A childhood filled with iconic singers. Accidentally hitting her future husband
in the head. Forcing Dolly Parton to pull over to the side of the road. Whitney Houston's life
was tragically cut short, but her time on Earth was an eventful and stunning journey.
Born in New Jersey in 1963, Whitney Houston's childhood was filled with music.
Her mother Cissy was a gospel singer who toured with her group The Drinkard Singers. She later
formed another girl group, The Sweet Inspirations, and also performed alongside incredible talent,
including Jimi Hendrix, Wilson Pickett, and Dusty Springfield. Additionally,
Cissy had a robust solo career and sang backup for artists like Aretha Franklin and Van Morrison.
And that wasn't young Whitney's only musical influence. Dionne Warwick was her older cousin,
and Aretha Franklin was her unofficial godmother,
while her actual godmother, Darlene Love, has had an amazing singing career as well.
Franklin in particular had high praise for Houstin during a 1986 interview with MTV.
"I had no idea that Whitney felt as close to me as she does, but it's lovely. It's fabulous."
Considering this background, it's hardly a surprise that Whitney Houston became a
professional musician herself. And in fact she started performing at a young age,
as she was only seven when she began to sing
"God had given me a gift."
Heaven-sent or not, to call Houston's musical talent incredibly rare is no overstatement.
Her vocal range reportedly spanned three octaves, allowing her to achieve sounds that most artists
can only dream of. Following in her mother's gospel footsteps, Houston began singing at church.
Initially, she wasn't aiming for the limelight, as she instead wanted to become a backup singer.
"I wanted to sing with my mother. That was safe for me. You know, I was very — very shy."
Houston's exposure to top performers also gave her unique opportunities. While still a child,
she had the chance to sing with her mother on the background sessions for Chaka Khan.
These experiences shaped her view about potential career possibilities.
"I just wanted to sing. You know? I wanted to do what was in my soul, what was in my heart."
In the 2018 documentary Whitney, filmmaker Kevin Macdonald revealed shocking allegations about
the singer's early life. Interviews with people close to Houston included claims that she and
her half-brother Gary were sexually abused while they were children by their cousin,
singer Dee Dee Warwick. For Gary's part, he claimed that he
was molested by a female relative while his mother was on tour. As he recalled,
"My mother and father were gone a lot, so we stayed with a lot of different people. Four,
five different families who took care of us."
Houston's longtime assistant Mary Jones also claimed that Houston was preyed upon by Warwick,
who died in 2008. According to Jones, Houston feared how her mother Cissy would
react if she found out. After the documentary was released, Cissy released a statement that said,
"Dee Dee may have had her personal challenges, but the idea that she would have molested my children
is overwhelming and, for us, unfathomable [...] We cannot reconcile the public's need to know about
Whitney's life as justification for invasion of her privacy or the charge against Dee Dee,
a charge which neither Whitney nor Dee Dee is here to deny, refute or affirm."
Before she took the music world by storm,
Whitney Houston had a brief stint as a magazine model while she was a teenager.
She was discovered at the age of 16 by an agent who worked for a modeling agency.
"And I thought, 'Well, hey, if I can do it, I'll do it,' and I made some great money."
Houston later signed on to the prestigious Wilhelmina agency
and graced the pages of some of the biggest magazines of the time, including Seventeen,
Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Mademoiselle, and Young Miss. In 2012, photographer
Jack Mitchell recounted to CNN working with Houston when she was just 18, as he called her
"An innocent, sweet, pleasant schoolgirl with very good manners."
Mitchell also noted that she didn't have the polish or savvy of many of the models he knew
and that she even asked to do homework while waiting to be photographed. As he recalled,
"All she had was the clothes she had worn to high school that day."
When Whitney Houston was 19, an opportunity arrived that would change the course of her life.
That was when star-making music mogul Clive Davis attended a club called Sweet Waters in
Manhattan to watch her mother's gospel cabaret act. Houston had prepared two songs to perform:
"Home" from the movie The Wiz and "The Greatest Love of All," both of which
Davis has described as "knockouts." In 2009, he told Good Morning America,
"To hear this young girl breathe such fire into this song. I mean,
it really sent the proverbial tingles up my spine."
Soon afterwards, Davis signed Houston to Arista Records, and with the ink barely dry,
he brought her on national TV two weeks later to sing on The Merv Griffin Show.
"She was a stunning beauty, stunning vocalist,
and I brought her on national television. I introduced her for the next generation."
Whitney Houston released a string of hit albums beginning with her self-titled debut in 1985,
and then in January 1991, she had the unique opportunity to showcase her talent at the
Super Bowl. But performing the "Star-Spangled Banner" that year was a bit of a minefield.
The United States had entered the first Gulf War just ten days earlier.
There were calls to cancel the game, but President George H.W. Bush pushed to allow
it to go on. Thus, striking the right tone during the national anthem was essential.
Dressed down in a white tracksuit, Houston was radiant on stage. Her rendition of the
song was impactful, as her soaring vocals shone with emotion and grace.
The performance was so moving that it was widely played on the radio after the game.
Arista even released a single of the track, with all proceeds going to a
charity benefiting troops that Houston selected. As she reflected on the moment after the big game,
"They say the national anthem is one of the hardest songs to sing,
but it gets a whole lot easier to use those notes when you think about
the many men and women risking their lives in the Middle East."
"I really did it for the fellas and the women that were over there fighting for us,
you know, and protecting us, and that's what it was all about."
In 1989, Whitney Houston met Bobby Brown at the Soul Train Awards,
while they were both at the top of their careers. It wasn't exactly a meet-cute, as she reportedly
accidentally kept hitting him on the back of the head while hugging friends sitting behind
him. She made up for that awkward first encounter by inviting him to her 26th birthday party,
and they began dating soon after. With Houston's squeaky-clean public persona
and Brown's more hard-edged vibe, many saw the pairing as a mismatch. Nevertheless,
they wed at her home in 1992 in front of 800 guests. The opulent ceremony included white
doves that were released after their vows, an 18-tier wedding cake, and crates of Dom Perignon.
Then in March 1993, the couple welcomed their first and only child together,
a daughter named Bobbi Kristina. For Houston,
giving birth was an understandably profound moment. As she told Rolling Stone that year,
"God knows, I have been in front of millions and millions of people,
and that has been incredible, to feel that give-take thing. But, man,
when I gave birth to her and when they put her in my arms, I thought: 'This has got to be it.
This is the ultimate.' I haven't experienced anything greater."
Houston often kept Bobbi Kristina close, taking her on tour whenever she could and sometimes even
bringing her on stage. But life on the road was hard, and Bobbi Kristina was exposed to darker
moments, like her parents' frequent drug use. As Brown wrote in his memoir Every Little Step,
"When I think about it now, I just feel enormous pain. We failed her."
Another seismic development in Whitney Houston's life in the early 90s was her
burgeoning film career, in particular the 1992 movie The Bodyguard, in which
she starred alongside Kevin Costner. It was a box office hit, earning over $400 million worldwide,
and brought home numerous accolades, including Grammy wins for the soundtrack. While filming,
Houston struck up a friendship with her co-star, with whom she had amazing chemistry on screen.
In fact, he reportedly pushed to have her cast in the main role, although he would later recall
that she had doubts as she embarked on a movie career. As he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2012,
"The Whitney I knew, despite her success and worldwide fame,
still wondered, 'Am I good enough? Am I pretty enough? Will they like me?'"
As part of The Bodyguard, Houston put her own spin on the Dolly Parton song "I Will
Always Love You," which was quite possibly even more successful than
the film itself. When Parton heard Houston's rendition while driving,
she was so moved that she had to pull over. As she put it on an episode of The Oprah Conversation,
"I could not believe how she did that. I mean, how beautiful it was that my
little song had turned into that, so that was a major, major thing."
"It was the most overwhelming feeling that little song of mine
could be done so beautifully, so big, so overwhelming."
Houston would later go on to star in the likes of Waiting to Exhale and The Preacher's Wife,
but her film career was cut short as her personal problems began to eclipse her work.
Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown famously had their demons, both together and individually.
She entered rehab for drug use multiple times, while he had legal trouble with drug charges.
And in 2003, he was arrested for hitting her. Brown also admitted to cheating on Houston,
while also claiming that she had her own affairs. He reportedly believed that their
relationship was "doomed" from the start, while she once cited her fame after The
Bodyguard as the underlying issue. As she put it in an interview with Oprah Winfrey,
"Something happens to a man when a woman has that much fame. I tried to
play it down all the time. I used to say, 'I'm Mrs. Brown, don't call me Houston.'"
Then there was also the 2005 reality series Being Bobby Brown. Houston was reportedly pressured
into participating in the series by Brown, and it was canceled after she refused to appear in
the second season. By 2006, the couple split, and they were officially divorced the following year,
with Houston receiving full custody of their daughter Bobbi Kristina.
By the time of Whitney Houston's divorce, her struggles with drug use were seriously
affecting her career. She was reportedly leaning on her daughter Bobbi Kristina during this time,
as she set out on her Nothing But Love tour in 2010. As a family member told The Daily Beast,
"Honestly, Whitney in many ways depended on Bobbi Kristina more than Bobbi Kristina did on her.
No matter what she did or how drunk she got or how much her voice cracked at times,
Bobbi Kristina still loved her so much and never gave up on her."
But clearly, Houston still needed more help. In May 2011, her spokeswoman Kristen Foster
announced that the singer was in a rehab program for drug and alcohol treatment.
Then on February 11, 2012, Houston's life tragically ended. She was set to perform
at Clive Davis' pre-Grammy Awards party in Los Angeles, but then she was found in her hotel
bathtub. Her death was later ruled an accidental drowning. Heart disease and drug use were also
contributing factors. She was only 48 years old. Despite all the struggles in her life
and her abrupt, tragic passing, her legacy and incredible talent continues
to touch people's lives a decade after her passing. As MTV News remembered her:
"Whitney Houston seized the spotlight so fast, so early,
so young and so forcefully that she set a bar so high singers are still trying to vault it today."
If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction issues,
help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).