Possessed of one of the great voices of all-time, it’s impossible to consider Whitney Houston without a tinge of sadness. Born into music royalty, her mom, Cissy, was an accomplished gospel and soul singer while her cousin was the esteemed songstress Dionne Warwick.

            Whitney was a sought after teen model and at 19 had signed with Clive Davis’ Arista label. With her self-titled debut LP in 1985 she scored three #1 singles (“Saving All My Love for You”, “How Will I Know”, “Greatest Love of All”), a Grammy, an Emmy, an MTV video award, and a boatload of Billboard awards. She was just getting started. Among the top-selling artists of all-time, 1992’s The Bodyguard, a soundtrack album, has reputedly sold in excess of 45 million copies, won the coveted Album of the Year Grammy, and features her best-loved single, “I Will Always Love You”, a Dolly Parton tune. Her vocals have been extolled by media outlets as diverse as Rolling Stone, the New York Times, and the BBC, and artists as different as Mariah Carey, Faith Hill, and Tony Bennett have sung her praises. Other Whitney favorites include “Where Do Broken Hearts Go”, “I Wanna Dance with Somebody”, “I’m Every Woman”, and “I Have Nothing”.

            Whitney’s tragic denouement is too well known- the fraught marriage to R&B singer Bobby Brown; the slow slide into drug dependency; her alarming weight loss and the precipitous decline in her vocal abilities. She was found dead in her Beverly Hilton hotel suite bathtub, an accidental drowning victim of heart disease and drug abuse. None of us, of course, understand the pressures and pain she lived with. We may thrill at the sound of her voice and the brilliant artistry she displayed; we may celebrate her many achievements and honors, but we can never know how it felt to be Whitney Houston.  

            -Steve Williams (9/18/23) Greatest Recording Artists Blog Post #46