Desperation knows no economic threshold nor is it admiring of the successful, famous or talented. If the ingredients are suitable to it, desperation will callously poison anyone.
In the 1980s, I was a young lad, and Whitney Houston was to me what I suppose Madonna was to other young males -- fans of pop music, and with an eye for gorgeous, talented young females. I found Whitney fascinating. The air about Whitney in the 1980s was not fake, I didn't believe then or now. She wasn't flailing eccentricity for attention, nor placing sex appeal above talent in her image. Whitney was something refreshing that came out of a generally pre-packaged, often overproduced, under-creative, inorganic, and haughty pop music industry of the 1980s.
Houston's images on her album covers (they still sold vinyl albums and cassette tapes, then, Kiddo) -- the pleasant, happy, fit and svelte Nubian goddess -- were far above what Madonna was, for me. It is not that Madonna wasn't impressive, just that, in the 1980s, for me, she was... no Whitney Houston.
In 1985, Whitney was the sweet Christian girl who made it big: attractive but not loose, energetic while not clawing at walls, talented and not a feckless showoff. Her mother was a gospel star, for goodness sake!
Whitney Houston Dies at 48
(found at The Music Mix on EW.com; an AP article - http://music-mix.ew.com/2012/02/11/whitney-houston-dies/)
She seemed to be born into greatness. She was the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston, the cousin of 1960s pop diva Dionne Warwick and the goddaughter of Aretha Franklin.
Houston first started singing in the church as a child. [Then,] music mogul Clive Davis first heard Houston perform.
“The time that I first saw her singing in her mother’s act in a club … it was such a stunning impact,” Davis told [ABC Television program] Good Morning America.
Whitney Houston recorded an inspirational ballad, "The Greatest Love of All," for her 1985 debut album -- which every parent, every HUMAN, ought to hear and absorb for it's message, and for those amazing pipes bringing the message. It is a moving recording on two fronts: smooth musical energy and the inspiring lyrics. It was not her biggest hit, not the biggest from the album, even. But it was a hit, and for many, including me, a meaningful song. Arguably, it was corny; some scoff at the song for its unashamed love-the-children and love yourself message, but it was philosophically positively meaningful. Not bubble gum pop music.
By contrast with that other aforementioned pop star of the 1980s, "Greatest Love" would not have fit with Madonna's other hits. Two of Madonna's many hits from 1985 were "Like a Virgin" and "Material Girl"; others were less topically shallow. (Catchy? Yes. Fun? Enjoyable? Definitely. Deep, classy and inspiring? Noooooooo.) Don't misread me, I am not knocking Madonna totally, but drawing a comparison on cultural influence and aesthetic packaging of them, in the 1980s when they both hit it big.
I don't want to believe that Whitney was a fated addict who became a superstar, only to fall to those addiction issues. I want to believe she was someone whose personality, talent and natural joyfulness, her soul, let's say, met with fame, celebrity and fortune as if the latter were slow-working poisons. I want to believe that the child gospel singer who became a world renowned celebrity sought refuge from fame, found love in Bobby Brown, and submerged herself in addictions. To Brown, drugs and sex.
It's a theme that goes around and around everyday, at every socioeconomic level: People don't know all of what they are made of, and what they do know they gather only in pieces and, sometimes, when we recognize something destructive about our makeup, it may be too late to build walls tall enough to protect us from it.
Fame and fortune affect people differently, as do alcohol, drugs, sex, cigarettes, or you-name-it. Some can often drink themselves stupid and never actually crave a drink, for example. Some can drink amply yet manage to effectively function in the vital parts of their lives; some are not so fortunate. Addicts aren't made, really, they are born. But they are made, as well, because the ingredients have to be right. Whitney Houston, despite her Christian roots, her talents, her ability to keep it together at one time, collapsed when her addictions awakened.
I want to believe that Whitney struggled with the stark contrast between talented success and its trappings, and a human, private existence. I want to believe that Whitney, the good Christian girl, crumbled from the impact of fame, fortune, and the ironies of a life in the public eye that does not meld well with a personal life.
I don't want to accept that her encouraging beginnings, and the control Whitney had over her life, mattered little when she awakened addiction issues had been dormant in her until she and Bobby Brown became bittersweet parts of each other's lives.
By the time Whitney had been smoking pot laced with cocaine with husband Bobby Brown, as she admitted to Oprah Winfrey in 2009 (see the Oprah.com interview text, from 2009), the addiction beast inside her had gained, apparently, a terrible control over her psyche. I was a stark contrast to her early life. In the much-publicized Oprah interview of September 2009, Whitney said that she was glad Bobby Brown had some control over her, because at the time she had control over everything else in her life.
Whitney: They don't have any idea about that sweet, gentle tenderness about him that nobody knew. He was a very quiet person. When that entertainer came out onstage, he did that thing. But at home, he was very much the father. He was very much the man. He was very much in control. I liked that because I was in control of all my stuff, and here he comes along and everybody was like, "Wow, she's got somebody now." When he said something, I listened. I was very interested in having someone have that control over me. It was refreshing.
Oprah: It was refreshing because in every other aspect of your life—
Whitney: I was in control.
Eventually, though, the relationship crumbled into this:
Whitney: We were lacing our marijuana with base. We weren't on crack. We weren't on no crack stuff. We weren't buying $20 jumbos. We were paying money. We were buying kilos and ounces and ounces. We would have our stash.
"I was very interested in having someone have that control over me," Whitney had said of Brown. Sadly, in addition to Brown's emotional meaning for her, he envied her fame, and was her partner in destructive drug and sex binges. He involved her in a depraved reality show, albeit willingly on her part because she wanted to be (in her thinking, inexplicable to me) the good wife. The show was chiefly an advertisement for in-patient addiction recovery and male insecurity, in my view, being only a freakish display of the mess that was their personal lives. It was his selfish, seemingly last-ditch effort to retain some sort of fame. For what that was worth. What it proved to do was show just how low Whitney had gone, and, certainly, Bobby Brown before her.
Was it worth it, Bobby Brown? Fame isn't meant to be an overt goal, not to mentally stable people, but a result of something... worthwhile. One accomplishes things that bring fame, fame as a goal in and of itself is narcissism or some similar mental disorder. Did you get that, Bobby? Or was your reality show raising money for the starving in Africa, secretly? Bobby?
Was Whitney's fall and her death, ultimately, Bobby Brown's fault? No. He didn't help, sadly. But addiction is illness, like allergies. He may have introduced her to her addictions, but he didn't create them. (I think he's a shallow, selfish creep, but that's another matter.)
The affect of mixing a personality with fame is not predictable (not always, for sure). One would not conclude, easily, that a child gospel singer who became world-renowned pop singer -- who lacked morose eccentricities, exploitative nude photos of herself, extreme behavior tendencies, crude quotations, and general bawdiness -- would be destined decades later to become as famous for being a junkie and suffering addict as she had been for being a smooth-voiced, stunner of a pop star. But, such a disaster can happen to anyone, if the many ingredients mix in the right manner.
Whitney didn't fade quickly. But, she did fade. It was a maudlin site for an admirer such as me, so I can only imagine how it was for those close to her to see her crumbling, and not be able to do enough to help her get herself right.
Whitney had resurfaced several times, with hope. And her amazing moments were not all in the 1980s, or all album hits and movie performances. Especially notable was, in 1991, when she sang a stunning "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the Super Bowl, mere days after Desert Storm had begun. The performance was so good that it was made into a single that raised money for charity.
She offered some fresh work in the 2000s, and it got respect though it was not the huge success of the 1980s and 1990s. In 2009, "I Look to You" became her seventh studio album, released in 2009. It sold more than 300,000 copies in its first week. (A new album was rumored in 2008 that, in fact, proved to be only a fake cover of an album called "Undefeated". In that cover image, the woman who was supposed to be Whitney looked amazing. That album never surfaced, and was called out as a hoax by an RCA executive.)
There were several remix albums put out by RCA Records up to 2009, according to the company's Web page of her RCA/Arista albums (RCA took over, then dissolved, Arista, the label she'd long been under). On RCA's artist page, it said, simply (prior to any posthumous changes):
170 million albums, singles, and videos sold worldwide. The only artist in history to chart seven consecutive #1 Billboard Hot 100 hits. Highest selling single of all time with “I Will Always Love You”.
And, the RCA Web page cited:
“the most awarded female artist of all time” - The Guinness Book of World Records.
