Long decline of gifted songbird

CONDOLENCES for Whitney Houston, the American pop diva, poured in on Twitter from shocked fans and from the famous yesterday.

Whitney Houston

CONDOLENCES for Whitney Houston, the American pop diva, poured in on Twitter from shocked fans and from the famous yesterday, as sadness over the news of her death spread through the entertainment world.

Houston was one of the most celebrated female singers of all time, winning multiple Emmy, Grammy and Billboard Music awards.

"Heartbroken and in tears over the shocking death of my friend . . . She will never be forgotten as one of the greatest voices to ever grace the earth," wrote Mariah Carey.

"We have lost another legend. Love and prayers to Whitney's family. She will be missed," said Christina Aguilera, while Rihanna wrote simply: "No words! Just tears #Dear Whitney."

"I just can't talk about it now," Houston's godmother, Aretha Franklin, said in a short statement. "It's so stunning and unbelievable. I couldn't believe what I was reading coming across the TV screen."

At her peak, Houston was the golden girl of the music industry. From the middle 1980s to the late 90s, she was one of the world's best-selling artists. She wowed audiences with effortless, powerful, and peerless vocals that were rooted in the black church but made palatable to the masses with a pop sheen.

Her success carried her beyond music to movies, where she starred in hits such as The Bodyguard and Waiting to Exhale.

She had the perfect voice and the perfect image: a gorgeous singer who had sex appeal but was never overtly sexual, who maintained perfect poise.

She influenced a generation of younger singers, from Aguilera to Carey, who sounded so much like Houston when she first appeared that many people thought it was Houston. But by the end of her career, Houston had become a stunning cautionary tale of the toll of drug use. Her album sales plummeted and the hits stopped coming; her once serene image was shattered by a wild demeanour and bizarre public appearances. She confessed to abusing cocaine, marijuana and pills, and her once pristine voice became raspy and hoarse, unable to hit the high notes as she had during her prime.

"The biggest devil is me. I'm either my best friend or my worst enemy," Houston told the American ABC network's Diane Sawyer in an infamous 2002 interview with then-husband, Bobby Brown, by her side.

It was a tragic fall for a superstar who was one of the top-selling artists in pop music history, with more than 55 million records sold in the US alone.

She seemed to be born into greatness. In addition to being Franklin's goddaughter, she was the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston and the cousin of 1960s pop diva Dionne Warwick.

Houston started singing in the church as a child. In her teens, she sang back-up for Chaka Khan, Jermaine Jackson and others, in addition to modelling. It was around that time when music mogul Clive Davis first heard Houston perform.

"The time that I first saw her singing in her mother's act in a club . . . it was such a stunning impact," Davis told Good Morning America.

"To hear this young girl breathe such fire into this song. I mean, it really sent the proverbial tingles up my spine," he added.

Before long, the rest of the country would feel it, too. Houston made her album debut in 1985 with Whitney Houston, which sold millions and spawned hit after hit. Saving All My Love for You brought her first Grammy, for best female pop vocal. How Will I Know, You Give Good Love and The Greatest Love of All also became hit singles.

Another multiplatinum album, Whitney, came out in 1987 and included hits such as Where Do Broken Hearts Go and I Wanna Dance With Somebody.

The New York Times wrote that Houston "possesses one of her generation's most powerful gospel-trained voices, but she eschews many of the churchier mannerisms of her forerunners. She uses ornamental gospel phrasing only sparingly, and instead of projecting an earthy, tearful vulnerability, communicates cool self-assurance and strength, building pop ballads to majestic, sustained peaks of intensity."

Her decision not to follow the more soulful inflections of singers such as Franklin drew criticism from some, who saw her as playing down her black roots to go pop and reach white audiences. The criticism would become a constant refrain through much of her career. She was even booed during the Soul Train Awards in 1989.

"Sometimes it gets down to that, you know?" she said in an interview in 1996. "You're not black enough for them. I don't know. You're not R&B enough. You're very pop. The white audience has taken you away from them."

Some saw her 1992 marriage to former New Edition member and soul crooner Bobby Brown as an attempt to refute those critics. It seemed to be an odd union; she was seen as pop's pure princess while he had a bad-boy image, and already had children of his own. (The couple had a daughter, Bobbi Kristina, in 1993.)

Over the years, he would be arrested several times, on charges ranging from drink driving to failure to pay child support. But Houston said their true personalities were not as far apart as people may have believed.

"When you love, you love. I mean, do you stop loving somebody because you have different images? You know, Bobby and I basically come from the same place," she told Rolling Stone in 1993. "You see somebody, and you deal with their image -- that's their image. It's part of them, it's not the whole picture. I am not always in a sequined gown. I am nobody's angel. I can get down and dirty. I can get raunchy."

Brown, who is touring in Memphis, is said to be "beside himself" at the news of his former wife's death. One of Brown's family members told People magazine he was not coping well. "He was sobbing, and by the end of the call, I was sobbing, too," the source said. "He's beside himself right now."

Brown had spoken to the couple's 18-year-old daughter about the death of her mother and she was "not doing well" after hearing the news.

Houston's moving 1991 rendition of The Star Spangled Banner at the Super Bowl, amid the first Gulf war, set a new standard and reaffirmed her as America's sweetheart.

In 1992, she became a star in the acting world with The Bodyguard. Despite mixed reviews, the story of a singer (Houston) guarded by a former Secret Service agent (Kevin Costner) was an international success. It also gave her perhaps her most memorable hit: a searing, stunning rendition of Dolly Parton's I Will Always Love You, which sat atop the charts for weeks. It was Grammy's record of the year and best female pop vocal, and The Bodyguard soundtrack was named album of the year.

She returned to the big screen in 1995-96 with Waiting to Exhale and The Preacher's Wife. Both spawned soundtrack albums, and another hit studio album, My Love Is Your Love, in 1998, brought her a Grammy for best female R&B vocal for the cut It's Not Right But It's Okay.

But during these career and personal highs, Houston was using drugs. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2010, she said by the time The Preacher's Wife was released, "(doing drugs) was an everyday thing . . . I would do my work, but after I did my work, for a whole year or two, it was every day . . . I wasn't happy by that point in time. I was losing myself."

In the interview, Houston blamed her rocky marriage to Brown, which included a charge of domestic abuse against him in 1993. They divorced in 2007.

Houston would go to rehab twice before she would declare herself drug-free to Winfrey in 2010. But in the interim, there were missed concert dates, a stop at an airport due to drugs, and public meltdowns.

She was so startlingly thin during a 2001 Michael Jackson tribute concert that rumours spread she had died the next day. Her crude behaviour and jittery appearance on Brown's reality show, Being Bobby Brown, was an example of her sad decline.

Her Sawyer interview, where she declared "crack is whack", was often parodied. She dropped out of the spotlight for a few years.

Houston staged what seemed to be a successful comeback with the 2009 album I Look To You. The album debuted on the top of the charts, and would go platinum.

Things soon fell apart. A concert to promote the album on Good Morning America went awry as Houston's voice sounded ragged and off-key. She blamed an interview with Oprah Winfrey for straining her voice.

A world tour launched overseas, including her shambolic tour of Australia in 2010, only confirmed suspicions that Houston had lost her treasured gift, as she failed to hit notes and left many fans unimpressed; some walked out.

Cancelled concert dates raised speculation that she may have been abusing drugs, but she denied those claims and said she was in great shape, blaming illness for cancellations.

Additional reporting: Andrew Dalton and Adrian Sainz

AP