In Memory: Whitney Houston

By Akshat Goel

To this date, she still holds the Guinness World Record for the most awarded female vocalist across genres and across time. With 415 lifetime awards, including two Emmys, six Grammys, 30 Billboard Music Awards, 22 American Music awards, and over 170 million records sold, the numbers say it all. Whitney Houston was one of the greatest music stars ever. Every vocalist of any kind will live in the shadow of her transcendental vocals, enormous range, and deeply melodic, fluid arrangements.

As the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston, a notable figure on the R&B, soul, and pop scenes, the young Whitney performed solo for the first time at age 11. Throughout her teenage years, she would often join her mother on stage to sing back-up vocals. At the age of 14, Whitney collaborated with composer, musician, and producer Michael Zager on his hit single ‘Life’s a Party.’ Impressed by young Whitney, he offered the singer a recording contract, though the girl’s rise to fame would have to wait as Cissy Houston refused the contact, wanting her daughter to finish school first.

Once her first album, ‘Whitney Houston ’ hit the markets, she never looked back. From the haunting, sometimes whispered, sometimes soaring lyrics of ‘I Will Always Love You’ to the fast, yet strangely moving dance tune ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody,’ her body of work reveals a phenomenal ability to tread the blurry boundary between a form of contemporary urban soul years ahead of its time and a beat-driven, addictive pop that is difficult to forget. In a genre characterized by distinctive female voices, hers remains, for me, the most original, the most distinctive, the one that started it all: the one and only Voice. May she rest in peace.