Remembering Whitney

(8 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

I think there ought to be a rule. If a famous musician just a few years younger than you survives their twenties, they ought to make it until you can go as a retiree yourself see them singing golden oldies on a golden oldies tour. That’s the way it ought to be.

This is not a political diary, as such, but just a log of my reaction to hearing the news. I heard the news on twitter, and after clicking through to listen to the linked YouTube clip … and verifying the news, which at first I could not believe … I set to browsing Youtube and sharing little reactions and memories, as one does when thinking about the passing of a pop culture star.

The tweet that sent me off on my journey was this one, which I retweeted with my visceral reaction:

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V @edgery / @TheTweetOfGod: This will always and forever be the definition of “nailing it”. […] || Wow. Shivers.

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My lord, it gave me chills again. Someone with the range to not merely belt out the high notes, but to sing them, and toss in a rising flourish on top of “Home of the Free” … and the ability to sing the anthem as a song.

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NB. A lot of these clips are the VEVO music rights clearing house system, which inserts ads ~ but their ad servers may be running behind due to the load, so if there is more than normal buffering, that could be the problem.

The format of log is simple: my remark for the twitter feed, with the place of the clip indicated by a “[…]” box, and beneath it, the embedded YouTube clip. And sometimes my reactions while putting this together, in italics.

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dT_Tb Whitney Houston – How Will I Know – YouTube […] ~ did I see this on MTV? I think MTV still played Music in 1991 ~

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dT_Tb Whitney Houston – I’m Every Woman ~ 1992 (UTube) […] ~ 3:30~4:30 ~ zOMG what pipes.

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d^_^b Whitney Houston ~ Exhale ~ 1995 (YouTube) […] ~ “Sometimes you laugh, sometimes you cry.” Shoop, Shoop, Shoo be do.

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Loved Whitney Houston, Loretta Devine, Lela Rochon & Angela Basset in Waiting to Exhale. “Sometimes you laugh, sometimes you cry”. T_T

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… life never tells us the whens or whys…

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d-_-b Whitney Houston – Saving All My Love For You ~ 1985 (YouTube) […] ~ I know BET was playing music in ’85

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Whitney Houston – Didn’t We Almost Have It All ~ (YouTube) […] 2:52-3:24 ~ a perfect choral bridge, then climb to the sky.

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d-_-b Whitney Houston & George Michael – If I Told You That ~ […] ~ best pipes of the 80’s soaring above a 90’s bassline ~

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Could I have this kiss forever – Whitney & Spanish Guitar (& Iglesias) […]

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… I loved the sound of this song, but if you’ve ever seen the video that they released it with, you may understand why I had to look for a clip I’d rather tweet around …

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BTW, you can assume more than song-length pauses are me hitting replay. Vale Whitney.

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d^_^b Whitney Houston ~ I Will Always Love You

[…] ~ 2:38-3:08 ~ another perfect transition before taking flight



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Whitney Houston- I Didn’t Know My Own Strength […] ~ Whitney, chanteuse ~ sparks & glimmers of earlier days ~ dT_Tb

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#Whitney ~ I Wanna Dance With Somebody ~ […] ~ sooner or later, the fever ends, & I wind up feeling down ~

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#Whitney ~ Queen Of The Night […] ~ all fireworks, flash & flourishes, but 0:32-0:40 ~ what flourish in that voice

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… the pop diva playing a pop-rock diva … I believe the technical term is “not a stretch” … but they sure as hell didn’t need a voice-over singer to make the performance pieces work …

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#Whitney ~ I Have Nothing […] ~ oh the rich butterscotch tone 2:06-2:22, 2:44-3:09 ~ & the caramel cream of 4:23-4:42

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#Whitney & Stevie Wonder – We didn’t know […]

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… in the duets, there comes the time when Whitney takes flight above her partner(s) ~ but singing a Stevie Wonder song together with Stevie Wonder, they fly together …

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A Log Epilog

What an instrument. And if perhaps incapable of handling the strains of media celebrity, I don’t really give a damn ~ long after the gossip has faded, people will remember her voice. I think she was the first of the eighties/nineties pop-divas …

… but where some drove to the top of their range like a trumpet player straining for the high note, she soared there with the still brass but richer tone of a coronet … but loose and flowing, some exotic slide coronet with the ability to swoop down into a lush, silky baritone. If you have heard Armstrong in duet with a saxophone, you may recognize the intuition that led many producers to sing counterpoint duet with a saxophone, the complement of two brass instruments, the reed contrasting with Whitney’s open clear tones, from lush to sweet to steel-edged.

In a way, it makes me feel less jaundiced about the outbreak of celebrities who are famous for being famous … when I think about the tremendous talents like Micheal and Whitney whose talent made them celebrities, and whose celebrity seemed to have been a fatal condition.

Anyway, some of the singers and songwriters I loved in my twenties seemed to have avoided the fatal bear’s hug of celebrity ~ for example, the Wikipedia machine tells me that Neneh Cherry is still cooking along …