On August 9, 1963, what was considered the golden voice of the 20th century was born, a voice that was lost in February 2012, but that went bankrupt years before and although it tried to return on more than one occasion, it was never seen as complete as in its best years. Whitney Houston was found face down in the bathtub of a Beverly Hills hotel, she was only 48 years old.
Harvey Manson Jr, one of Whitney's producers, said of the artist that she "had days when she sounded amazing, days when she sounded decent, and days when she didn't sound so good."
She was born in New Jersey and at just 11 years old she joined the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, one of the oldest black churches in the United States, and little by little she revealed the power hidden in her vocal cords. It is said that when she entered the studio to record her second album, she asked everyone to leave the place except the producer and the sound technician. Who knew that the singer of iconic ballads from the 80s and 90s would feel shy in front of a microphone.
In her prime, Whitney Houston had a vocal range of three and a half octaves, but her addiction to tobacco (borne since her adolescence) and drugs (the result of her insecurities), in addition to the passage of time and age, were diminishing his instrument, his voice.
Perhaps it was not only those excesses but also the excess use, and for some abuse, of her voice on stage. The artist gave 50 shows on her first tour, in 1986, but for her second there were already 150 in just a year and a half. And after this tour known as Moment of truth came I'm your baby tonight in 1991 with 92 concerts in just seven months and across several continents.
Hits like the version of Dolly Parton's "I will always love you" that appeared in The Bodyguard (1992) set the bar high and placed him at the top of the charts, but the vocal challenge increased as the years went by Her fans saw how her voice increasingly sounded hoarse and how the singer's demons grew.
Her vocal coach of her later years, Gary Cantona, said that Whitney's personality was affected by the deterioration of her voice. He began working with her in 2005: "Her voice when talking about her was completely hoarse and when she sang about her it was also completely hoarse." With the classes she tried to recover her great sonorous flow and thus be able to maintain the notes that characterized her, but even after dozens of sessions she was not able to reach one hundred percent of it.
She could barely speak when she met Cantona and he says she got him back to 75% of who she was. She wasn't whole, but she did give him confidence and she became fun and charming again. Her self-esteem increased and she herself recognized that she had to change even though she couldn't. They did not want to make an album until her golden voice returned and in 2009 the album that would mark her return was published, I look to you.
The work sold more than 300,000 copies and put Whitney Houston back on the lips of fans and critics. It was not a particularly criticized album, but the negative comments came when the artist began her presentation tour. They were concerts that took her around the world and at that time YouTube already existed. The videos uploaded to the platform showed a Whitney who needed to tone down her old songs, that she could not sustain her notes and that she had lost her lyrical and melodious voice. She now sounded broken, broken and smoky. The instrument made itself sound dirty as a result of the excesses and torments that returned to Whitney's mind and the news spread through the Internet and the conventional media. From that time there are still news and reports with statements from fans leaving her concerts before the end and considering the performance as a scam or the worst show they had ever seen.
The artist was no stranger to criticism and what she said around her. The pressure increased and her demons increased, those that had been growing for years and that she couldn't get rid of. She rehearsed for the 2012 Grammy Awards and that warm-up concert was her last performance. Just 24 hours before the gala, her body was found and her eternal voice was never heard live again. At this awards ceremony, a tribute was dedicated to someone who would have turned 58 today.
