Certain Moments in Time

Whitney Houston (1963 - 2012)

Since everyone is doing a tribute to the passing of Whitney Houston, I might as well share out some random babbling of my own. This is by no mean an exhaustive retropective of Ms. Houston's career.

1. Whitney Houston has always been a Grammy darling. She had the look, the image, the voice and the pedigree (daughter of legendary gospel singer Cissy Houston and cousin to fellow Grammy winner Dionne Warwick). Her debut album was certified eight time platinmum already within one year of its release. The entire package just spells G-R-A-M-M-Y. So it was puzzling to say the least that she was not even nominated for Best New Artist in the 1986 Grammy Award, when she won the Best Pop Female Vocal Performance in the very same year. The official reason is, among other, this song
   
   
   
   From Jermaine Jackson's album Dynamite, Take Good Care Of My Heart featured Whitney Houston as one half the lead vocal. Because the album was released in 1984, it disqualified her from the 1986 Best New Artist category. This reason is of course unconvincing because Cyndi Lauper, who won the Best New Artist award the previous year, had released an entire album as the lead singer of the band Blue Angel herself as early as 1980.
   
   But it might just as well because the Grammy Best New Artist award has a reputation as being a "curse", particularly from the late 70s to mid 80s, since the winners during this period generally failed to duplicate their initial success and just simply faded away. Could it be that Clive Davis actively campaigned against his protégé being nominated for the award in order to protect his investment?



2. One of the most infamous incidences in French TV history
   
   In April of 1986, Whitney Houston, still relatively unknown in France, was invited to a live French variety show called Champs-Elysées through a connection her famous cousin Dionne Warwick has. Also invited that night was enfant terrible Serge Gainsbourg. The first meeting between the French legend and the American legend-to-be proved to be memorable in more ways than one. After host Michel Drucker introduced Whitney to the audience, he walked her over to sit next to Gainsbourg. The obviously under-the-influence Gainsbourg showered Houston with compliment before blurting out in English (with a thick French accent): I want to f**k her – on live TV. Add to the hilarity of the moment is Whitney’s shock reaction (Youtube doesn’t allow the video to be embedded but you can watch Serge Gainsbourg vs. Whitney Houston here)
   
   
   
   Michel Drucker tried desperately to abate the situation by explaining to Houston that Gainsbourg sometimes is a little bit drunk. At this stage of her career Whitney was still considered a class act and she managed to keep her composure and laughed off Gainsbourg’s unwanted advance but the debacle unexpectedly gave her an extra exposure in France. A French acquaintance once told me that most French people first came to know Whitney Houston only through this particular episode



3. MTV has become all the rage in music industry by the time Whitney released her debut album in 1985. Unfortunately cable TV has yet to arrive at Hong Kong and those music video starved had to settle with the cheesily made TVB got to offer, featuring the usual triple tricks of beach strolling, glass-crashing and dry ice overload. However, Whitney Houston was one of the very first artists who had music videos commercially released for sale. I remember spending over half an hour staring at the big screen TV of a relatively high-end audio visual shop in Sheung Wan just because it was playing Whitney Houston’s #1 Video Hits (repeatedly). Of the four music videos, How Will I Know easily the most vibrant and elaborate one, with a colourful set of maze built specifically for it.
   
   
   
   I particularly like how it choreographed the Decision of Flower verse (the If he loves me/if he loves me not… motif) with Whitney pushing through a set of doors to search for the boy she has a crush on. The best kind of music video should be those that present the music visually, rather than just a montage of images that come with a score





4. Like most people, growing up I only listen to those got played on the radio, those got pushed and promoted by record companies. None got more radio-friendly and pushed and promoted than Whitney Houston’s ballads, it is what made her a megastar. However, as you grow older and start to explore musically on your own, you can’t help but notice slickly produced and easy listening they undoubtedly are, they are also generic and characterless, meticulously calculated to mass appeal. They are good diversions as long as you don’t listen to them more than twice in a row.
   
   
   
   While Where Do Broken Hearts Go is no exception this song does mean a little extra special to me – I came to Boston in the late spring of 1988 and my life can be schizophrenically divided into pre-88 and post-88. Where Do Broken Hearts Go spent two weeks topping the Billboard 100 chart back in mid-May, 1988, the first when I was in Hong Kong and the second in Boston. So in a hyperbolical way the song has bridged the two sides of me.



5. With her faultless voice, Whitney Houston was considered somewhat beyond reproach in Hong Kong, at least in the 80s. However, critics in US were not as kind. The black audience in particular considered her music whitewashed and sellout for the sake of mass commercial success. It had reached the nadir when she was booed as Where Do Broken Hearts Go inexplicably received a Soul Train Music Award nomination. To answer her critics, Whitney Houston tried to introduce (not entirely successfully) a heavier R&B flavor in her next solo album I’m Your Baby Tonight. The title track presented her as a harder-edged queen of the nightclub:
   
   
   
   Dabbled in cross-dressing, Whitney paid homage to the decadent cabaret act of Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus:
   
   
   
   Donning beatnik black, Whitney channeled Audrey Hepburn's Parisian café dance in Funny Face (also the inspiration for a GAP commercial a few years ago):
   
   
   
   But best of all is the final mirror hall sequence:
   
   
   
   Whitney Houston was never known to be much of a dancer. I don't know how many takes she had to film the video. However, when she perform I'm Your Baby Tonight on Saturday Night Live upon the album release, she just simply stomped her feet during the same verse.
   



6. Whitney acquitted herself on the dance floor somewhat when I'm Your Baby Tonight became her eighth number one song in Billboard 100. She went one step further with her next uptempo single My Name Is Not Susan:
   
   
   
   Gone were those sequin dresses and classy silk stocking, Whitney slipped into a white overall and wore her cap backward. The song even included a rap segment (by someone else) to give her some extra street credential. What makes My Name Is Not Susan memorable to me is the ingenious idea to incorporate Hitchcock’s cult classic Vertigo into its video
   
   
   
   Unlike I'm Your Baby Tonight where it borrowed footage from old movies mostly for the "cool" factor, My Name Is Not Susan actually had a relevant story line. For those who are unfamiliar with vintage movies, Vertigo is about a man who tried to transform his new girlfriend into the exact same image of a deceased woman he has an unhealthy obsession with. This included having her wearing the exact same bouquet:
   
   
   
   Buying her the exact same dress:
   
   
   
   And ultimately dying her hair to the exact same shade of colour, the famous Hitchcockian blonde:
   
   
   
   It is a clever idea for a song about a man who dates a girl because she reminds him of his ex-girlfriend, Susan (It will be an even bigger statement had the photographer in the video been played by a white man, considered Whitney's career was carefully groomed by Clive Davis to maximize her cross-over appeal). The end result, nevertheless, is Whitney Houston's first ever solo single that didn't reach the top 10 in Billboard 100, not counting The Star Spangled Banner
   



7. The somewhat underperforming of her third album was quickly erased when she reverted back to her bread-and-butter with the power ballad I Will Always Love You. The success of The Bodyguard would keep Whitney Houston in the movie business for a while. However, it was not until her third movie did she break new ground musically. The remake of a 1947 Cary Grant vehicle, The Preacher’s Wife is about an angel who came to help a financially strapped bishop in building a new church, along the way provided guidance to his spiritual crisis…
   
   
   
   The story of The Preacher’s Wife is only a little old fashioned Christmas fairy-tale. Nevertheless, despite her background in church choir, Whitney Houston’s music has long been complained as soulless and the movie provided her the perfect opportunity to get back to her Gospel root. It features perhaps my favorite Whitney Houston song ever – Step by Step:
   
   
   
   To be precise, I should say Step by Step is my favorite song Whitney has recorded. Like her megahit I Will Always Love You, Step by Step is also a cover of a song that was written and recorded earlier by another female singer-songwriter. Released in 1992, the original is available only in the Japanese edition of Annie Lennox's debut solo album Diva:
   
   
   
   Both versions are very uplifting and soulful but Whitney did add an extra touch of Gospel to the song. In fact you can even distinctly catch Annie Lennox’s background vocal in her cover. I don't give much thought on religion but even I have to admit there is a certain spiritual cleansing listening to both of these songs. It is too bad Whitney in real life wasn't able to live out the lyrics of this song. Had she hold on to what she got what turned out today could be very different
   



8. After a decade spent mostly in movies and soundtracks, in 1998 Whitney Houston released My Love is Your Love, her first studio album in more than eight years.
   
   
   
   Although her addiction had yet to surface at this point her stormy marriage and Bobby Brown’s frequent brushes with the law had been the constant fodder for the tabloid. With songs like Heartbreak Hotel, It's Not Right But It's Okay and I Learned from the Best, My Love Is Your Love certainly played up to her wronged woman persona. Of the three my favourite is I Learned from the Best because it reminds me one of my all-time favourite movies – The Heiress
   
   
   
   The Heiress is about a plain and shy woman in 1800s New York rebelled against her emotionally abusive father to elope with the first young man who ever paid her any attention, only to be deserted when the young man found out her father had disinherited her. In one of the sweetest revenge scenes in movie, the harder and bitterer woman had alluded to giving the heartless mercenary a second chance now that her father has passed away. Upon finding out her true intention, her silly aunt implored to her conscience by asking if she could be so cruel. The woman cynically replied:
   
   Yes, I can be very cruel. I have been taught by masters
   
   
   
   The Heiress had won actress Olivia de Havilland her second Oscar and it is considered one of the most well deserved wins in Oscar history. The movie itself was based on a 1947 play that adapted from Henry James' Washington Square, which has enjoyed a Broadway revival in 1995. If they somehow decided to modernize the play to a musical and feature an all-black cast, I Learned from the Best can fit right in the revenge scene. Considered the time of the release and the similarity between the lyrics and the play, I can't help but wonder if The Heiress is the source of inspiration when Diane Warren penned I Learned from the Best
   
   My Love is Your Love has given Whitney the strongest critical review in her career by far. Although it took some times before the public was warm to the album (it was her only original album failed to crack the top ten in Billboard 200), its longevity eventually certified the album quadruple platinum and even outsold I’m Your Baby Tonight worldwide.
   
   Unfortunately that proved to be her last hurrah. Despite that she would go on to live for another thirteen years and release two more studio albums, her hard living had all but obliterated that angelic voice twenty years before. Her untimely death is a sad conclusion to a singer that had only been a shadow of her former self for more than a decade