Singer Whitney Houston dies at 48

Whitney Houston after performing I Didn’t Know My Own Strength at the 2009 American Music Awards [Reuters]

Whitney Houston, who reigned as pop music’s queen until her majestic voice and regal image were ravaged by drug use, erratic behaviour and a tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown, has died aged 48.

The singer was found dead in a Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles, where she had been staying for the past two weeks.

Houston’s publicist Kristen Foster confirmed on Saturday that the singer had died, but the cause of death was unknown.

Al Jazeera’s Rob Reynolds, reporting from Los Angeles, said that Houston had been seen at public events in good form, and had been working on post-production for the film Sparkle in recent weeks, a film which she was producing.

Kelley Carter, an entertainment journalist, said the news was all the more tragic and surprising given the star’s recent good spirits.

Carter has seen Houston shortly before her death on Saturday.

“I saw her and spoke to her and never would have thought something like this would happen just a day and a half later,” Carter said. “All of her previous problems with drug were behind her.”

An ambulance had been called to the hotel at around 3pm local time but she was pronounced dead when it arrived.

Golden girl

At her peak, Houston was the golden girl of the music industry.

From the middle 1980s to the late 1990s, 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.

From the middle 1980s to the late 1990s, Houston was one of the world’s best-selling artists [Reuters]

News of Houston’s death came on the eve of music’s biggest night – the Grammy Awards. It is a showcase where she once reigned, and her death was sure to cast a heavy pall on Sunday’s ceremony.

Houston’s longtime mentor Clive Davis was to hold his annual concert and dinner on Saturday; it was unclear if it was going to go forward.

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

At the height of her career 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.

Houston influenced a generation of younger singers, from Christina Aguilera to Mariah Carey, who when she first came out sounded so much like Houston that many thought it was Houston.

A cautionary tale

But by the end of her career, Houston became 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 ABC’s Diane Sawyer in an infamous 2002 interview with then-husband 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, the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston, the cousin of 1960s pop diva Dionne Warwick and the goddaughter of Aretha Franklin.

Houston first started singing in the church as a child. In her teens, she sang backup 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 a 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.

‘Cool self-assurance’

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.”

Whitney Houston

Won two Emmy Awards and six Grammy Awards, along with hundreds of other honours in her lifetime   Remains the only artist to have seven consecutive No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hits   The 1985 debut album, Whitney Houston, was the best-selling debt album by a woman artist at the time of its release   First acting role was the lead in The Bodyguard (1992)   Sold more than 200 million albums worldwide

Her decision not to follow the more soulful inflections of singers like Franklin drew criticism by 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 told Katie Couric 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,” she said.

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.

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 Brown 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.

Cancelled concerts

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 eventually 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 Winfrey for straining her voice.

A world tour launched overseas, however, 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.