Whitney Houston, the multimillion-selling singer who emerged in the 1980s as one of her generation’s greatest R & B voices, only to deteriorate through years of cocaine use and an abusive marriage, died on Saturday in Los Angeles. Her death was confirmed by her publicist, Kristen Foster. She was 48, and had been in Los Angeles on Saturday to sing for the annual pre-Grammy party held at the Beverly Hilton hotel by Clive Davis, the founder of Arista Records, who had been her pop mentor. Ms. Houston was declared dead in her room at the hotel about 4 p.m. after paramedics from the Beverly Hills Fire Department spent close to 30 minutes trying to revive her, the authorities said. There was no immediate word on the cause of her death. The streets in front of the Beverly Hilton, already crowded because of the Grammy Awards party taking place there, were swarmed with reporters and fans, drawn by the news of this latest high-profile pop star dying in Los Angeles. Partygoers and celebrities continued to arrive for Mr. Davis’s party while fans stood behind a rope trying to take pictures. Dressed in evening gowns and tuxedos, people stepped out of limousines at the curbside and streamed into the party. From the first, Ms. Houston had the talent, looks and pedigree of a pop superstar. She was the daughter of Cissy Houston, a gospel and pop singer who had backed up Aretha Franklin, and the cousin of Dionne Warwick. (Ms. Franklin is Ms. Houston’s godmother.) Ms. Houston’s range spanned five octaves, and her voice was plush, vibrant and often spectacular. She could pour on the exuberant flourishes of gospel or peal a simple pop chorus; she could sing sweetly or unleash a sultry rasp. Dressed in everything from formal gowns to T-shirts, she cultivated the image of a fun-loving but ardent good girl, the voice behind songs as perky as “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)” and as torchy as what became her signature song, a version of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.” But by the mid-1990s, even as she was moving into acting with films like “The Bodyguard” and “The Preacher’s Wife,” she became what she described, in a 2009 interview with Oprah Winfrey, as a “heavy” user of marijuana and cocaine. By the 2000s she was struggling; her voice grew smaller, scratchier and less secure, and her performances grew erratic. All of Ms. Houston’s studio albums were million-sellers, and two have sold more than 10 million copies in the United States alone: Her 1985 debut album and the 1992 soundtrack to “The Bodyguard,” which contains ”I Will Always Love You.” But her marriage to the singer Bobby Brown — which was, at one point, documented in a Bravo reality television series, “Being Bobby Brown” — grew miserable, and in the 2000s, her singles slipped from the top 10. Ms. Houston became a tabloid subject; the National Enquirer ran a photo of her bathroom showing drug paraphernalia. And each new album — “Just Whitney” in 2002 and “I Look to You” in 2009 — became a comeback. At Central Park in 2009, singing for “Good Morning America,” her voice was frayed, and on the world tour that followed the release of the album “I Look to You,” she was often shaky. Whitney Houston was born on Aug. 9, 1963, in Newark. She sang in church, and as a teenager in the 1970s and early 1980s, she worked as a backup studio singer and featured vocalist with acts including Chaka Khan, the Neville Brothers and Bill Laswell’s Material. Mr. Davis signed her after hearing her perform in a New York City nightclub, and spent two years supervising production of the album “Whitney Houston,” which was released in 1985. It placed her remarkable voice in polished, catchy songs that straddled pop and R & B, and it included three No. 1 singles: “Saving All My Love for You,” “How Will I Know” and “The Greatest Love of All.” Because Ms. Houston had been credited on previous recordings, including a 1984 duet with Teddy Pendergrass, she was ruled ineligible for the best new artist category of the Grammy Awards; the eligibility criteria have since been changed. But “Saving All My Love for You” won her first Grammy award, for best female pop vocal performance, an award she would win twice more. Her popularity soared for the next decade. Her second album, “Whitney,” in 1987, became the first album by a woman to enter the Billboard charts at No. 1, and it included four No. 1 singles. She shifted her pop slightly toward R & B on her third album, “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,” in 1990, which had three more No. 1 singles. For much of the 1990s, she turned to acting, bolstered by her music. She played a pop diva in “The Bodyguard,” and its soundtrack album — including the hits “I Will Always Love You,” “I’m Every Woman,” “I Have Nothing” and “Run To You” — went on to sell 17 million copies in the United States. It won the Grammy for album of the year, and “I Will Always Love You” won record of the year (for a single). After making the films “Waiting To Exhale” in 1995 and “The Preacher’s Wife” in 1996 — which gave her the occasion to make a gospel album — Ms. Houston resumed her pop career with “My Love Is Your Love” in 1998. Ms. Houston married Mr. Brown in 1992, and in 1993 they had a daughter, Bobbi Kristina, who survives her. Ms. Houston’s 2009 interview with Ms. Winfrey portrayed it as a passionate and then turbulent marriage, marred by drug use and by his professional jealousy, psychological abuse and physical confrontations. They divorced in 2007. Her albums in the 2000s advanced a new persona for Ms. Houston. “Just Whitney,” in 2002, was defensive and scrappy, lashing out at the media and insisting on her loyalty to her man.. Her most recent studio album, “I Look to You,” appeared in 2009, and it, too, reached No. 1. The album included a hard-headed breakup song, “Salute,” and a hymnlike anthem, “I Didn’t Know My Own Strength.” Ms. Houston sang, “I crashed down and I tumbled, but I did not crumble/I got through all the pain,” in a voice that showed scars. In Los Angeles on Saturday night, a number of other people were drawn to the hotel where Ms. Houston died to mourn. “I want to show support because she inspired a lot of people, and nobody’s perfect,” said Lavetris Singleton. “But if we’re not out here then she’ll be forgotten. We are her legacy. “I was in utter, total disbelief,” she said. “Who was not a fan of Whitney Houston at some point? The song that always sticks in my mind was ‘Greatest Love of All.’ I remember singing that as a child, and all her hits, and then following her, even with her rise and fall with Bobby Brown and watching her reality show.” Besides her daughter, now 18, Ms. Houston is survived by her mother. A woman who answered the telephone at the Edgewater, N.J., home of Ms. Houston’s mother on Saturday night said she would not speak to reporters. Ian Lovett and Jennifer Medina contributed reporting from Los Angeles, and Channing Joseph in New York. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/arts/music/whitney-houston-dies.html [video=youtube;8QaI-M9sxW4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QaI-M9sxW4[/video]
She still have those classic songs of hers that will always be loved by many... Still need to find out cause of her death...
Not... really surprising, especially if it was OD, but sad non the less. I used to listen to The Bodyguard soundtrack (cassette ftw!) over and over. She was amazing. RIP
