There’s no other way to describe it. Whitney Houston’s sudden passing in a bathtub at the Beverly Hills Hotel this past February was a horrible waste of talent and a tragic loss for the world.
Houston’s battle with drugs and the horrors of an abusive marriage aren’t uncommon in the world of show business, but given her success and upbringing, it was especially sad to watch her decline and witness her ultimate demise. Fortunately, we as fans were able to learn a bit about life, love, and Houston by watching her bloom and then fade under the spotlight. Here are a few things, good, bad, and ugly, that we learned from watching Whitney.
First, the Good
Born August 9, 1963, Houston achieved many remarkable milestones over the course of her career. Named by Guinness World Records as the most award-winning female performer of all time, she chalked up sales of more than 170 million records, including seven studio albums and three movie soundtracks that achieved diamond, multiplatinum, platinum, or gold certification. She was the only recording artist to chart seven consecutive number-one hits and became only the second performer (coming in behind Elton John) and the first female to have two number-one albums on the Billboard year-end album charts.
Houston’s eponymous 1985 debut became the best-selling debut album by a female artist up until that time, and Rolling Stone went on to rank it as the best release of the year. The stats don’t end there. The soundtrack to her first feature film The Bodyguard garnered the Grammy for Album of the Year, while its first single, “I Will Always Love You,” ranked as the best-selling single by a female artist in the history of the music biz. It helped Houston become the first act — solo or group, male or female — to sell more than a million copies of a single album in a week. Likewise, she ranks at number four in the list of the ten best-selling female performers of all time.
Lesson learned: Talent gains its recognition. But with untamed addiction, even talent can’t conquer all the odds.
Still, these amazing numbers don’t tell the entire story. Those who caught her in concert during her prime, and the millions more who saw her onscreen in The Bodyguard and her other films that followed — The Preacher’s Wife, Waiting to Exhale, and Cinderella (Sparkle, her latest, is about to be released posthumously) — can testify to her remarkable charisma and unique presence that she radiated during her turn in the spotlight.
Perhaps she had it in her genes. Mother Cissy Houston and cousins Dionne Warwick and Dee Dee Warwick seemed to bequeath her their talents. But regardless, she radiated it and made that acumen her own.
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article courtesy of PalmBeach.com
