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| The Two Faces of Whitney Houston. Images from http://www.inquisitr.com/193192/remembering-whitney-houston-listen-to-the-singers-eleven-no-1-songs-video/ and http://nicholasstixuncensored.blogspot.com/2012/02/hosts-of-kfis-john-ken-show-suspended.html |
Death Dealers. It’s a movie reference straight out of the Underworld franchise, but instead of an elite group of vampires who hunt lycans, the Death Dealers in the real world make their living from the deaths of celebrities.
The careers of Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston were going nowhere fast. After meteoric rises, they had meteoric falls. They had their loving families, of course, and their devoted fans, mostly people who loved music so much they were willing to look past all their failings, like the contestants on American Idol, but after so many years of problems, these fans were fewer, especially in Jackson's case. I myself was reluctant to buy Michael Jackson’s CDs once those allegations of child molestation hit, and noticed he looked very, very feminine on the arrest reports. Putting my money in his pocket makes it seem that I’m okay with all those shenanigans. My reaction was the same reaction I’m sure a lot of people had, including his sister LaToya: “What’s wrong with him?” Most fans turned their backs. That’s the main reason why they weren’t as popular as they once were, and had all the problems with drugs and alcohol and the law that they did. Whitney’s voice was gravely in her last known interview, and I saw clips of her last performance just days before her death; it was plagued with a bit of disjointed spaciness and, later, booze-fueled partying. It seems that few were paying her any mind… until she died… and then everybody wanted a piece of her, just like they did with the deceased Michael Jackson, and you can throw Amy Winehouse into that mix as well, and any other celebrity whose career has stalled. Nobody can stand poor Lindsey Lohan these days, but if she dies, people will come out of the woodwork to say what a gifted, young actress she was in films like The Parent Trap, Mean Girls, and Freaky Friday. In the end, it seems nobody wanted to have anything to do with them, until they died, and then they suddenly all appeared with glowing love and support. It’s too little too late. She’s dead now. If you loved her that much, where were you when she really needed you, when she was still alive? Why wasn’t her name being plastered all over the place the week before she died? Where was all this love and support and accolades then?
So now, it seems everyone is saying what a great talent she was, and the fact is, she was! Yet she wasn’t, and isn’t, the only one. Never mind that the only recent footage of her I’d seen was of her inebriated tirade they show occasionally on The Soup (“KISS MY A**!”) and news of her troubled relationship with the hotheaded Bobby Brown, and her continued use of drugs and alcohol, whether crack or the later prescription medication (which, according to recent news, can be worse than street drugs), and the deterioration of her voice. I remember when she came out with her sophomore album Whitney in 1987 and the critics were very harsh. After “Saving All My Love for You” and “The Greatest Love of All,” she suddenly started singing bubbly pop songs that just about anybody could sing, like “How Will I Know,” “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” and “So Emotional,” and the critics hated it! Over the years, she managed a few other classic soul songs to keep the critics appeased, but all of that unforgiving criticism for those bouncy pop songs is forgotten now, and everybody is acting like she was the greatest voice to ever grace the world with her presence. It's certainly a nice notion, but are you kidding me? People, especially critics, seem to have short memories. You mean to tell me in the entire history of the world, with the billions of people who have ever been alive, and all the singers who came before her, including the billions who were alive before the invention of sound recording, that she beats them all? What about Etta James, whose Grammy tribute was diminished after Whitney died? Mariah Carey complimented Whitney on her voice after she died, but truthfully, she was no slouch either, and during the Grammy telecast, while they heaped praise upon Whitney, Jennifer Hudson did a version of “I Will Always Love You” that brought the house down, and Adele was showered with awards for her amazing voice and songs. Dare I say that these women were amazing too? Does that diminish the tribute to Houston? In the grand scheme of things, Whitney Houston certainly had an amazing voice, once upon a time (and according to the critics, ended up squandering it on quite a few forgettable pop songs) but in the history of the entire world, when all is said and done, she’s really just another person with a great voice. There were others before her, and there will be others after her, proven by the amazing performances on the very Grammy show that applauded her, and there will be more… lots more. I agree that she defined a piece of the pop culture landscape in her time, and became the voice to emulate and the name to speak when you wanted to talk about great singers you might want to be like. (It might be interesting to find out how many times her name was mentioned on American Idol over the years). But there are other great voices too, and certainly other great songs.
But the Death Dealers have her now, and I’m sure in time, she will be enshrined as one of the greats, and she’ll even deserve it. But it won’t be the whole truth. Putting her on such a high pedestal ultimately diminishes the talent of others, like Etta James, Mariah Carey, Jennifer Hudson, and Adele, and they don't deserve that. Leave it to the Death Dealers to carry things just a bit too far... but only after the struggling talent dies. And by that time, will anyone remember the state she was in when she died so very young?
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