RIP Whitney Houston

I understand the impulse to overrate somebody's legacy upon their death, but there are some memes being generated by this one that bother me. To wit:

* I have heard discussed many times over the last three days her version of the national anthem prior to the Giants-Bills Super Bowl. In fact, it seems that many, both professional critics and the armchair version alike, are including that as an unmitigated positive piece of her legacy. I disagree.

First of all, it takes some very strenuous mental gymnastics to steer around the fact that she did not actually perform the anthem live. Obviously they aren't the authority on this, but "Mike & Mike" this morning were putting up a passionate defense of lip synching - it doesn't matter, they argued strenuously, since she was actually the person who sang it, even if it were in the studio. Again, two sports radio hosts are not the authority, but this is something being advanced by plenty of others. For example, our own IJAG, early in this thread, got a little huffy when someone said that the performance was diminished because it wasn't live.

Perhaps the Milli Vanilli embarrassment has, to this day, lowered the bar for us, but from where I sit, I still think that a huge part of what makes the national anthem such a test for vocalists is that it is a difficult song to sing in a single take. Add the enormous stage that is the Super Bowl, and the test is magnified even further. Faced with that test, what did the alleged greatest female pop vocalist of all time do? She punted. Criticize Christina Aguilera and Steven Tyler if you will, but at least they gave it an honest effort. With all of the kvetching on here about the use of Autotune these days, you simply can't at the same time let it go that Whitney Houston, when faced with the moment, retreated to the warm comfort of the studio.

* This part is not necessarily Houston's fault, but the context of that performance - ahem, "performance" - should embarrass us slightly, looking back. One reason that it caught fire so fast was that it was delivered about a week after the beginning of the first Gulf War. Our reaction to that conflict is truly one of the most embarrassingly jingoistic episodes in our nation's history, at least our recent history. On a thread a few months back, perhaps one about the over-the-top militarism of the NFL, BYH mentioned the fact that there were Desert Storm trading cards being sold at 7-11's at that time. I recall mash-ups on the radio of Styx's "Show Me the Way" with Colin Powell press conferences and soldier interviews interspersed into the bridges. The NHL All-Star Game in Chicago turned into a high school pep really for war.

And that is also a large part of why Houston's rendition, along with the technical competence, became so popular. It is almost unfair to say we were war-mongering that month. It was more like war was just another sporting event for us to cheer for on television. Houston's anthem was another touchdown for the home team. Embarrassing reaction then. And 10 times more embarrassing now to consider that context a positive attribute of the performance. To me, we should remember our reaction to the first Gulf War the way we remember the Summer of '98 in baseball. With the benefit of hindsight, we should realize that we were out of line. And I do think we largely acknowledge that, until something like Whitney Houston's death inspires us to crop out the embarrassing aspects and unconvincingly try to re-capture our feelings at the time. Why? Because it better fits the easier narrative we want to roll out to honor a celebrity's death.

* If you have a feminist bone in your body, some of her hit songs should anger you on some level. On the drive in this morning, I heard a song called "How Will I Know," which was one of her No. 1 hits. It is catchy, but the content is cringe-inducing. Basically, she is taking on the persona of a delicate, unworthy flower who is just too shy to approach the oh-so worthy boy she desires. Now, whether Madonna's strain of feminism hurts or helps the cause is up for debate, and I'm sure that debate will rage on for years after her eventual passing. Some see her overt sexuality as empowering. Others may see it as debasing. However, I know this: If the singer of "Like a Virgin" had been handed the lyrics to "How Will I Know," the writer would have quickly been laughed out of the studio.

* I still think that her voice, for all of its technical competence, lacks any modicum of soul. It is easy to attribute that to the era she arose during, the largely vapid 1980s. However, that would also be oversimplifying things. I think of a song like "Eternal Flame" by the Bangles - or many of their songs, really - and realize that Susanna Hoffs packed more soul into that one three-minute piece of music than Whitney Houston packed into her entire string of No. 1 singles. Cyndi Lauper is another one that made up for any technical deficiencies with distinctiveness and emotion. She even had something to say, from time to time. Hell, even Pat Benetar had some rough edges that you could appreciate, some soul sprouting through the '80s pop gloss. I know that it's a different gender and a different genre, to a point, but I think that soulless hitmakers like Houston, right alongside soulless rock hitmakers like Poison and some of the others, helped feed the quiet rage that eventually launched Nirvana as such an unstoppable cultural force. Kurt Cobain couldn't hold Whitney Houston's jock as a singer, of course, but her ascension in the culture certainly moved us toward the tipping point as a growing minority and, eventually, a majority of American music fans burned for some authenticity.

I dearly wish that for all her talent, that Whitney Houston had chosen to take some artistic risks. She never did, though. She instead elected the safe route as a fleeting hit machine with a vanilla artistic legacy. It's unfortunate.

 

Outing: Dick Whitman is Patrick Bateman

 

Dick, click the links I posted where she sings live on Letterman back in 1985. If you think Lauper or Benetar sang with more passion, then that is your opinion.

 

I don't question that she had the ability to do so. But, really, in this day and age (and that day and age), legacy is largely constructed in the recording studio. And in there, she made a conscious, calculated choice to go by-the-numbers. And all the links you can toss up do not overshadow the fact that when presented with the biggest stage of her life to show what she could do live, she instead shrank from the challenge. She's LeBron James: Otherwordly talent, no killer instinct.

 

Holy Fuck!
You have waaaaaaaaay too much time on your hands to devote this much time to Whitney Houston and "her legacy."


And No, I didn't read it. (No offense intended)

 

I think he has posting files on quite a few of us...

"BUT IN 2005, YOU POSTED THIS!!!!"

 

Dick is not nearly cool enough to be Patrick Bateman.

 

Everyone loves when Jon Stewart does it!

(I concede that I misinterpreted IJAG's post. I think that what she meant was: "I really can't comment on those songs, as I have not heard them." At the same time, I hope you'll understand that I wasn't actually trying to be condescending by saying you don't know "Exile on Main Street." I was simply using it as the classic example of a great album without many tracks that would be recognizable as hits.)

 

Very true, but Grohl isn't an icon the way Cobain is.

I am quite sure Grohl is quite happy to "just" be wildly successful and wildly likable and happy, as opposed to his "icon" bandmate.

 

You've got to wonder, with Grohl's own talents, how long Nirvana would have been able to stay together anyway. No way was that guy going to be satisfied sitting behind a drum kit during his peak creative years.

 

He's said on Stern that Cobain's death kind of triggered something in him as a songwriter and a musician. If I remember correctly, he wrote every track on the first Foo Fighters album and played every instrument on it long before he ever put a band together...