Whitney Houston RIP

That awful, screechy I Will Always Love You aside, there was a time when Whitney Houston was the best (known) singer in the world.  As for I Will Always Love You I’ve always preferred the writer, Dolly Parton’s version.  But I digress. Houston’s self-titled debut is a classic.  Her voice is original and textured and she is beautiful too.

Her recent struggles are the stuff Hollywood is also made of besides star-making.   She’s been a drugged out, boozed-up diva in club and interview appearances.  She has appeared bloated and angry and in the last photo taken before her death, with her daughter Bobbi on Thursday night, she looks disheveled and out of it.

There will be a lot of air time and magazine space devoted to how someone with everything could throw it all away and die before their time.  No matter what the cause of death is determined to be it’s likely that years of drug and alcohol abuse contributed to it.  But a person with an exceptional talent isn’t necessarily equipped to cope with life.  Throw in a very public life, fading stardom and what have you to the mix and see how even a healthy mind would endure.  It can’t be easy.  (Whitney’s cousin, Dionne Warwick, was often cited by Whitney as a mentor and supporter.  Well, we saw on Celebrity Apprentice that Ms. Warwick is a diva and a true bitch.  She was unlikable, argumentative and – to borrow a phrase from my Dad – “full of herself”.   Even if her nice bits were edited out, she was much more bitter than sweet.  She would not be a reasonable life guide for anyone let alone a fellow performer!)

As I write this there’s speculation that Whitney took too many prescription drugs and drowned in the bathtub.  That’s not definitive yet but it’s a theory.  The talent of her youth was a gift to the world and I suppose it will be rediscovered now that she’s gone and there’s a generation of music lovers that only knows Whitney as the aging has-been she became in the gossip rags.  Whitney Houston was 48.