd adopted some kind of grittier template throughout.

(someone could do a bitchin cover of "Run To You" as well, I suspect; sensibly people only seem to do "The Greatest Love Of All" in the failed auditions the shows play for lols, and I think either network producers or otherwise God has enough sense to prevent any performances of "Where Do Broken Hearts Go" from ever being broadcast)

i think most have now accepted GLoA as kitsch, largely b/c of the lyrics.

I passed myself off as knowing all about Whitney albums just then but in truth I haven't heard I'm Your Baby Tonight past the singles - hot or not?

My awareness of Whitney Houston's music pretty much cuts off somewhere around her big 90s soundtrack albums. I'd known she had her dalliances, but I had no idea that she was struggling so much & for so long w/ addiction - so this is pretty shocking to me.

I also didn't know about her early collaborations before now & some of those tracks posted upthread are pretty dope! There are about four or five of her early singles that have insane vox & hooks & which, after hearing, I will invariably have stuck on repeat in my brain for hours, days even.

RIP

I'm really sad about this which is sort of weird because while I definitely liked some of her music, it's not like I was ever an enormous fan. That said, sside from the early dance pop stuff I mentioned a couple days agom IWALY can give me chills and make me tear up any time I hear it. She just had such a powerful voice. They were talking about it the whole thing on the news this morning and it bummed me out a lot more than I would have expected.

I haven't posted anything on this thread, because I wasn't much of a fan. I played "How Will I Know" for student-entry music this morning, though, and that was nice--it's the one song of hers I always liked--and then in my own class I played the Super Bowl performance off YouTube. It's the kind of thing I normally wouldn't care for (I was at teachers college at the time, and had pretty much tuned out the first Iraq War altogether), but this morning, it did feel historic. Not as historic or as audacious as Hendrix, maybe not even as good as Marvin Gaye's rendition, but in the ballpark.

wait, "student entry music" -- like entry to your classroom or over the speakers in the whole school?

The only songs my son's school seems to own are "Dynamite" (Cruz, not Lattisaw) and "Who Let the Dogs Out."

your son's school OTM

I put my hands up in the (who? who, who?)

The graduation theme for my class at an all-boy Catholic school: "Promise of a New Day."

ha

a serious wtf moment. That's where everything went wrong.

we had to listen to the radio over the loudspeakers between classes and i remember when it went from top 40 to "alternative" in 1991 or 1992 (not entirely sure when it happened, tbh) and they played "it's the end of the world as we know it" for 24 hours straight. that day was SO WEIRD.

my point above was that if you can choose the music they listen to between classes, that is a lot of memory-creating power!

anyway, whitney houston owned memory-creating power in gradeschool right up there with mj and prince
i thought everyone had to sing "the greatest love of all" at some point in school. i remember being pretty mortified by having to sing it, at least.

lol I think we did "Greatest Love Of All" in a music class, now that I think of it

Same here. Houston was already so massive in late spring '86 that our teachers could corral the girls into singing an off-key "Greatest Love of All."

It was up to the rest of us to sing "Hands Across America" as a last performance.

Yup, we sung "Greatest Love Of All" at our middle school graduation (June 1986). Also "That's What Friends Are For."

Four kids volunteered to sing "That's What Friends Are for." This small (white) guy named Nick wore Ray-Bans and swayed side to side like Stevie.

man, "Greatest Love Of All" would have been so much better than what we sang, which was the horrid Love In Any Language

we sang "The Greatest Love of All" at an all-school assembly in sixth grade, when Whitney's version was new.

We sang it at the Father Daughter dinner, which was an annual fundraiser/ordeal at my all-girls Catholic school.

same year

LL - we had a father daughter DANCE as our annual fundraiser/ordeal at my all-girls Catholic school.

yeah ours was a dance too. dinner dance.

it was AN ORDEAL

Oh yeah it was. Comical moments too though. I remember having to explain to my dad what moshing was and why a bunch of girls were jumping around and slamming into one another.

omg
http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6120/6344604386_5c7af06713_z.jpg

the greatest love of all is easy to achieve when you are this awkward

wait, "student entry music" -- like entry to your classroom or over the speakers in the whole school?

Over the P.A. system for the whole school. I'm in charge, and I'm a tyrant.

AHHHH amazing!! I have one pic of my dad and I at one (sadly not here right now) where I am wearing a one piece floral jumpsuit (!!!) and have hair mid-way down my back. It was not a good look.

clemenza that is totally awesome

i made that skirt with my grandma because i was totally into the 50s at the time (?!)

For some reason I can't recall, we had to go to the gym when my 5th grade class finished a DARE ("to keep kids off drugs") program, and watch a slide montage of photos of us sitting through the DARE program set to 1.5-2.5 runs through "The Greatest Love Of All."

x-post - ^^^

Cute.

glad I'm so old, God have mercy on the rest of you

Yup, we sung "Greatest Love Of All" at our middle school graduation (June 1986). Also "That's What Friends Are For."

― Let A Man Come In And Do The Cop Porn (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Monday, February 13, 2012 10:42 AM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh Jesus, I just remembered that nearly everyone at my senior prom (there were only prob about 70 ppl there) got in a circle and sang That's What Friends Are For as the last song of the night. It was pretty horrifying.

enbb i demand to see that pic you speak of!

glad I'm so old, God have mercy on the rest of you

― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Monday, February 13, 2012

oh like the nuns didn't force you guys to gather round the victrola to mime "Easy Living."

nuns dug Uriah Heep? Wow.

Lech that pic is awesome!!

Thanks! That reminds me that I need to call my parents. Children are our future.

Kerr - not a chance.

My 5th grade class lip-synced and danced to "How Will I Know" at our school concert

Damn--da croupier beat me to the Uriah Heep joke.

nuns pushed "Top of the World" and "Let It Be" on us

Was "That's What Friends Are For" a consensus elementary school graduation song? Is it still. My grade 8 class did it too, but that was 1993, at which point I figured even then that the song was pretty musty.

tried to find the clip from say anything where joe sings 'the greatest love of all' at their graduation. youtube could not help me...

i was wondering when someone was going to mention that!

Lech that pic is awesome!!

― plee help i am lookin for (crüt), Monday, February 13, 2012 11:21 AM (48 minutes ago)

office break room filled with lunchers listening to CNN guest clinically describe drowning- and drug-related autopsies.

i thought everyone had to sing "the greatest love of all" at some point in school.

Yup, in high-school choir.

Also, one of my favorite Whitney moments was when three girls did a choregraphed routine to "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" at our 4th-grade class talent show.

Was "That's What Friends Are For" a consensus elementary school graduation song?

"Don't Worry Be Happy" for me.

Indie-dom enters the tribute game:

http://pitchfork.com/news/45407-watch-girls-pay-tribute-to-whitney-houston/

No big suprise that Girls are fans though, and I don't think I mean that in bad way..

Owens is apparently crying by the way

watch-girls-pay-tribute-to-whitney-houston/

no fucking thanks

haha been holding my tongue on snarking about the tunnel vision hilarity of that headline or at least a couple hours

Morbius that's happening at my job today too

This thread = slowly making progression for mournful to awesome

For = from

Mostly I just recall being bombarded with Whitney singles during elementary school carpools and then singing the songs to myself later when I was alone

join us here homie! Whitney Houston singles poll

Ha ok

Oh, of course:

http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/13/10394035-sony-hikes-whitney-houston-album-prices-online?chromedomain=digitallife

"He's dead? Why didn't you say so!"
http://images.wikia.com/simpsons/images/6/6e/159.jpg

Sales of Whitney Houston albums have soared on both sides of the Atlantic following her death in Los Angeles.

Whitney - The Greatest Hits is at two on the US iTunes chart, while Whitney Houston - The Ultimate Collection is second in the UK iTunes chart.

Some fans reacted angrily on Twitter after The Ultimate Collection's price was temporarily raised on iTunes UK.

The price was increased from £4.99 to £7.99 but has since reverted to its former cost.

Several fans on Twitter described the alleged price hike as "greedy" and "shameful".

iTunes and Sony Music, Houston's record label, declined to comment on the matter.

sealed bodyguard for 150 bucks is about as frenetic as things got on the ebay front.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/REMEMBERING-WHITNEY-HOUSTON-The-Bodyguard-Original-Soundtrack-LP-New-Sealed-/180818106575?pt=Music_on_Vinyl&hash=item2a199958cf

nowhere near MJ numbers the weekend of his death, but, you know, that's to be expected.

telling that the bodyguard ost was the one people really wanted. more so than the studio albums. though the first two did okay for a minute there.

its not oop is it?

well its more a case of there being less vinyl copies than the actual studio albums too. i'm sure the cd is still in print. it must be.

Love in Any Language!!! We had to sing that, too.

The Whitney song we sang was "One Moment in Time."

Oh I love "One Moment"

http://www.juancole.com/2012/02/arab-world-mourns-whitney-houston.html

went to a bar in soma last night to see optimo - there was a whitney houston shrine (complete with several candles burning) in the front entryway. lots of drag queens in full-on sequined whitney evening gowns. stirmonster played 'i wanna dance with somebody' twice - first time acapella, the second time with bonkers EQing - the crowd went wild obviously

nice

"How did the Arab world react to Joey Strummer’s death? That guy spoke more truth in one song than some people sing, say or write in a lifetime."

You know, that was a question I hadn't asked myself yet.

gotta love the comments section on any blog

Also, I never thought about it until this weekend, but had she taken her husband's surname, she would have been a Whitney Brown.

and that my friends, is the big picture.

joe strummer once said he cared, but he never really gave a fuck :(

Meanwhile, over on Fox News comments thread, racist spewing:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/39912_Fox_News_Commenters_Respond_to_Whitney_Houstons_Death_With_Deluge_of_Hatred_and_Racism

She couldn’t face life without the “bling bling”, she knew she would never have any more “kaching kaching”

didn't know Jessie J was a racist Fox News commenter but it all makes sense now

racism in the comments section you say?

aw - strummer seemed like a nice guy. i randomly ran into him and jah wobble (?!) at a poetry reading in london 12 or 13 years ago. we convinced him to play songs for me and my friends on his acoustic guitar - 'white riot', etc - and he happily obliged. he certainly didn't need to be as nice as he was to us.

talk to rudimentary peni, not me!

they're the ones with the problem with him. me, i just like the hits.

xxpost geeta I love that story <3

joe strummer once said he cared, but he never really gave a fuck :(

― scott seward, Monday, February 13, 2012 4:46 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

i loled

Was anyone else forced to hear her Star Spangled Banner every morning in public school? It's one of those rare songs I've easily heard over 1000 times, and I'm pretty sure I have every last nuance of that performance memorized.

Pop music hadn't had time to digest The Terminator (1984) and Donna Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto" (1985) when Whitney Houston released her 1980s albums. Thus, they were still in robot, not cyborg, mode. Fine robot music, for sure, esp. the robodisco of "So Emotional" and "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" (as well as its proper homecoming in "I Wanna Dance With Numbers"). But she didn't realize her cyborgian potential until "Exhale (Shoop Shoop)," her greatest single.

In his essay “An Anthropologist Underwater: Immersive Soundscapes, Submarine Cyborgs, and Transductive Ethnography,” Stefan Helmreich provides an excellent definition of cyborgs that helps get at the distinction between RoboWhitney and CyborgWhitney: "Cyborgs need not be material compounds of flesh and machine; anything that can be described in terms of information dynamics can be considered a cyborg. The boundaries of cyborgs are subject to shifting and expanding as they are networked to other feedback dynamics across scales and contexts" (627-8). RoboWhitney hasn't networked to other feedback dynamics. That's what "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" and "So Emotional" are about. She isn't dancing with somebody but she wants to. She remembers the way that we touched but we're not touching right now (and note how the lyrics appeal to the distancing sense of vision to heighten the sense of disconnection; even the production tends towards discrete sound-images as much as a Wall of DX7). More importantly, the thwarted desire implies the self-presence that identifies all robots from Phil Oakey to the love duo in the underrated Heartbeeps to David in the equally underrated A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. Like the aforementioned, she can't help but broadcast her thereness because she's perpetually letting us know how frustrated she is in her casing (which is how many critics have described her post-"Memories" work in general).

CyborgWhitney makes herself available for networking. Crucially, "Exhale (Shoop Shoop)" is the rare diva song where "I" is never mentioned. She has significantly lessened what Mark Sinker calls "the sense of regality, of dreadful awful majesty of style and skill as a weapon, the sense of renunciation, the sense that her role leaves her the loneliest person of all." She sings it down and invites us commoners in, not eradicating loneliness but finding a temporary prison for it. Nothing is forever in this network save for the infinite play of information dynamics. The song traces not a line from Whitney to a lover but a skein of flickering vectors, a series of points where for every win, someone must fail, where falling in love is sometimes wrong, sometimes right. There's a point where we exhale but a point back to where we're gasping for air. Even our identities are only momentarily whole when networking with another and looking inside ourselves only gets us halfway there. But, and herein is the song's genius, this holds true as much for Whitney here, in this modest moment (it's her shortest #1 single too), as it does for us which means at long last we can interface with her. We say shoop shoop as if to vault over language in an attempt to express the peace in this point of contact but even that is connected to other points back to The Sweet Inspirations and Salt-n-Pepa. It's Whitney Houston's cyborg manifesto and it holds out Haraway's world-changing vision. As Helmreich puts it, "Haraway found an unexpected, ironic, utopian promise in the figures of cyborgs initially created to automate warfare or de-skill workers; cybernetics opened up possibilities for recoding our human bodies and selves, for short-circuiting the idea that a durable 'nature' dictated our destinies. Somewhere in cyborg bodies might whir a liberatory consciousness."

what the

"all robots from Phil Oakey" <-- best bit

looks like banaka got to someone

Battlestar Houstonica

that reads strongly like c&p'd k-punk

(no offense kjb if it isn't)

seemed more like a car alarm to me

Public funeral will apparently be in the 18,000-seat Prudential Center in Newark. Everything about it is appealing, everything the traffic will allow...

Was anyone else forced to hear her Star Spangled Banner every morning in public school?

would've turned me full Commie

oh look, it's shithead

why don't you link us to the withering appraisal of The Bodyguard on your stupid webzine?

u have a webzine, Morbs...?

oh wait nm

my ukrainian coworker just told me that ppl are devastated about whitney in russia - 'the bodyguard' was a massive box office hit there and she later played in moscow and kiev

so, no public memorial.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/02/14/whitney-houston-nj.html

i would have liked to have seen bin laden's reaction to this news.

http://www.regretsy.com/2012/02/13/healing-through-tragicrafting-whitney-houston-edition/

The Singles Jukebox has a few things to say.

Dan better not read those "So Emotional" appreciations, he will hunt and slay.

we're lucky no one chose "Where Do Broken Hearts Go."

Ain't it shocking how terrible this song is?

it's not shocking actually

ha well played

Dolly Parton is set to earn millions from Whitney Houston's cover of her song I Will Always Love You, it has been revealed.

The track, which Whitney covered for the soundtrack of The Bodyguard, was originally penned by Parton in 1973.

Last month, Parton revealed to CNN that Houston's cover had already raked in lots of cash for her.

'When Whitney did it, I got all the money for the publishing and for the writing, and I bought a lot of cheap wigs,' she said.

and if one of her other songs had been the one everyone bought someone else would've earned all the money...

and would hopefully buy cheap wigs too

Dolly Parton is set to earn millions from Whitney Houston's cover of her song I Will Always Love You, it has been revealed.

haha "it has been revealed"

how is this news at this point

haha seriously

although i do really wonder what percent of dolly's earnings over her career can be traced directly to WH's recording of that song. 10%? 50%? 90%?

the-dream said a while back that he made like 15 million off writing "umbrella" alone, so the mind reels at how big the royalties are for "i will always love you"

Well, if Nick Lowe received a $1 million royalty check for that terrifying cover of "What's So Funny 'Bout..." on The Bodyguard soundtrack, I can only imagine what Parton earned.

haha "it has been revealed"

i'm picturing dolly having like a huge factory pallet of cash under a velvet sheet in her living room, inviting a bunch of journalists over, and then at the appointed time, whoosh.

like a huge factory pallet of cash under a velvet sheet in her living roomin her castle made of cheap wigs, for a more perfect world!

Diamanda Galas releases a statement on Whitney's death:

http://www.diamandagalas.com/houstonstatement.htm

wow, Diamanda... OTM?

I'm not used to saying that

you goths always stick together

dolly parton has got to be the richest lady in tennessee

i love her so much

yeah she is the sweetest

also i know this is not news to anyone and i do like whitney but holy jesus does dolly sing her song better than houston.

love dolly so much. I'm sure IWALY made her a ton of cash, but it's not like she didn't have other huge hits too y'know

she's got porter waggoner money still, bless her heart

diamanda is always otm

well yeah she's got hits but like, the biggest pop hit she wrote AND performed, "9 to 5," you know that wasn't a cash cow like IWALY

diamanda is always otm

she was not OTM here as much as she was just mad and racist

http://diamandagalas.com/images/letters/diamanda_vs_timbaland_thetakedown-1.gif

shades of marisa tbh

this would be a good one to let go

this would be a good one to let go

― little clouds of citrus spritz as i peel (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, February 15, 2012 10:40 PM (Yesterday)

^^^^^

Just heard the last of a radio special on Whitney's actual music, with good tracks from her last album. No acrobatics, but steadfast and melodious: "Though I don't know if I'll make it through/I look to you." Anybody familiar with the whole album?

I Look to You is a very good album, it's quite understated in many ways - and her voice didn't just lose a lot in her "later" years (sounds so sad), it also gained something, as did her performance, in its roughness and grit. "I Look to You" is good, and "I Didn't Know My Own Strength" and "Nothin' But Love" are great songs, the latter produced by Danja, but nothing desperately-trying-to-be-modern about it (only "Million Dollar Bill" comes a bit close to that, perhaps). And there's more good tracks, and nothing that's out of place.

some impressive gospel performances at the funeral

Bunny does candelit tribute to "Didn't We Almost Have it All"

<iframe width="853" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/_gHWiWZ8p_4"; frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I was out to lunch with my family yesterday, and the TV was playing in the background. It looked like a press conference, but I couldn't figure out the context. Why is this white dude addressing an all-black audience? Is that white dude Kevin Costner? Nah, can't be. Why would Kevin Costner be addressing an all-black audience?

Of course, it was Kevin Costner, whose presence made sense once I later learned the context.

"I wish I was her real bodyguard." WTF. I barfed.

holy shit @ insane racist diamanda galas

"shades of marisa" otm

The singer suffered from cardiac disease and could have had a heart attack before drowning, officials say. Cocaine is listed as a contributing factor in the death.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-03-23-whitney-houston-20120323,0,919750.story

:(

i guess she was just doing coke every day, a little weed and alcohol to take the edge off.. jesus. she must have been living like this for years. sort of amazing she lasted as long as she did if so.

idk that doesnt sound so bad

live while you're young

i'm sure her family and friends would agree

idk i think that many years of addiction what constitutes friends gets twisted through a particular refractory index. everything gets modulated by addiction. everything gets swept into that particular economy. we all saw it in this case, how marriage and drugs were sortof a package deal. this always extends into everything. this is why its sad but i guess i'm glad for her sake it isn't crack that showed up on the toxicology report. crack is cheap. crack is wack.

this is classy as fuck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kt9GeWbofrM

that's nice

thicke is so absurd

ha yes, but that's rather beside the point

he's having GROWING PAINS do you get it because he is getting older

holy crap was the bet awards tribute discussed elsewhere on ilm? i don't feel like i can finish watching it, but cissy houston sings, or wails, really, a version of "bridge over troubled water" where she changes the lyrics to past tense, viz. "your time had come to shine / all your dreams have gone away." i couldn't finish watching her performance tbh. before that, monica did an amazing version of "i love the lord."

there that new movie 'sparkle' which i see ads for on youtube all the time now, and the trailer has a line from whitney's character saying something like "don't live the life i did!" or something akin to that.

oooh...meta!

http://www.huntautobody.com/RIPPED_FROM_THE_HEADLINES_copy.jpg

"I do cocaine suppositories nitch"

http://aiyatheydidnt.livejournal.com/879708.html

(That's: China’s stars react to Whitney’s tragic death)

lost in translation
“Whitney Houston has boarded Noah’s Ark. You guys! She’s only in her 40s. She must have boarded the ark. How could it be possible that she has died?” – Little C Xian Sen (小C先森)

Well fuck

http://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/celebrity/whitney-houstons-daughter-bobbi-kristina-brown-found-unresponsive-bathtub-n297596

oh no

:(

wowwww sad.

Omg I just heard
So unbearably sad

(I'm not sad personally but I find the situation really really tragically sad)

:((((((((

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jul/27/bobbi-kristina-brown-daughter-of-whitney-houston-dies-aged-22

jesus. nothing about this story that isn't tragic.

Has anyone else watched WHITNEY, the 2018 doc? I watched it last night and it dragged me through the wringer all over again. Usually I don't like talking head interviews in documentaries but these were very direct and it was illuminating to hear from her closest friends and family (except Robyn)

I want to look up this performance because it sounds extremely emotional and that is how I feel after watching this movie. RIP Nippy & Chrissy.

holy crap was the bet awards tribute discussed elsewhere on ilm? i don't feel like i can finish watching it, but cissy houston sings, or wails, really, a version of "bridge over troubled water" where she changes the lyrics to past tense, viz. "your time had come to shine / all your dreams have gone away." i couldn't finish watching her performance tbh. before that, monica did an amazing version of "i love the lord."

― horseshoe, Sunday, July 8, 2012 8:34 PM (six years ago) Bookmark

here it is :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tGzCBzGEts

I saw can I be me by nick broomfield and its pretty sad viewing.

This looks terrible:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx8p_quBV3I

No surprise. It was produced and written by a guy who's done some of the hackiest biopics ever, and Clive was also a producer. Kasi Lemmons is a great director though - if this helps her finance her own projects, so be it.

Wow, Kasi Lemmons in the director!? I don't think I've seen anything of hers since "The Caveman's Valentine."

Saw the trailer for this while taking my kid to see Matilda on Friday (which is superb). This movie looks like dreck - cheap, tacky, melodramatic and appallingly overacted.

snake is skipping the tail and starting on the midsection these days, no point to finding historical truth when there's money to be made on the backs of people who can't complain