Whitney Houston R.I.P.

xpost But I think that's her legacy as a show-off unit shipper, alas, thus justifying rampant melisma.

i don't think anyone does prefer the acappella, it's just a pretty astonishing demonstration of her voice

― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Sunday, 12 February 2012 14:42 (52 minutes ago) Permalink

I do. I suppose this will qualify me for rockism or some such egregious sin, but it's just a personal preference - the '80s, tinny pop production values of producers like Arthur Baker sound tuneless so me and detract from the voice.

man there was some speed garage tune (ha ha probably something really obvious like "ripgroove") that looped a bit of whitney melisma until it sounded like god's own emergency broadcast system.

Arthur Baker is tinny?!?!

i always kinda hoped you'd do more house diva stuff.

so many remixes over her career which did this job for her though - thunderpuss mix of "it's not right" as correctly rhapsodised over upthread, also hex hector's "i learned from the best" and jr vasquez's "how will i know"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMdXi6f5KRg

I adore this performance, espesh ~ 4:00 in : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_4PlM85NJo&feature=BFa&list=PLFB0C6BC1061DAE04

awww, my brother dan bunny wrote something nice on facebook just now:

"i miss whitney..working in record stores when her first record came out i felt th sky shift a little every day..people were berserk for that voice..moms..teens..old frumpy dudes..all they wanted was to be taken out of whatever hell the 80's had to offer and escape to a cloud w a caramel angel..when i djed for some mafia at a steakhouse,,dipping low behind the booth to snort some cocaine.,i couldnt wait to blast the new record and make people happy..th dirt and grime will forthcome in th press..but i will always feel like a saved soul of some sort in th presence of that amazing voice,unequalled,poorly imitated and never forgotten"

guthrie ramsey on facebook:

"Perfect vibrato. (Deceivingly) effortless diaphragmic support. Excellent way of "crowding" the cadences with "just enough" sonic information before landing coyly in the next structural part of the song. Widest of ranges: hardly ever "bailed out" by flipping into falsetto. Used the falsetto flip as a subtle garnish. Impeccable intonation (builds "trust" in a listener). Grew more melismatic as time progressed--never overdid this, though--mostly clever twists at the ends of phrases or tossed in between plainly rendered melodic statements that allowed us to sing along at full voice, by ourselves, in the car. Through musical economy and powerful execution could shape the emotional contour of a song whether in long concert-versions or on a 4:00 minute record. A come hither/don't come another step closer or I'll call my cousin camera presence. She and "the voice" seemed like two separate entities: she performed it; allowed us to witness it, she obviously enjoyed it herself. But in the end it just couldn't keep up."

there's an x-men remix of "it's not right" that you can find on the internet but the b-side is an alternate mix they did that i like even better. i have ripped it from the white label JUST FOR YOU and encoded it, and uploaded it here -

http://www.mediafire.com/?uyr8m4v86eycb83

: /

According to TMZ, Whitney Houston was found in the bathtub of the Beverly Hills hotel with her face underwater. She had been in the bathroom for over an hour when her hairdresser went to check on her, only to discover her head underwater and legs in the air, as if she'd slid down the back of the tub. It is unclear if the official cause of death was drowning.

damn scott, helluva quote

<---- drowning in a sea of OTM posts

― Bo Jackson Overdrive, Sunday, February 12, 2012 10:21 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Grew more melismatic as time progressed

Yeah, Josh, there's no rampant melisma on her early hits.

im pretty sure that's where the general public all started to think she was an amazing singer.

Grew more melismatic as time progressed--never overdid this, though

Beg to differ. In addition to showcasing two dynamics--soft and LOUD--she oversings the living shit out of "I Will Always Love You."

I don't pretend to know her catalog through and through or anything. And I apologize if I'm being too unsentimental for people less than 24 hours out.

But I feel like people are confusing her talent--which she had in abundance--with artistry. And while I don't deny talent alone can take even the most banal of material to somewhere emotional, even artistic (see: The Star Spangled Banner), I'm not entirely sure a handful of moments to that effect over a span of three decades justifies some of the tributes we're hearing. Put another way, Whitney Houston wasn't a legend -- she was a star. And like every star, she burned bright for a while and then burned the fuck out.

let's agree to, not exactly disagree, but that we are completely right and you are completely wrong

Glad you brought up The Star Spangled Banner, because that performance was pretty widely debated- people who loved her loved it, but I can also recall a lot of catty and/or skeptical reactions to the display going on there.

I'm also wondering if I"m the only person who remembers the very long and elaborate Henry Rollins spoken word bit about Whitney Houston's version of "The Greatest Love of All"- I recall it being an extended cranky rant about race in America with some aside about Houston's undeniable pipes.

What's the difference between a star and legend? A "legend" in this context is a showbiz word.

I encourage unsentimentality -- it's a tonic to the shall we say wetter tributes I've read in the last nineteen hours.

About the only edifying thing emerging from the death of someone as big as Houston is figuring out what made her awesome and gross. I'm not a fan and said so in my obit. To my ears she recorded quite a few misconceived songs. I dislike a third of her hits. I was in the anti-Whitney camp in '93.

But I've learned a lot about gospel and R&B in the interim, specifically how to listen and judge it. Thus, I'm reacting more kindly to those moments in vast catalog that ARE powerful. But it's a waste of time to pine for a purer Whitney who could have kept working with Bill Laswell.

It's funny, being born in late '82 I always felt Whitney was just a hair before my time, whereas it seems like I grew up with Mariah Carey (her heir to the big-ballad/pop-soul/M.O.R&B throne, of course). And despite that voice, her music never really signified for me either, though I can feel that great big gorgeous voice now more than I ever could as a kid. But her decline spooked me for real. After the drugs she turned into an utterly, completely different person. Look at early and late interviews, or performances. It's terrifying. What a fucking shame.

(Lex has already linked my piece on how "I Will Always Love You" actually works and where the hostility to it comes from, so I won't spam: it isn't to do with her "oversinging" it, though, it's to do with her singing exactly as she means to, and the response this inevitably entails.)

(<i>a purer Whitney who could have kept working with Bill Laswell</i> : "purer" also i think misunderstands laswell's project)

I was going to stick square quotes around "purer."

Whitney wasn't the kind of icon i had much time for when she was big, but I think Rich J's piece in The Daily does a great job of summing up her accomplishments in a critically aware way without engaging in hollow acclaim or unnecessary pontification about drugs, music-liked-by-grandmas, etc.

http://www.thedaily.com/page/2012/02/12/021212-news-whitney-houston-appreciation-1-2/

Jody Rosen:

Houston was the queen of Adult Contemporary—but her adultness made her not quite contemporary. She was old-fashioned, a little bit fuddy-duddy; your grandmother loved her. She sang about grown-up emotions, and had no feel for the attitude, or the rhythms, of hip-hop. She spent the early '90s in a tug-of-war with Mariah Carey for chart supremacy, but Carey’s hip-hop savvy ensured that she’d come out on top in the end—even though Whitney could sing circles around her.

She captured the zeitgeist in other ways, though. Her message was self-esteem: She made opera out of Oprah. A historian wishing to understand America’s late-20th-century therapy culture can begin and end his research with Whitney Houston: “Learning to love yourself / Is the greatest love of all.”

The self-esteem was inseparable from self-regard—she was a diva, after all. But she was not just singing for herself. She was criticized for being too milquetoast, too “white,” but you could hear the black church in every note of her records. There was a reason that African-American women were her most loyal fans: When she unleashed her fearsome melisma, singing about struggle and resiliency, demanding love and fair treatment in the face of indifference, only a dolt could miss the politics. You can hear it in the stormy final chorus of one of her greatest ballads, “I Have Nothing.” “Don’t walk away from me!” she commands in a wild gospel growl. It’s a sound that will outlive her, and the rest of us.

the first paragraph of that slate piece pretty much sums up why i'm impressed with the daily's.

Did she sing about "grown-up emotions"? I never thought she did, even at her best ("Exhale" is an exception, maybe). She sang from the point of view of a blinkered sixteen-year-old.

the "let us not forget that mariah took whitney down with the achilles heel of hip-hop" part made me think of maura's rule no. 3: Are you comparing the artist you're writing about to other female artists only? If so, why?

seriousness and carefulness more than grown-upness (and ha, obv those are the hallmarks of the kind of teenager who wants to be more mature than they are) (kind of opposite to mariah's whole "eternally 12" thing)

must not let myself read any of these pieces til i've finished mine

What's the difference between a star and legend? A "legend" in this context is a showbiz word.

Ok, how about genius? Or one of the greatest artists of the modern era? My point is, she never actually transcended the business. She was basically a creation of it.

But it's a waste of time to pine for a purer Whitney who could have kept working with Bill Laswell.

Honestly, that's a terrifying thought. For me, the bigger issue is that she never hooked up with particularly good songwriters or producers. Where Dionne, Dusty and Thelma hooked up with Bacharach/Stax/Gamble & Huff and Britney, Beyonce and Mariah have been square in the middle of the R&B producer-ama of the last decade, Whitney hooked up with...Clive Davis. Which pretty much tells you all you need to know about her, her interests and her career (and in fairness, her era).

XXP - Considering Mariah was marketed as the next Whitney, and that's effectively what she became, I think it's an entirely appropriate comparison.

whitney also hooked up w/rodney jerkins, babyface, missy elliott, danja, swizz beatz and tricky stewart

For me, the bigger issue is that she never hooked up with particularly good songwriters or producers

Babyface? Rodney Jerkins? Annie Lennox? Narada Michael Walden?

I'll grant you Michael Masser.

i mean the reason she wasn't in the middle of the producerama you speak of is that for many of those years she wasn't recording music at all

Michael Masser wrote "Touch Me in the Morning!"

I get the logic of comparing Whitney to Mariah, but not the logic of playing "TS: Mariah Carey vs. Whitney Houston" in her obit. I like the Rich's piece (while acknoweldging Clive's paternalism) let's Whitney own her victories and failings, rather than making the thinkpiece about us.

I like that Rich's piece lets, rather

Seriously bill laswell mostly sucks guys, he's done way worse than whitneys worst song...are people really mourning some shitty, thinly produced theoretical funk/fusion record she might have made with him? Oh no!!

Narada Michael Walden was a very good drummer. I think my broader point is that I just never got the sense that Whitney cared all that much about what she sang or who she worked with. And I can't really think of another *great* singer I could say that about.

XP Crouper: Yeah, good article. One thing Rich got wrong, tho: Whitney's death isn't going to overshadow the Grammys. Instead, it'll be the biggest ratings boost the show has ever had. It never ceases to amaze me, the, well, "awesome and gross" drawing power of celebrities dying. Perfect timing, huh?

god damn bobby brown for laying his crack dusted fingers on her

"Croupier", rather

think my broader point is that I just never got the sense that Whitney cared all that much about what she sang or who she worked with

haha -- dude the competition is thick in this category! Ray Charles comes immediately to mind. Lady Dionne too.

i thought whitney made some pretty bitchen music. it never occurred to me that she was some kind of schlockmeister. 'i will always love you' still gives me chills, who cares if its not subtle or tasteful. since when does ILM care about that crap!!

Whitney's death isn't going to overshadow the Grammys. Instead, it'll be the biggest ratings boost the show has ever had.

i think he means the whitney tribute will overshadow the Adele-fest or the resurrection of chris brown, not that ratings will go down.

i was actually thinking about whitney last week, & was contrasting her with mariah and how mariah's kept her nose to the grind to maintain her empire, while whitney sadly stopped caring about her career. that contract she signed more than 10 years ago, the deal that toppled arista, what a disaster! lets kill boby brown yall

I don't know much about Whitney Houston's whole personal thing but I never assume anybody's decision to abandon public life is necessarily a sad one

m@tt so otm about laswell; this is the last place i expected to read ppl pining for that stuff tbh

can you abandon public life while being a reality TV superstar

Well you know what I mean