RIP Whitney Houston

Gehrig · Feb 13, 2012

JC said:

Gehrig said:

How about Heath Ledger?
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Still dead.
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Thanks for letting me know.

rmanfredi · Feb 13, 2012

Gehrig said:

How about Heath Ledger?
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He's no Phil Collins, that's for sure...

Armchair_QB · Feb 13, 2012

rmanfredi said:

Gehrig said:

How about Heath Ledger?
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He's no Phil Collins, that's for sure...
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He was good in The Client though.

jr/shotglass · Feb 13, 2012

Speaking of deaths that had an impact on a great number of us ...

Mizzougrad96 · Feb 13, 2012

Ledger was a wow, but it didn't hit me particularly hard.

Double Down · Feb 13, 2012

Dick Whitman said:

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.
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Good post, Dick. I agree wholeheartedly about the live/studio stuff, which is why I think Marvin Gaye's national anthem at the 1983 NBA All-Star game is superior.

You make some good points too about the war mongering, although I will say that I think it's OK to feel like you need comfort in times when life feels confusing and scary.

Ben_Hecht · Feb 13, 2012

jr/shotglass said:

Lennon and Ritter both hit me pretty hard. Probably because they were totally unexpected in a way that, say, Cobain or Joplin or Whitney Houston were not.

Belushi and Farley hurt.

The ones where I was transfixed, of course, were the political deaths -- JFK, RFK, MLK.
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Belushi . . . and the fact that it was broadly-anticipated didn't make it sting any less.

jr/shotglass · Feb 13, 2012

Which famous singer would have been the ultimate lock as an American Idol contestant? Simmons provided the obvious answer three years ago.

And this observation is just so poignant, IMHO.

One of the many fascinating subplots of the mid-80s: you had a male singer (Jackson), a female singer (Whitney), a boxer (Mike Tyson), a baseball pitcher (Dwight Gooden) and an actor/comedian (Eddie Murphy) who peaked at precociously young ages, convinced us they were headed toward becoming the "greatest (fill in the genre) of all time" … only none of them made it. Not one.
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Mizzougrad96 · Feb 13, 2012

Yeah, I'm a little too young for Belushi to have had that kind of an impact.

I remember when Farley died, just thinking how much that sucks, not because you're surprised, but just because he seemed so likable.

Sam Kinnison's death hit me hard too... Of course, I was a teenager when it happened.

Ben_Hecht · Feb 13, 2012

jr/shotglass said:

Which famous singer would have been the ultimate lock as an American Idol contestant? Simmons provided the obvious answer three years ago.

And this observation is just so poignant, IMHO.

One of the many fascinating subplots of the mid-80s: you had a male singer (Jackson), a female singer (Whitney), a boxer (Mike Tyson), a baseball pitcher (Dwight Gooden) and an actor/comedian (Eddie Murphy) who peaked at precociously young ages, convinced us they were headed toward becoming the "greatest (fill in the genre) of all time" … only none of them made it. Not one.
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The first four all fell to one or both of the great derailers . . . the fifth was gold, until he changed his game, to his commercial distress . . .

HC · Feb 13, 2012

TheSportsPredictor said:

My library system has 18 copies of Whitney Houston's greatest hits CD. Before Saturday, there were three people on the waiting list for them. Today there are 73.
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Library's a good idea since apparently Sony raised their prices on Houston's music within 30 minutes of her death.

http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/13/whitney-houston-digital-music-price-hike/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Venturebeat+%28VentureBeat%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

jr/shotglass · Feb 13, 2012

Mizzougrad96 said:

Sam Kinnison's death hit me hard too... Of course, I was a teenager when it happened.
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Kinnison's death had a delayed effect on me -- like, when I heard the other-worldly aspects of his final moments.

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RIP Whitney Houston

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RIP Whitney Houston

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