Sunday, February 12, 2012

In Memoriam: Whitney Houston 1963-2012

Singer. "Saving All My Love For You." "All at Once" "How Will I Know." "Greatest Love of All" "I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)." "Didn't We Almost Have It All." "I Will Always Love You." "I'm Every Woman." "Exhale (Shoop Shoop)." "My Love is Your Love." And, for all you red-blooded Americans and/or NFL fans out there, who could ever forget this?

"What Whitney's style came down to was selling the melody and selling it hard, and selling your voice along with it--showing that you had the ability to take the chorus all the way to the moon...Whitney had the power to do that, whereas a lot of other singers don't, and have embarrassed themselves trying to."

--Music journalist JD Considine

"[Houston] possesses one of her generation’s most powerful gospel-trained voices, but she eschews many of the churchier mannerisms of her forerunners. She uses ornamental gospel phrasing only sparingly, and instead of projecting an earthy, tearful vulnerability, communicates cool self-assurance and strength, building pop ballads to majestic, sustained peaks of intensity."

--The New York Times.

"The biggest devil is me. I’m either my best friend or my worst enemy."

--Whitney Houston

(If you want some idea of the influence this woman has had on pop music, watch American Idol sometimes. Her style dominates. As for the drugs, hey, I'm honoring the singer, not the addict. It's not like she charged admission to watch her shoot up--KJ)