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The Official WHITNEY HOUSTON Mega-thread!!!
- Thread starter mrmanfan
- Start date
SexyKev
Sex Symbol
Re: New Whitney Album On Sale Today!
"I Look To You" album has been officially certified GOLD!
She had been passed 500K for some time now, but it's great to have it FINALLY certified by the RIAA!
CONGRATS, WHITNEY!!
Next up: Platinum!
Won't be long.
"I Look To You" album has been officially certified GOLD!
She had been passed 500K for some time now, but it's great to have it FINALLY certified by the RIAA!
CONGRATS, WHITNEY!!
Next up: Platinum!
Won't be long.
SexyKev
Sex Symbol
Re: Whitney Houston - "Million Dollar Bill" (MUSIC VIDEO)
^^ I'd have to agree!
But what they SHOULD release is "Worth It' and "Call You Tonight". Them are the JOINTS! Think they will be huge hits.
^^ I'd have to agree!
But what they SHOULD release is "Worth It' and "Call You Tonight". Them are the JOINTS! Think they will be huge hits.
SexyKev
Sex Symbol
Re: New Whitney Album On Sale Today!
GREAT (although rather long) article from Times Online...
October 16, 2009
Whitney Houston: the life, death and rebirth of a pop princess
The fall and rise of Whitney Houston, who appears on The X Factor on Sunday, has been played out in public
Peter Robinson
If you cast your thoughts across the past 24 years of pop history, Whitney Houston comes equipped with very little in the way of iconic imagery for one of the biggest-selling recording artists to date. Ring the bell on the front desk of your local lookalike agency, for example, and you'll be presented with a disappointingly sparse array of Houstons. While her peers in the 1980s were making life easy for future tribute acts with their sequined gloves, purple wardrobes and conical bras, Houston simply became known as "The Voice". Whether turned towards ballads or dancefloor smashes, hers were pipes that could knock the froth off a cappuccino at 50 paces. Think of Houston and you invariably think of a career captured in one dramatic drum thud followed by two perfectly pitched words: "and I".
That, at least, is the image The X Factor will be hoping we recall on Sunday, when the singer flies in to perform her new single live on the show. After half a decade of declaring that perfectly capable vocalists are nowhere up to the standards of the legendary Whitney Houston, Simon Cowell will join 14 million viewers in finding out whether in 2009 even Whitney Houston is an adequate Whitney Houston. Her comeback has already resulted in a No 1 album in America but it follows seven years in the wilderness, during which Houston hit the headlines after legal disputes, daily drug use, divorce and rehab. Is her voice still the voice, or just a voice? For The X Factor, Houston's perfect collision of star quality, big tunes and extraordinary vocal talent has provided a useful benchmark for six seasons, so dark days could follow if her well-established brilliance, this assumed truth at the heart of the X Factor belief system, suddenly ceases to exist, sending the show's internal logic spinning off into a light-entertainment black hole.
To understand the lows - and the media always perceive there to be more at stake with "voice in a million" singers such as Houston and Amy Winehouse rather than with the more limited range of a singer such as Britney Spears - it's important fully to consider the highs. In the 1980s Houston was so wholesome and healthy that she became the face of Diet Pepsi, this innocent girl who was discovered while singing in a gospel choir and whose appeal seemed to span demographics like few before or since. She instantly became the queen of the wind-machine-friendly pop ballad: Didn't We Almost Have It All?, Greatest Love of All, One Moment in Time, Saving All My Love for You and Where Do Broken Hearts Go? were all released in the three-year period leading up to 1988, but disco hits such as So Emotional and I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me) kept Houston's feet on the dancefloor, too.
By 1992 Mariah Carey was strongly established as the new Houston, but just as Houston's transition from pop princess to womanly warbler had been seamless, so she responded to this arrival of a younger model by branching out into film with The Bodyguard and Waiting to Exhale and then, in 1998, staging a fantastic pop reinvention with It's Not Right But It's Okay. Her Greatest Hits double album in 2000 featured one of the most audaciously, brilliantly self-congratulatory album sleeves of recent times, featuring the singer on step ladder with a drill, hanging yet another platinum disc in a room whose walls, ceiling and floor were lined with other platinum discs. It wasn't too much of an exaggeration: some estimates put her total sales as getting on for 200 million units.
That Houston has been a reference point for so long is all the more impressive if one considers that when The X Factor first aired five years ago, she was of no mind to be promoting a new album, and seemed more involved in promoting the output of her husband at the time, Bobby Brown, via a stupendously ill-advised reality show for Bravo called Being Bobby Brown. Houston had already spent most of the 21st century appearing to fall apart rather publicly, with rapid weight loss, cancelled shows, a high-profile sacking from the Oscars and drug abuse spiralling out of control.
In 2002 she tackled the attention in a single, Whatchlookinat?, which declared: "I don't understand why you keep peepin' me/ when you don't even like me/ you're after me and my man/ Don't think you're stressing me/ 'cause your lies don't excite me".
Around that time Houston agreed to take part in a TV interview with Dianne Sawyer, one of those fantastically offensive US showbiz interviewers who tackled the singer (described as "[singing] to us from the doorway to death") head on. "Is it alcohol?" she asked. "Marijuana? Is it cocaine? Is it pills? All?" At one point in the interview, which you can watch on YouTube, Houston denies taking drugs and Sawyer's face is gripped by a look of mock incredulity so utterly graceless that even Jeremy Paxman might consider it slightly bad-mannered. "I'll grant you that I partied," Houston eventually admits. It is worth remembering that American definitions of "partying" do not begin and end with paper hats and trifle and, as Houston would later admit, in this instance involved daily cocaine and marijuana binges that dated back to 1992, the year in which she was at the height of her Bodyguard fame and, more significantly, married Brown.
By the time Being Bobby Brown arrived on screen in 2005 it showed the Browns living in chaos and Houston was often portrayed as a disorientated Marge Simpson character in a baseball cap and jogging bottoms. There was a lot of shouting between the couple. In one typical scene, during a camping expedition, Houston demands that Brown has sex with her behind a tree.
Being Bobby Brown didn't attract the huge audiences that MTV's The Osbournes once reached but it did for Houston's public image what The Osbournes did for Ozzy's Prince of Darkness character. Which is to say, it killed it. The show wasn't really about being Bobby at all, as Brown discovered when Houston refused to appear in the second season and Bravo coincidentally lost all interest in recommissioning the show. Unfortunately, by the end of season one the damage had been done.
At the height of her marketability, Houston had been the definitive American pop star, capable of delivering spectacularly blank interviews with a manner that was both charismatic and somehow thunderously dull. Faced with someone this clean, the media either take it all at face value, or suspect that the star is, instead, simply being rather discreet. Houston always received the benefit of the doubt, but by the 2000s, the smoke had cleared and the mirrors were being put to more creative use. The most shocking images came in 2006, when publications including The Sun and The National Enquirer ran photographs of Houston's squalid bathroom, a mess you'd mistake for something left behind in a hastily vacated squat.
Things were clearly getting bad when papers had used up all their "Houston, we have a problem" headlines: The Sun opted for "Houston at her Whit's end", stating that Whitney "is a paranoid wreck hopelessly hooked on crack", while the Enquirer ran with the less elegant "Trash of a drug addict". Brown's sister Tina excused leaking the snaps, explaining - with the usual, rather pompous familial concern of a woman being offered money to sell her story - that "the truth needs to come out ... Maybe this interview will save her life". The interview did nothing: it took rehab, then an intervention from Houston's mother, the soul singer Cissy Houston, then a divorce.
In 2002, with her personal life already going awry, Houston's career stumbled too. She released her least accomplished offering to date, but with personal songs such as Whatchulookinat? it at last brought some personal sentiment, and some soul, to a voice that had long been criticised for being inexperienced at showcasing any real emotion. Just Whitney became Houston's worst-selling studio album but it certainly set the stage for future releases to collide songs with genuine feeling. At least, that would certainly have been the hope of her career-long mentor and A&R guru Clive Davis, who had re-signed Houston to Epic in 2001 for a six-album deal worth a record-breaking $100 million.
Fast-forward to July this year when Davis held a press conference at a London hotel to announce Houston's comeback album, I Look to You. Such events usually feel quite insincere, as international executives jet in to present the label's big priorities for the next quarter with all the elegance and imagination of a Dragons' Den garden-hose pitch. Davis's speech was more personal and when Houston appeared after the album's first playback, it was clear that this was something of a rebirth. The tunes are in place, with the slinky single Million Dollar Bill having become something of an autumnal anthem and, most importantly, the voice is still, unmistakably, The Voice.
Pop stars stage comebacks all the time, after the birth of a child, after a world tour, after a three-month gap between singles, but very few are a return from the brink of oblivion. Fresh, excited, somehow (unbelievably, after Being Bobby Brown) rather dignified, at the age of 46 and after 24 years in the game, Houston seems to find herself at the start of something special.
Whitney Houston appears on The X Factor on Sunday, ITV1, 7.45pm .
I Look to You is reviewed on page 15
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article6876609.ece
GREAT (although rather long) article from Times Online...
October 16, 2009
Whitney Houston: the life, death and rebirth of a pop princess
The fall and rise of Whitney Houston, who appears on The X Factor on Sunday, has been played out in public
Peter Robinson
If you cast your thoughts across the past 24 years of pop history, Whitney Houston comes equipped with very little in the way of iconic imagery for one of the biggest-selling recording artists to date. Ring the bell on the front desk of your local lookalike agency, for example, and you'll be presented with a disappointingly sparse array of Houstons. While her peers in the 1980s were making life easy for future tribute acts with their sequined gloves, purple wardrobes and conical bras, Houston simply became known as "The Voice". Whether turned towards ballads or dancefloor smashes, hers were pipes that could knock the froth off a cappuccino at 50 paces. Think of Houston and you invariably think of a career captured in one dramatic drum thud followed by two perfectly pitched words: "and I".
That, at least, is the image The X Factor will be hoping we recall on Sunday, when the singer flies in to perform her new single live on the show. After half a decade of declaring that perfectly capable vocalists are nowhere up to the standards of the legendary Whitney Houston, Simon Cowell will join 14 million viewers in finding out whether in 2009 even Whitney Houston is an adequate Whitney Houston. Her comeback has already resulted in a No 1 album in America but it follows seven years in the wilderness, during which Houston hit the headlines after legal disputes, daily drug use, divorce and rehab. Is her voice still the voice, or just a voice? For The X Factor, Houston's perfect collision of star quality, big tunes and extraordinary vocal talent has provided a useful benchmark for six seasons, so dark days could follow if her well-established brilliance, this assumed truth at the heart of the X Factor belief system, suddenly ceases to exist, sending the show's internal logic spinning off into a light-entertainment black hole.
To understand the lows - and the media always perceive there to be more at stake with "voice in a million" singers such as Houston and Amy Winehouse rather than with the more limited range of a singer such as Britney Spears - it's important fully to consider the highs. In the 1980s Houston was so wholesome and healthy that she became the face of Diet Pepsi, this innocent girl who was discovered while singing in a gospel choir and whose appeal seemed to span demographics like few before or since. She instantly became the queen of the wind-machine-friendly pop ballad: Didn't We Almost Have It All?, Greatest Love of All, One Moment in Time, Saving All My Love for You and Where Do Broken Hearts Go? were all released in the three-year period leading up to 1988, but disco hits such as So Emotional and I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me) kept Houston's feet on the dancefloor, too.
By 1992 Mariah Carey was strongly established as the new Houston, but just as Houston's transition from pop princess to womanly warbler had been seamless, so she responded to this arrival of a younger model by branching out into film with The Bodyguard and Waiting to Exhale and then, in 1998, staging a fantastic pop reinvention with It's Not Right But It's Okay. Her Greatest Hits double album in 2000 featured one of the most audaciously, brilliantly self-congratulatory album sleeves of recent times, featuring the singer on step ladder with a drill, hanging yet another platinum disc in a room whose walls, ceiling and floor were lined with other platinum discs. It wasn't too much of an exaggeration: some estimates put her total sales as getting on for 200 million units.
That Houston has been a reference point for so long is all the more impressive if one considers that when The X Factor first aired five years ago, she was of no mind to be promoting a new album, and seemed more involved in promoting the output of her husband at the time, Bobby Brown, via a stupendously ill-advised reality show for Bravo called Being Bobby Brown. Houston had already spent most of the 21st century appearing to fall apart rather publicly, with rapid weight loss, cancelled shows, a high-profile sacking from the Oscars and drug abuse spiralling out of control.
In 2002 she tackled the attention in a single, Whatchlookinat?, which declared: "I don't understand why you keep peepin' me/ when you don't even like me/ you're after me and my man/ Don't think you're stressing me/ 'cause your lies don't excite me".
Around that time Houston agreed to take part in a TV interview with Dianne Sawyer, one of those fantastically offensive US showbiz interviewers who tackled the singer (described as "[singing] to us from the doorway to death") head on. "Is it alcohol?" she asked. "Marijuana? Is it cocaine? Is it pills? All?" At one point in the interview, which you can watch on YouTube, Houston denies taking drugs and Sawyer's face is gripped by a look of mock incredulity so utterly graceless that even Jeremy Paxman might consider it slightly bad-mannered. "I'll grant you that I partied," Houston eventually admits. It is worth remembering that American definitions of "partying" do not begin and end with paper hats and trifle and, as Houston would later admit, in this instance involved daily cocaine and marijuana binges that dated back to 1992, the year in which she was at the height of her Bodyguard fame and, more significantly, married Brown.
By the time Being Bobby Brown arrived on screen in 2005 it showed the Browns living in chaos and Houston was often portrayed as a disorientated Marge Simpson character in a baseball cap and jogging bottoms. There was a lot of shouting between the couple. In one typical scene, during a camping expedition, Houston demands that Brown has sex with her behind a tree.
Being Bobby Brown didn't attract the huge audiences that MTV's The Osbournes once reached but it did for Houston's public image what The Osbournes did for Ozzy's Prince of Darkness character. Which is to say, it killed it. The show wasn't really about being Bobby at all, as Brown discovered when Houston refused to appear in the second season and Bravo coincidentally lost all interest in recommissioning the show. Unfortunately, by the end of season one the damage had been done.
At the height of her marketability, Houston had been the definitive American pop star, capable of delivering spectacularly blank interviews with a manner that was both charismatic and somehow thunderously dull. Faced with someone this clean, the media either take it all at face value, or suspect that the star is, instead, simply being rather discreet. Houston always received the benefit of the doubt, but by the 2000s, the smoke had cleared and the mirrors were being put to more creative use. The most shocking images came in 2006, when publications including The Sun and The National Enquirer ran photographs of Houston's squalid bathroom, a mess you'd mistake for something left behind in a hastily vacated squat.
Things were clearly getting bad when papers had used up all their "Houston, we have a problem" headlines: The Sun opted for "Houston at her Whit's end", stating that Whitney "is a paranoid wreck hopelessly hooked on crack", while the Enquirer ran with the less elegant "Trash of a drug addict". Brown's sister Tina excused leaking the snaps, explaining - with the usual, rather pompous familial concern of a woman being offered money to sell her story - that "the truth needs to come out ... Maybe this interview will save her life". The interview did nothing: it took rehab, then an intervention from Houston's mother, the soul singer Cissy Houston, then a divorce.
In 2002, with her personal life already going awry, Houston's career stumbled too. She released her least accomplished offering to date, but with personal songs such as Whatchulookinat? it at last brought some personal sentiment, and some soul, to a voice that had long been criticised for being inexperienced at showcasing any real emotion. Just Whitney became Houston's worst-selling studio album but it certainly set the stage for future releases to collide songs with genuine feeling. At least, that would certainly have been the hope of her career-long mentor and A&R guru Clive Davis, who had re-signed Houston to Epic in 2001 for a six-album deal worth a record-breaking $100 million.
Fast-forward to July this year when Davis held a press conference at a London hotel to announce Houston's comeback album, I Look to You. Such events usually feel quite insincere, as international executives jet in to present the label's big priorities for the next quarter with all the elegance and imagination of a Dragons' Den garden-hose pitch. Davis's speech was more personal and when Houston appeared after the album's first playback, it was clear that this was something of a rebirth. The tunes are in place, with the slinky single Million Dollar Bill having become something of an autumnal anthem and, most importantly, the voice is still, unmistakably, The Voice.
Pop stars stage comebacks all the time, after the birth of a child, after a world tour, after a three-month gap between singles, but very few are a return from the brink of oblivion. Fresh, excited, somehow (unbelievably, after Being Bobby Brown) rather dignified, at the age of 46 and after 24 years in the game, Houston seems to find herself at the start of something special.
Whitney Houston appears on The X Factor on Sunday, ITV1, 7.45pm .
I Look to You is reviewed on page 15
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article6876609.ece
SexyKev
Sex Symbol
Re: New Whitney Album On Sale Today!
Is Whitney's comeback the greatest of all time?
Whitney Houston has kicked drugs and an abusive marriage to score a No.1 album, and prime slots on Oprah and X Factor, writes Ed Power
By Ed Power
Wednesday October 14 2009
In the history of pop, few stars can have had such a topsy-turvy career as Whitney Houston. From her peak as one of the biggest pop stars of the 1980s, the singer's life and career fell apart after she developed a serious addiction to crack cocaine and endured years of emotional abuse at the hands of her husband Bobby Brown. But now the singer has bounced back in spectacular fashion -- her first studio album in seven years has shot straight to the top of the charts in the US (it's released here on Friday). And millions of Americans tuned in to watch her emotional warts-and-all interview with chat-show queen Oprah Winfrey, which Irish audiences will get a chance to see tomorrow night on TV3.
Then on Saturday night, Whitney is the star guest on ITV's X Factor show, which will ensure her a prime time audience numbering in the millions.
Having descended to the bottom rung, it seems that Whitney Houston has managed to climb the ladder of success all the way back to the top.
Now 46, Whitney is not the first fallen star to choose Oprah's show to open her heart to the public - but her interview will go down as one of the most revealing of recent years. Sparing no detail, Whitney opened up about her 15-odd years of heavy drug addiction.
She also laid bare the extent of the emotional abuse she suffered at the hands of ex-husband Bobby Brown. And she revealed the truth behind the couple's car-crash reality TV show, panned by critics as one of the most stunningly squalid programmes ever to air on mainstream television.
Over the course of two tearful interviews with Oprah, the Baptist choirleader's daughter set out the full horror of her fall. Some of the details were truly horrifying: her favourite way of getting high, Houston said, was "freebasing" crack cocaine, with a marijuana 'chaser' taking the edge off.
"You put it in your marijuana, Oprah," she said, as if passing on a recipe for oatmeal cookies. "You lace it, you roll it up, and you smoke it in your weed -- it's like heroin and cocaine speed-balling, but you level it off, with marijuana."
She also discussed at length her troubled marriage to R'n'B singer Bobby Brown, to whom she got hitched in 1992.
Typical of their years together, she told Oprah, was the time he painted images of enormous eyes all over her bedroom walls (Brown was arrested for allegedly striking her -- a judge ruled Brown could stand trial, but Houston declined to press charges).
"I think something inside happens to a man when a woman has that much control," said Houston. She explained that she had agreed to appear in Being Bobby Brown because she thought it would be good for his career ("undoubtedly the most disgusting and execrable series ever to ooze its way onto television," was Hollywood Reporter's verdict).
When Oprah asked if Brown was jealous of her, she took a deep breath and then answered. "He's not going to like this, but yes."
How could it have ended like this? When she released her debut album in 1985, Houston was so squeaky clean it was almost creepy. She burst upon the pop scene as a kind of anti-Madonna. "An exceptional vocal talent," was the (usually sniffy) New York Times' assessment of her first record. The rest of the world couldn't have agreed more -- the album went to number one in the US and refused to budge for 14 weeks. Grammy and Emmy awards were duly showered upon her, testament to her ability to do what no female artist had previously managed and appeal to both white and black audiences.
Over time, however, her saccharine image would turn into a liability. She could sing, but where, people asked, was the soul, the edge? Released to enormous hype her second LP, Whitney, was poorly reviewed. She was, her growing legion of detractors argued, a plastic popstar.
In her own community, meanwhile, she was increasingly regarded as a sell-out. Receiving an award at the Soul Train Awards in 1995, she was booed when her name was read aloud.
Did she care? Apparently not. Her performance alongside Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard was criticised as wooden -- and the gadzillion selling hit spawned by the movie, 'I Will Always Love You', was even more hated still. Yet Houston ignored the barbs. "People know who I am," she said, brushing aside claims that her public persona was so saccharine it felt as if she wasn't really a real person.
In her personal life, however, the wheels were starting to come off. The same year that she starred in The Bodyguard she married Brown. Then came her spiral into drug use. She started smoking crack recreationally and was soon using on an almost daily basis (in the Oprah interview she insisted Brown had no part to play in her tumble into addiction).
She did manage to hold it together professionally for a while. Houston starred in two more high-profile movies, Waiting to Exhale (1995) and the semi-autobiographical Preacher's Wife (1996). And she finally caught up with what was happening with urban music with the release of 1998's distinctly slinky, and very un-Whitney, 'My Love Is Your Love'.
Indeed, the success of My Love Is Your Love' encouraged Clive Davis, her mentor at Arista records, to handwrite a new contract worth a record $100m. His timing could not have been worse. By now, Houston's eccentric public appearances were setting tongues wagging. She looked less like a starlet at the height of her powers than a drug-induced zombie.
In more than one interview, she was distracted, and had difficulty staying awake. Journalists described Houston humming to herself and trying to plunk an imaginary piano. She was also controversially dropped from the 2000 Oscars. From his death bed, her father John had a stark message: "Get your act together, honey."
She's taken her sweet time but, at 46, Houston is doing exactly that. In 2007, she divorced Brown and quit drugs. Encouraged by Davis, who never lost faith in her talent, she went to work on a new record.
On its release last month I Look To You whooshed straight to number one in the US. selling over 300,000 copies, and is expected to repeat that performance when it is released here on Friday. She is also back playing live -- her UK tour begins in April and she is strongly rumoured to be playing Dublin around this time.
A happy ending? Well, whatever happens to Houston, that certainly appears to be the case for Oprah. After 12 months of sagging ratings, the Whitney Houston interviews have given her a huge bump in viewers, up 45pc on the same time last year.
The entertainment industry may have transformed itself beyond recognition since Houston exploded on the scene. One thing, though, hasn't changed. Misery, it seems, still loves company.
Oprah's interview with Whitney Houston is on TV3 tomorrow at 9pm. I Look To You is released on Friday. Whitney appears on X Factor this Saturday.
- Ed Power
Irish Independent
http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle...omeback-the-greatest-of-all-time-1912429.html
Is Whitney's comeback the greatest of all time?
Whitney Houston has kicked drugs and an abusive marriage to score a No.1 album, and prime slots on Oprah and X Factor, writes Ed Power
By Ed Power
Wednesday October 14 2009
In the history of pop, few stars can have had such a topsy-turvy career as Whitney Houston. From her peak as one of the biggest pop stars of the 1980s, the singer's life and career fell apart after she developed a serious addiction to crack cocaine and endured years of emotional abuse at the hands of her husband Bobby Brown. But now the singer has bounced back in spectacular fashion -- her first studio album in seven years has shot straight to the top of the charts in the US (it's released here on Friday). And millions of Americans tuned in to watch her emotional warts-and-all interview with chat-show queen Oprah Winfrey, which Irish audiences will get a chance to see tomorrow night on TV3.
Then on Saturday night, Whitney is the star guest on ITV's X Factor show, which will ensure her a prime time audience numbering in the millions.
Having descended to the bottom rung, it seems that Whitney Houston has managed to climb the ladder of success all the way back to the top.
Now 46, Whitney is not the first fallen star to choose Oprah's show to open her heart to the public - but her interview will go down as one of the most revealing of recent years. Sparing no detail, Whitney opened up about her 15-odd years of heavy drug addiction.
She also laid bare the extent of the emotional abuse she suffered at the hands of ex-husband Bobby Brown. And she revealed the truth behind the couple's car-crash reality TV show, panned by critics as one of the most stunningly squalid programmes ever to air on mainstream television.
Over the course of two tearful interviews with Oprah, the Baptist choirleader's daughter set out the full horror of her fall. Some of the details were truly horrifying: her favourite way of getting high, Houston said, was "freebasing" crack cocaine, with a marijuana 'chaser' taking the edge off.
"You put it in your marijuana, Oprah," she said, as if passing on a recipe for oatmeal cookies. "You lace it, you roll it up, and you smoke it in your weed -- it's like heroin and cocaine speed-balling, but you level it off, with marijuana."
She also discussed at length her troubled marriage to R'n'B singer Bobby Brown, to whom she got hitched in 1992.
Typical of their years together, she told Oprah, was the time he painted images of enormous eyes all over her bedroom walls (Brown was arrested for allegedly striking her -- a judge ruled Brown could stand trial, but Houston declined to press charges).
"I think something inside happens to a man when a woman has that much control," said Houston. She explained that she had agreed to appear in Being Bobby Brown because she thought it would be good for his career ("undoubtedly the most disgusting and execrable series ever to ooze its way onto television," was Hollywood Reporter's verdict).
When Oprah asked if Brown was jealous of her, she took a deep breath and then answered. "He's not going to like this, but yes."
How could it have ended like this? When she released her debut album in 1985, Houston was so squeaky clean it was almost creepy. She burst upon the pop scene as a kind of anti-Madonna. "An exceptional vocal talent," was the (usually sniffy) New York Times' assessment of her first record. The rest of the world couldn't have agreed more -- the album went to number one in the US and refused to budge for 14 weeks. Grammy and Emmy awards were duly showered upon her, testament to her ability to do what no female artist had previously managed and appeal to both white and black audiences.
Over time, however, her saccharine image would turn into a liability. She could sing, but where, people asked, was the soul, the edge? Released to enormous hype her second LP, Whitney, was poorly reviewed. She was, her growing legion of detractors argued, a plastic popstar.
In her own community, meanwhile, she was increasingly regarded as a sell-out. Receiving an award at the Soul Train Awards in 1995, she was booed when her name was read aloud.
Did she care? Apparently not. Her performance alongside Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard was criticised as wooden -- and the gadzillion selling hit spawned by the movie, 'I Will Always Love You', was even more hated still. Yet Houston ignored the barbs. "People know who I am," she said, brushing aside claims that her public persona was so saccharine it felt as if she wasn't really a real person.
In her personal life, however, the wheels were starting to come off. The same year that she starred in The Bodyguard she married Brown. Then came her spiral into drug use. She started smoking crack recreationally and was soon using on an almost daily basis (in the Oprah interview she insisted Brown had no part to play in her tumble into addiction).
She did manage to hold it together professionally for a while. Houston starred in two more high-profile movies, Waiting to Exhale (1995) and the semi-autobiographical Preacher's Wife (1996). And she finally caught up with what was happening with urban music with the release of 1998's distinctly slinky, and very un-Whitney, 'My Love Is Your Love'.
Indeed, the success of My Love Is Your Love' encouraged Clive Davis, her mentor at Arista records, to handwrite a new contract worth a record $100m. His timing could not have been worse. By now, Houston's eccentric public appearances were setting tongues wagging. She looked less like a starlet at the height of her powers than a drug-induced zombie.
In more than one interview, she was distracted, and had difficulty staying awake. Journalists described Houston humming to herself and trying to plunk an imaginary piano. She was also controversially dropped from the 2000 Oscars. From his death bed, her father John had a stark message: "Get your act together, honey."
She's taken her sweet time but, at 46, Houston is doing exactly that. In 2007, she divorced Brown and quit drugs. Encouraged by Davis, who never lost faith in her talent, she went to work on a new record.
On its release last month I Look To You whooshed straight to number one in the US. selling over 300,000 copies, and is expected to repeat that performance when it is released here on Friday. She is also back playing live -- her UK tour begins in April and she is strongly rumoured to be playing Dublin around this time.
A happy ending? Well, whatever happens to Houston, that certainly appears to be the case for Oprah. After 12 months of sagging ratings, the Whitney Houston interviews have given her a huge bump in viewers, up 45pc on the same time last year.
The entertainment industry may have transformed itself beyond recognition since Houston exploded on the scene. One thing, though, hasn't changed. Misery, it seems, still loves company.
Oprah's interview with Whitney Houston is on TV3 tomorrow at 9pm. I Look To You is released on Friday. Whitney appears on X Factor this Saturday.
- Ed Power
Irish Independent
http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle...omeback-the-greatest-of-all-time-1912429.html
SexyKev
Sex Symbol
Re: New Whitney Album On Sale Today!
Ticketmaster: Whitney Houston adds second London show
Due to overwhelming demand, Whitney Houston has added a second London date to her forthcoming UK tour and will now play at The O2 Arena on 25th AND 26th of April.
The tour announcement comes on the heels of her critically-acclaimed, internationally chart-topping album "I Look To You", and will be her first major tour in more than 11 years, performing classic hits alongside her latest songs.
Tickets go on sale Friday at 09:00 and are sure to sell fast - get yours here!
http://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/Whitney-Houston-tickets/artist/945194?dma_id=
Ticketmaster: Whitney Houston adds second London show
Due to overwhelming demand, Whitney Houston has added a second London date to her forthcoming UK tour and will now play at The O2 Arena on 25th AND 26th of April.
The tour announcement comes on the heels of her critically-acclaimed, internationally chart-topping album "I Look To You", and will be her first major tour in more than 11 years, performing classic hits alongside her latest songs.
Tickets go on sale Friday at 09:00 and are sure to sell fast - get yours here!
http://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/Whitney-Houston-tickets/artist/945194?dma_id=
SexyKev
Sex Symbol
Re: New Whitney Album On Sale Today!
Video of Whitney's appearance on the 'X Factor' tonight, mentoring the kids:
LOL @ that girl falling to the floor when Whitney walked in the room.
The reactions on those kid's faces were priceless lol
And Whit sounded good singing a lil of "How Will I Know".
Can't wait to see her perform tomorrow!
Video of Whitney's appearance on the 'X Factor' tonight, mentoring the kids:
LOL @ that girl falling to the floor when Whitney walked in the room.
The reactions on those kid's faces were priceless lolAnd Whit sounded good singing a lil of "How Will I Know".
Can't wait to see her perform tomorrow!
MCsNo1Fn
NOVEMBER 3RD
Re: New Whitney Album On Sale Today!
Actually, Miley's album had early street violations which had it debut the chart week before it's actual "first week sales" week. So if you combine them, Miley trumped her. So, there went that.
lol of course its possible. But Whitney went up against MILEY CYRUS the week she released her album. And Miley is a BIG SELLER these days. Crazy popular with the teen/kid crowd and they and their moms run out and buy her albums in droves. Stiff competition and yet Whitney still trumped Miley bigtime and got to #1 over her.
Actually, Miley's album had early street violations which had it debut the chart week before it's actual "first week sales" week. So if you combine them, Miley trumped her. So, there went that.
MCsNo1Fn
NOVEMBER 3RD
Re: New Whitney Album On Sale Today!
LMFAO. Nice source. Seriously? Even you can't possibly believe she had the greatest comeback of all time. She didn't even have a mediocre comeback. Debuting at #1 in several countries doesn't mean the album sold well....and it didn't. So FAIL.
LMFAO. Nice source. Seriously? Even you can't possibly believe she had the greatest comeback of all time. She didn't even have a mediocre comeback. Debuting at #1 in several countries doesn't mean the album sold well....and it didn't. So FAIL.
Davenavarrolover
On the Prowl
Re: New Whitney Album On Sale Today!
Yeah i've seen her during TBG era live and the MLIYL tour. Whitney has a way of singing songs that make them better then the album versions, she really is the most gifted vocalist of the last 50 years!
Yes, hopefully she'll go there.
Have you ever seen Whitney live in concert?
Can't wait till she comes to the U.S.!
Yeah i've seen her during TBG era live and the MLIYL tour. Whitney has a way of singing songs that make them better then the album versions, she really is the most gifted vocalist of the last 50 years!
Davenavarrolover
On the Prowl
Re: New Whitney Album On Sale Today!
You must be a lamb, you're attacking Whitney in every thread... so sad for you but the album turned gold in just 5 weeks and is going for platinum now. And she has certifications all over the world and the worldwide sales are over a million in a few weeks.,.so now what?!
You must be a lamb, you're attacking Whitney in every thread... so sad for you but the album turned gold in just 5 weeks and is going for platinum now. And she has certifications all over the world and the worldwide sales are over a million in a few weeks.,.so now what?!
SexyKev
Sex Symbol
Re: New Whitney Album On Sale Today!
Yeah, she really is! She's amazing and her interpretive skills are incredible. She has a way of interpreting a song like no other. She can bring something new and different to a song each time she performs it. And I jus love how she "acts" out a song. Perfect example:
Amazing.
Her stage presence is so untouchable.
Yeah, she really is! She's amazing and her interpretive skills are incredible. She has a way of interpreting a song like no other. She can bring something new and different to a song each time she performs it. And I jus love how she "acts" out a song. Perfect example:
Amazing.
Her stage presence is so untouchable.
SexyKev
Sex Symbol
Re: New Whitney Album On Sale Today!
lol...he's nothin but a crazed, delusional lamb. I don't even pay attention to him half the time anymore. So delusional. What he should be doing is going out and buying another 100,000+ copies of Whisperiah's new flop cd to help HER poor sales out.
lol...he's nothin but a crazed, delusional lamb. I don't even pay attention to him half the time anymore. So delusional. What he should be doing is going out and buying another 100,000+ copies of Whisperiah's new flop cd to help HER poor sales out.
SexyKev
Sex Symbol
Re: New Whitney Album On Sale Today!
Here's Whitney's X Factor performance of "Million Dollar Bill":
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1MTL-0q1Mg[/ame]
Aside from the wardrobe malfunction and her flubbing the lyrics a lil ("They held the song, we played our song"), she sounded great and just like the record. Had some nice strong belts. Overall: a solid performance. Awesome entrance and intro, too!
Really can't wait till she goes on tour and puts that voice back to work more often. I know she's gonna be killin it!
Here's Whitney's X Factor performance of "Million Dollar Bill":
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1MTL-0q1Mg[/ame]
Aside from the wardrobe malfunction and her flubbing the lyrics a lil ("They held the song, we played our song"
), she sounded great and just like the record. Had some nice strong belts. Overall: a solid performance. Awesome entrance and intro, too! Really can't wait till she goes on tour and puts that voice back to work more often. I know she's gonna be killin it!
Whitney Houston's New Disastrous Performance. Some fear return to drug use.
After the debacle that was Houston's performance on Good Morning America and her sad one on French TV Whitney continues to worry that she's lost her voice and may be back on drugs.
Yesterday on the X Factor Whitney sounded terrible even flubbing her lines to her own song. When she tried to belt out certain parts she was drowned out by both the musicians and background singers. Was this a way to disguise she's lost it? The entire performance she sound like she had a soar throat. Was she tired and out of breath from another binge?
Some have speculated she might be back on drugs. Clearly there have been many signs.
Tellyzone's Mike Stewart was quoted as saying she was "Looking slightly nervous when quizzed by the X Factor host, Whitney took a while to answer each of his questions and seemed a little uneasy when put on the spot."
Maybe she needs divine intervention?
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1MTL-0q1Mg[/ame]
After the debacle that was Houston's performance on Good Morning America and her sad one on French TV Whitney continues to worry that she's lost her voice and may be back on drugs.
Yesterday on the X Factor Whitney sounded terrible even flubbing her lines to her own song. When she tried to belt out certain parts she was drowned out by both the musicians and background singers. Was this a way to disguise she's lost it? The entire performance she sound like she had a soar throat. Was she tired and out of breath from another binge?
Some have speculated she might be back on drugs. Clearly there have been many signs.
Tellyzone's Mike Stewart was quoted as saying she was "Looking slightly nervous when quizzed by the X Factor host, Whitney took a while to answer each of his questions and seemed a little uneasy when put on the spot."
Maybe she needs divine intervention?
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1MTL-0q1Mg[/ame]
G-Lexington
Lex. Icon. Devil.
Re: New Whitney Album On Sale Today!
I came back to this thread after reading a thread about Whitney's performance on X-Factor on another board. Watched the clip, then wondered "Wonder what SexyKev thought of it."
...yep. Thought so.
Lex
I came back to this thread after reading a thread about Whitney's performance on X-Factor on another board. Watched the clip, then wondered "Wonder what SexyKev thought of it."
...yep. Thought so.
Lex
G-Lexington
Lex. Icon. Devil.
Re: Whitney Houston's New Disastrous Performance. Some fear return to drug use.
You must be mistaken. Please see the other Whitney thread, in which it is made clear that "she sounded great and just like the record. Had some nice strong belts. Overall: a solid performance."
Lex
You must be mistaken. Please see the other Whitney thread, in which it is made clear that "she sounded great and just like the record. Had some nice strong belts. Overall: a solid performance."
Lex
rnailsone
On the Prowl
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Re: Whitney Houston's New Disastrous Performance. Some fear return to drug use.
Sounds good to me... I still love her the only problem I saw was her dress came apart towards the end but she kept going like the pro she is.
Sounds good to me... I still love her the only problem I saw was her dress came apart towards the end but she kept going like the pro she is.
kineticpsi
Slut
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Re: Whitney Houston's New Disastrous Performance. Some fear return to drug use.
After not performing for so long, and doing all the drugs, I wouldn't be surprised to find that she no longer has good breathing. In the first two minutes she was all over the stage - she seems like she may be having trouble catching her breath at times.
Her voice has changed for one reason or the other. It's a natural progression, not to mention that she was probably doing tons of interviews that day, and lack of sleep could also affect her performance. She's making a comeback and has a lot of work to do, I doubt her days are filled with one TV performance and a radio interview. She's trying to revitalize her career.
If she is on drugs again, I hope she eventually gets off of them for good. I can't imagine having to deal with that kind of addition (I can't even manage to not drink soda for a week), but it can't be simple, no matter how many promises you've made or contracts you've signed.
After not performing for so long, and doing all the drugs, I wouldn't be surprised to find that she no longer has good breathing. In the first two minutes she was all over the stage - she seems like she may be having trouble catching her breath at times.
Her voice has changed for one reason or the other. It's a natural progression, not to mention that she was probably doing tons of interviews that day, and lack of sleep could also affect her performance. She's making a comeback and has a lot of work to do, I doubt her days are filled with one TV performance and a radio interview. She's trying to revitalize her career.
If she is on drugs again, I hope she eventually gets off of them for good. I can't imagine having to deal with that kind of addition (I can't even manage to not drink soda for a week), but it can't be simple, no matter how many promises you've made or contracts you've signed.
rinlakeworth
On the Prowl
Re: Whitney Houston's New Disastrous Performance. Some fear return to drug use.
I looked at the video, I think the reason that she looked a little flustered was due to a "wardrobe malfunction"....if you look close you will see her looking at her dress and then you can see the strap has come undone. I think the rest of the song she was concerned with the dress as you can see she is keeping her arms sort of close to her sides to keep the front from coming undone! I think she is sounding great but the voice is aged. I really like her new song " I look to you"....very uplifting.
I looked at the video, I think the reason that she looked a little flustered was due to a "wardrobe malfunction"....if you look close you will see her looking at her dress and then you can see the strap has come undone. I think the rest of the song she was concerned with the dress as you can see she is keeping her arms sort of close to her sides to keep the front from coming undone! I think she is sounding great but the voice is aged. I really like her new song " I look to you"....very uplifting.
