The Bodyguard movie and the No.1 Grammy award winning song ‘I Will Always Love You’ propelled 1980s singing R&B sensation Whitney Houston into one of the world’s most iconic superstars. It was the 1990s and she already had three consecutive massive hit albums under her belt and was no stranger to fame and fortune. What seemed to be the perfect fantasy world of wealth and worldwide adoration was not to be. Whitney’s life was plagued with personal turmoil, marital problems, and heavy drug abuse. The rollercoaster ride of her amazing life was later brought to an end by her shocking and untimely death in February of this year, 2012.
Whitney Houston’s career took off in her teens, firstly as a photographic model, but later a singer, performing in nightclubs with her mother, Cissy Houston. Arista Records boss, Clive Davis was the man to finally take Whitney where she needed to go. Clive wanted to make sure her first album ‘Whitney’ would blow everyone away with the strongest material. He set her to work and developed her under top producers, such as Narada Michael Walden and Michael Masser.
Since then, and after a multitude of hit singles from her subsequent albums, ‘Whitney’ and ‘I’m Your Baby Tonight’, smash hit records such as ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’, ‘Didn’t We Almost Have It All’ and ‘My Name Is Not Susan’ looked to solidify her career for the long term.
In the 1990s, she married R&B star Bobby Brown and during this time, it was apparent that her life was becoming unstable, with rumours that she was heavily addicted to drugs. Whitney herself admitted publicly that she was her own worst enemy, and ducked in and out of the limelight. She appeared on her husband’s reality TV show ‘Being Bobby Brown’, which showed the public a less wholesome version of her once spotless personality.
In 2009, Whitney released what was to become her last album, ‘I Look To You’. Although it became another successful album for her, she received much criticism for her blunted live performances and weakened voice.
In 2012, Whitney Houston made her last performance on stage at a pre-Grammy show. The next day, on the 11th February, she was found dead in her hotel bathtub. Later, coroner reports showed she’d drowned accidently, but found traces of cocaine and other prescription drugs in her system, and the effects were further complicated by heart disease.
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