Each generation has a list of singers who transcend music and are true icons. Etta James. Gladys Knight. Janis Joplin. Aretha Franklin. Diana Ross. All of these are iconic in the pantheon of female singers.
For my generation, three immediately come to mind: Madonna. Mary J. Blige. And Whitney Houston.
Women who have a string of memories and monumental moments to go along with a string of no. 1 hits.
The world lost a great one last night, a songbird who could make you feel whatever she was going through, and make it so that listening to her songs always reminded you of whatever you were going through too. It's easy to rhapsodize about her booming pipes, melodic voice, and mesmirizing shifts in tone. Many will do that and rightfully so.
But what stands out to me about Whitney - that's the first sign of a star, when only a first name suffices - is that she created a number of iconic moments that I experienced personally or as part of the American public.
Her first few hits, and they were heavyweight successes, are ingrained into '80s pop culture: You Gave Good Love; How Will I Know?; I Wanna Dance With Somebody. I didn't realize it at the time but it was rare, if not unheard of, for girls all across the country to get their style from an African-American woman. Whitney transcended race and culture during a time when, really, there weren't very many black pop singers.
Perhaps that was why our teacher forced our class to sing I Believe the Children Are Our Future at sixth-grade graduation. I say forced because my classmates at Lindbergh Elementary in San Diego's suburb of Clairemont thought the song was sappy; we thought we'd be laughed at. We weren't, of course, but what we didn't realize until years later was Mrs. Negus had chosen that song as a hallmark of diversity, education, and triumph. It would become a classic.
What was interesting is the youth of the 1980s and '90s eventually went through a cultural metamorphosis. As the glitz and economic success of the '80s grinded into the more challenging early '90s, a lot of families lost jobs and homes. Whitney herself found pop stardom, which came so easily from 1985 - 1988, came at a cost. She was criticized by other R&B singers for "not being black enough" and was booed at the 1990 Black Entertainment Television Awards.
Then came late 1990 and the emergence of Saddam Hussein and what eventually became Desert Storm. Our country had not engaged in international conflict since Vietnam and, needless to say, it was an unsettling time. With debate raging over war in Iraq and even the Super Bowl overshadowed by the gloom of families sending sons and daughters overseas, Whitney was tabbed to sing the National Anthem. What followed was the most beautiful rendition of The Star Spangled Banner I have still ever heard.
I can still remember players from the Bills and Giants - the Super Bowl champions in this year that Whitney has passed too - wiping tears from their eyes. The next day famed B.E.T. announcer Donnie Simpson recounted on air how, when the anthem ended, he picked up his phone, called his brother somewhere, and said, "Man, did you hear that?", while wiping tears from his eyes.
Personally I believe the Lord made it so that Whitney could sing that song, like only she could, before the biggest single-game sporting spectacle in the world, to comfort, encourage, and galvanize us that good would eventually defeat evil.
The next few years were as roller-coaster wild for Whitney as they were for our generation. She created the album I'm Your Baby Tonight, which finally gained her R&B acceptance; became a mega-star in music and movies; married my favorite male singer, Bobby Brown (an original member of New Edition); got caught up in a whirlwind of drugs, abuse, and money; became a reality-show trainwreck; survived and eased into her roles as mother and singing luminary.
Her role in Waiting to Exhale showed her acting chops and displayed the sass many didn't want to believe she had. Whitney wasn't the pop princess many in the public desired her to be. But she wasn't an all-out crazy diva either. She was many things in many different eras and I think another one-name queen of entertainment, Oprah, recognized that. Not every singer has a song like I'm Every Woman selected as the theme for the biggest talk show in television history.
Whitney Houston was every woman: brash, talented, romantic, mischievous, ambitious, sensitive, resourceful, tough, and always able to come back from defeat. Hearing her songs is like taking a trip through 25+ years of music history.
She is incredible. She is an icon. She is Whitney and, man, will she be missed.
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